Successful complaints about private parking tickets - how to get them cancelled!

Coupon-mad

BrooklyBay said:

Had a bit of a win with the Co-op and Horizon parking.

First notice I had that something was wrong was a letter turning up from Debt Collectors relating to a charge for overstaying at a co-op car park. I hadn't received anything from Horizon but could give them the benefit of the doubt as I was slow to update my VC5 address after moving house and the "offence" was a while ago so there is a reasonable chance the letters had been going to my old address.

This did mean that Horizon wouldn't deal with me as I had missed their appeal window, and the Debt Collectors couldn't care less obviously. 

What I did get from Horizon was the details of the overstay - 12 hours apparently! Overnight! This I knew was nonsense as I've never left my car there overnight (its right by my house!) and looking at the dates I knew the car had been elsewhere as they were around a specific work trip I had been, and messages between my wife and I and google location tracking backed that up (albeit not providing conclusive proof). So I knew what the cameras had actually captured was two separate trips, one in the evening, and one the next morning. Looking at where the cameras are located I'd be surprised if this doesn't happen fairly often - if you follow someone in closely, or someone follows you out closely I can see how the cameras view could be obscured.

I used the co-op CEO email I found online, and sent an email detailing that I had been charged in error and my proof for that, that I couldn't afford to continue to shop at that co-op if this was the risk I was running by doing so, showing how much I have spent in that co-op since moving into the area [to show I'm a regular customer], pointing out that we choose it over the sainsbury's that is across the road from it, and saying that I couldn't square their ethical stance on trading with their decision to associate themselves with such cowboys (this co-op seems problematic - a good chunk of its google reviews are people complaining about parking charges).

And slightly amaingly to me, I got an email back from the 'executive resolutions team' the email had been passed too, less than 24 hours later, apologising, and saying they had instructed Horizon to cancel the charge.

Brilliant!

A great landowner complaint example.

Plan A strikes again.  Please could you post about this in Successful Complaints About PPCs? It will help more people there.

CasaMia11

Thanks to help and guidance on this forum.  Cancelled PCN

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6501892/parking-pcn-help-please-update#latest

Nebbit

A Wickes DIY store was extremely helpful. I received a PCN yesterday, for a 15 minute overstay, and rang the shop asking who I should raise it with. The man who answered said he was the manager himself, gave me his email address, and once I sent him the PCN and my receipt from shopping, this morning he has emailed to say the PCN has been cancelled.  It does help that this chain of shops, unlike others, still has publicly-available telephone numbers for each shop. 

slowbob

Thanks to all the contributors on these forums. Following the advice on the NEWBIES thread, I successfully had a PCN cancelled at Step 1, by complaining to the retailer. The car-park was for a small Sainbury's Local, and the PCN was issued by Euro Car Parks. As per the advice, I wrote to the CEO of Sainsbury's. I admit that I did go a little overboard on the "aggrieved customer" aspect(!) - letter attached below for anyone else's benefit.

I received a quick response from the Executive Office, and they said they would look into it. I didn't hear anything further, and so was preparing my dispute response to eurocarparks (on day 26, as per advice!) and a follow-up letter to Sainsbury's. However, when I attempted to lodge the dispute on the eurocarparks site, I received a notification to say the PCN had already been paid/closed, so I can only assume Sainsbury's cancelled the PCN.

Dear Mr Roberts,

I apologise for reaching out to you directly, but I feel that I have to bring to your attention what I consider to be a quite appalling experience while shopping at the XXXXXXXXX Sainsbury's Local on DD MMM. I must emphasise that the issue is not with any Sainsbury's staff or the store itself, but with the behaviour of "Euro Car Parks", the private parking company who are presumably agents sub-contracted to "manage" the store car-park on your behalf. During my visit to the store, I returned to my car to find a Parking Charge Notice (PCN No. xxxxx) affixed to the windscreen, which stated that my 41-minute stay was longer than the maximum period allowed, and, as a result, I would be charged £100.

The nature of this parking charge notice, the outrageous value of £100, and the threatening tone of additional charges and "civil action being taken" if this charge is not paid promptly has caused significant personal distress and consternation. However, aside from my personal angst, my other reason for contacting you was to advise you that your customers are being harassed in this manner, so you can be aware of the reputational damage this can cause to the Sainsbury's brand.

