Smart Parking charges and ASDA

discovering_10

Hi,

I visit ASDA many times but this was my first visit to Harrogate store last April.

When I got back to my car, half an hour later, I've found a parking charge from this Smart Parking for £40. The reason on the charge was that the ticket was not displayed. There was also a comment saying that there were 10 minutes given before issuing the charge.
When entering the store, i didn't see the sign saying that I should pay and display a £1 ticket which is refundable when spend £2+ in store.
I didn't pay any attention and also didn't keep the receipt on that day by mistake. Stupid of me I know.
I was on holiday for three weeks and when I got back I 've found two letters, one from Smart Parking saying that I should pay £70 and another one from Debt Recovering saying I should pay £120 and "if you don't pay, we will recommend to the creditors solicitors that court action should be taken to recover what you owe"

I am really !!!!ed with this approach, clearly ASDA don't take care of their customers.:mad:
I am not going to pay anything to these guys and I will go back to ASDA, finding the store manager to tell him the story.
I've got two questions:
1) Will I be taken for real to court if I keep ignoring this and the manager not taking any action?
2) How could I persuade the store manager to take back the parking charge?

Kite2010

Total damages to the landowner would normally be £1, but as that would normally be refunded on spending the money they would have lost nothing.

Sounds like you have gone past the stage where you could have done a soft appeal to Smart to get a POPLA code, so the best you can do is ignore everything now. Smart are smart enough to know not to do court

Coupon-mad

How would you persuade the Store Manager to cancel the fake PCN?

By being polite but assertive, going in dressed smartly (deliberately to look professional), take your recent Asda receipts and the fake PCN letters and slap them down on the CS desk! Demand only to speak to the Store Manager (do not accept a 'Duty Manager' off the meat counter!) and do not believe the staff if they say 'we don't own the car park' (well know Asda lie!).

See all these threads where people are complaining about this scam in Supermarket car parks and what they are doing or did to get it cancelled (some Asda, some Tesco, some Aldi and the latter are currently suffering big time on their facebook page over their parking 'agent'!):

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4534485

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4560681

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4576679

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4694547

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4702675

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4697229

and the Aldi facebook page thread (Asda could find theirs going the same way very quickly of course...)

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4660007


HTH