ParkingEye !!! £85 for parking at a beach in Wales !

RocketRonnieRadox

Hi all,

I just received a letter / PCN from Parking Eye Reference a short stay in a car park on Welsh coastline carpark

We literally didn't leave the car ! Gran was inside, me the wife and the kids were talking to a caravan owner about renting a van for a week.
We did not realize we had to pay to talk to the adjacent caravan owner and now I am getting worried.

I did a google on these types of ticket and learnt about this site and what you do here so thought to ask advise please.

The ticket has my name and address and pictures of my van and its reg number.

The PCN is payable to parking eye (creditor)
it cites the schedule 4 of the protection of freedoms act 2012 that the driver is required to pay.


As with others on here - what do I do ? Pay or ignore ?

Currently quite miffed and confused, £85 is a shocking amount of money, even the local councils don;t charge this.

Sheer daylight robbery.

Any advice gratefully received. What do I do ?

Rocket

giraffe69

Appeal to their better nature. You can guess the result of this.
Appeal via POPLA but get advice first. It will cost them a little money.
Completely ignore them and all their correspondence.

Of course it is daylight robbery. They are daylight robbers!

RocketRonnieRadox

Thanks Giraffe69,

This has taken up most of my afternoon reading up about them.

So I take it that as they are not the police or council they have no right to charge ?

As such I am committing no offence by not paying ?
Obviously if it is an offence I will pay but not if I am within my legal rights not to.

Thank you kindly

Ron.

Guys_Dad

What you need to know is this is a game with two sets of players.

On one side, there is the PPC. They are a business. They make money by charging motorists who contravene some made up rules that they put for parking on some land they claim to "manage".

On the other side is you. Normally, with certain exceptions such as Parking Eye's "first in last out" biased ANPRs, you have contravened these"rules" and they claim that by parking, you have entered a contract with them and, under these contract terms, you owe them money.

So we have the battle lines drawn.

If you refuse to pay, the only way they can get money from you is through the court. No debt collectors, solicitors or anyone else has any claim on this disputed charge.

There is a step before court however called POPLA, a recent body set up to adjudicate on Parking on Private Land cases. Before going to POPLA, however, must appeal to the PPC. If your appeal to the PPC fails - and it doesn't really matter what you write, they are almost certain to turn down your appeal as, after all, that means losing £50 or more income.

They then have to give you a POPLA Code and Form to enable you to appeal to POPLA.

Now POPLA comes from a stand point that charging you up to £100 for contravening a PPC's rules is all fair and square and the PPC has the right to charge you this, unless your appeal is covered by one of the 4 appeal reasons. From POPLA's site, these are the reasons.

The grounds under which you can appeal the parking charge notice are as follows:

• The vehicle was not improperly parked: e.g. that the vehicle was not parked where stated on the parking charge notice; that you believe you were still within the time you paid for; that the voucher was clearly displayed or that the conditions were not properly signed.
  
• The parking charge (ticket) exceeded the appropriate amount: e.g. that you are being asked to pay the wrong amount for the parking charge or that the charge has already been paid.
  
• The vehicle was stolen: e.g. that the vehicle was improperly parked after being stolen. However, the fact that someone else was driving your vehicle, for example a family member, friend or colleague, is not in itself a valid ground of appeal. The fact that you told the driver that they could only use your vehicle on condition they did not get any parking tickets is not a valid ground of appeal.
  
• I am not liable for the parking charge: e.g. that you had sold the vehicle before, or bought it after, the alleged improper parking. However, the fact that you had paid to park the vehicle in the first place (even if, for example, the voucher was not clearly displayed) is not in itself a valid ground of appeal.

Note - no mitigating circumstances, misunderstandings, didn't see the sign, sorry won't do it again etc are considered.

OK - so in your particular case, your circumstances don't meet the POPLA appeal criteria - but don't despair, that's why we are here to help. See a couple of paragraphs further on.

If by any chance it does get to court, and these are on the increase unfortunately, then it becomes a lottery. The stats are on a thread somewhere.

Some of the judiciary also seem to believe that contravening these "rules" is a breach of contract and may award the PPC the amount claimed plus some costs. Others take a different view thankfully.
The vast majority of tickets don't get to court and the PPC gives up after a series of letters from solicitors and debt collectors, but with the word spreading about not paying, some are getting militant as you will have seen.

So the aim is to win at the POPLA stage. Not by appealing under one of the 4 reasons stated by POPLA (unless one fits your case), but by showing that the PPC has slipped up in their obligations under the POFA and their own British Parking Association's Code of Practice & Guidelines. As I said, this is where we can help.

PPCs don't like POPLA - it costs them money and decent challenges embarrass them for their shoddy adherence to the BPA/POFA rules.

Take a look at Aaron Aardvaark's POPLA Results sticky at the top of the forum. You can get a flavour of what wins and what loses.

So, you can either take the ignore route and hope that you are one of the majority who don't get the dreaded Northampton Court letter or use Stroma's short, no nonsense "appeal" letter that gets you your POPLA code and then get our help to frame a decent POPLA appeal.

Letter in question helpfully added in next post.

And remember - the POPLA decision is not binding on you, but it is on the PPC, and it costs them £27 to go through POPLA, but free for you.

Hope this helps.

Stroma

You need to challenge this fake ticket as you've identified yourself on a public forum, see my signature below. And send an appeal like the one below. After they reject it, you can go to popla the independent appeals to get this won for yourself .

If you don't challenge the fake ticket there is a more than fare chance that parking eye will raise a small claim on this. The other alternative is to cough up and fund this scam so they harass others. Please don't do that when you've come to the right place for help.




Name
Address

Date

Dear Scammers,

In regards to the invoice received with ref number xxxxxx dated xxxxxx, the keeper denies all liability to your company, if you reject this challenge the keeper requires within 35 days a popla verification code for them to appeal independently, per Version 2 of the BPA Code of Practice.

The keeper has nothing further to add, and will not respond to any correspondence from your company unless it contains the popla code. If you wish to find out why the keeper rejects all liability, pay the £27 plus vat to popla to find out

The challenge will be deemed accepted if there is no popla code on any rejection that you supply within the timeframe stipulated above.

Yours Faithfully

Your name (printed)

RocketRonnieRadox

Thanks to you both for your helpful replies.

I will indeed do as you suggest and report back.

No one needs this kind of harassment

Coupon-mad

RocketRonnieRadox wrote: »

Thanks to you both for your helpful replies.

I will indeed do as you suggest and report back.

No one needs this kind of harassment

We agree, it's why we come here unpaid every day and stop people falling for this scam.

Same advice as on any thread here posted today, yesterday and tomorrow, like this one and loads of others you'll see here:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4633199



Just don't go it alone with a POPLA appeal. That is not a normal 'appeal' situation if you want to win.

jjjaaammm

Thanks to the thread for parking fines at luton airport from APOCA, I stopped my mother paying an £80 fine for dropping someone off.
It was a PCN which escalated to over £200 and debt collector letters sent but all a scam. The latest letter is saying how important it is to pay and they will now accept a reduced amount if she rings to discuss. She has just ignored every letter sent as recommended and hopefully they will get the message that they are not getting any money from her.
They look legitimate and are very intimidating but not enforceable. Not sure about the beach parking but it sounds very similar.