I am a strong believer in the value of brand loyalty, and as a family we consider ourselves particularly aligned to the brand. I am a former employee of Homebase from when it was owned by Sainsbury's, and my father-in-law worked his way up to be a Branch Manager before he retired. My family have been regular and loyal customers of Sainsbury's for decades, and we use the XXXXX Sainsbury's Local close to our house on an almost daily basis.

Regarding the specifics of this occasion, although I regularly shop at my nearby Sainsbury's Local store in XXXXX, the store I visited on this occasion is not one I regularly use.

The car-park in question has no barriers, no ticket machines, no payment structure for parking and no means of paying for parking or registering a vehicle. So, any parking charge arbitrarily applied by a private parking sub-contracting agent has no reference point for determining an applicable charge. In my case, suggesting that the parking charge should be £100 for a 41-minute stay while shopping in the store, isn't just out of all proportion of the original parking fee, but because there is no parking fee in the first place, the value of the charge is not based on any reason and is quite absurd. In fact, I believe that £100 is the maximum charge that private parking companies are allowed to levy, so to suggest that a 41-minute stay in a "free" Sainsbury's Local car-park, which included the customer purchasing products from the store, is, frankly, outrageous.

Additionally, there is no sign at the entrance to the car-park to indicate there is a maximum stay period. There is a sign at the exit, as I later discovered, which faces away from the car-park and cannot be seen from the car-park itself. I have attached two photographs to illustrate this failure to provide adequate signage.

Finally, when I arrived, there was a large delivery lorry parked in the car-park directly in front of the store. After finding the Parking Charge Notice when I left the store, I looked for signs explaining the parking restrictions. I discovered that there were some signs attached to the wall of the store - but at the time I arrived, they were not possible to see as they were completely blocked by the delivery lorry (as illustrated in the attached photo). As I mentioned above, this particular Sainsbury's Local is not one that I generally use, so I had no prior knowledge of any parking restriction signs. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, on arrival, there were no visible signs anywhere explaining that parking was restricted to 30 minutes, nor that overstaying by 11 minutes would result in a parking charge of £100.

As mentioned above, my family have been loyal customers of Sainsbury's for decades, and this incident has already left an extremely bad taste in the mouth. The thought that continuing to shop at Sainsbury's could result in the possibility of further parking charges of this nature will inevitably mean we have to reconsider our options, not to mention feel obliged to warn friends, family and neighbours of the risks of shopping at the store, and start to use our nearby Tesco Express or Best One.

It also concerns me that for many of your customers, receiving this sort of notice could be extremely distressing, and I'm sure some customers would feel compelled to immediately pay what is an exorbitant, unjust and almost certainly unenforceable charge.

I trust that you can appreciate my concerns, and I look forward to your response and your thoughts on the matter.

Yours sincerely,

slowbob

Anchovie

This is regrading a PCN at Riverside Retail Park, Warrington for parking with a tyre on a white line: 

Rob Cane has passed me your email below, thank you for getting in touch. I will speak to UKPC and ask them to rescind this PCN on this occasion as a gesture of goodwill. 

I would ask however that on future visits to Riverside that vehicles are kept within the lines. The parent and child spaces are marked to allow more space to get in and out of the vehicle. I appreciate that in this particular space you’re not necessarily inconveniencing another motorist but if we’re going to enforce cars being parked within the bays that needs to be for all spaces on the park. We obviously don’t want to penalise genuine customers, and we are more than willing to waive the fine here, however we do have to have some way of managing a busy car park and ensuring there is enough space for everyone who wants to use it.

Best regards..

 Afternoon Mr Cane, 

Hope you can help. 

As the registered keeper, my daughter has received the attached after the driver was shopping at JYSK Ltd. The image shows that the car was parked within a bay and it left your Retail Park within 4 hours. 

I have put these facts to UKPC but they persist in predatory requesting invoice payment. Virtually all ‘reviews’ of your site complain about your contractors methods: 

Riverside Retail Park Warrington | B&M, Home Bargains, Next (visitnorthwest.com) 

Riverside Retail Park - Car Park (parkopedia.co.uk) 

Car park nightmare - Riverside Retail Park, Warrington Traveller Reviews - Tripadvisor 

I appreciate that you need to prevent people that are not shopping with your tenants from parking, but UKPC actions are driving existing customers away. 

I am therefore asking that you ask your contractor to cancel this parking charge notice, for the good relationship I and my family and friends have with your Retailer Tenants to continue.

tj17usa

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to share a success story on:

Almondvale West Retail Park, Livingston, Scotland, EH54 6QX 

The parking notice was issued by UKPA and the car park is monitored by Hozah. 

I spoke to the landowner who agreed to contact Hozah right away and have the parking notice removed. 

andrew.madden@cbre.com

Here is the email I sent the landowner alongside pictures of the parking notice:

—-

Good evening Mr Madden, 

 

Apologies in advance for this email which I’m sure will be nothing short of a waste of your time. That said, I feel very strongly about the issue and have been directed to you as the landowner of:

 

Almondvale West Retail Park, EH54 6QX

 

I recently received a notification from Volkswagen, informing me that they had been contacted by Euro Car Parks in relation to an alleged parking offence on 13/02/24. I reached out to them and agreed to pay £60 hoping the matter would go away. The next time I visited the retail park (08/04/24) I set up an automatic payment with Hozah to ensure this didn’t happen again. 

 

Shortly after, I received another letter from UKPA regarding an alleged offence on 16/03/24 which I was unaware of. I visited the retail park that day and spent several hundred pounds at Smyths Toys for my daughter’s birthday which took place on 06/04/24. In any case, I would like to request that you as land owner consider this and the attached evidence and reach out to UKPA to ask them to remove the notice. 

 

Any help with this matter would be greatly appreciated,

 —-

Hopefully this can help the people someone. Trying to track down the landowner was the hardest part! 

nopcns

@tj17usa, please have a read of the Newbies/FAQ thread where you will find advice about PCNs issued in Scotland. Only the gullible pay a PCN in Scotland (for now). There is no keeper liability in Scotland and so, as long as the keeper does not identify the driver, the PPC has nowhere to go with this. Besides that, a PPC is unlikely to make a claim in the Scottish courts because there is no money in it for them.

So, whilst you were fortunate with this PCN, you almost ended up paying £60 which would be a shame unless you have plenty of money to burn and don't mind funding scammers. You can thank your dear ex-leader for agreeing to change the law in Scotland to allow these parking scammers to pursue keeper liability when the new Act comes into force.

FinancialDunce

SUCCESS STORY! Nearly two years after the ParkingEye PCN and with a County Court date set for later this year, I just received a Notice of Discontinuance from DCB Legal.

Location: Welcome Break Membury
Claimant: ParkingEye
Claimant's solicitors: DCB Legal
Defence used: Disability discrimination under The Equality Act 2010 (neurodiversity / ADHD) and insufficient signage.

Here's a link to the original thread with a full update and defence submitted. Hopefully this win will be useful for others citing disability discrimination and for neurodivergent people.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6427057/county-court-claim-parkingeye-dcb-defence-for-review-discrimination-under-equality-act-2010

ossie48

Just to let readers know of a success in cancelling a ticket from Euro Car Parks.

This was achieved by following Plan A on the forum as advised in the Newbies thread so please follow that advice and do the initial legwork. Plan A is to speak with the shops, landowners, management company etc before proceeding further (not forgetting to appeal to the parking company within their timeline)

We had an accidental overstay at The Poole Retail Park in Redlands, Poole, Dorset and were hit with a £100 notice. We were unaware despite being regular visitors that although it's one site, its split into several car parks with different time limits (There's a railway station nearby so I guess that's the reason for these quite draconian measures and to prevent all day parking) 

We actually spent quite a bit of money in various stores at the location but they were very vague about sorting the issue because the notice was for one car park and not another- on the same site.  So I set about e mailing all the stores HO's(heard nothing to date) and the landowners (found via a google search and a press article) and what I thought was the current retail park management (they're not).  
 
As it stands (and you might struggle to find this elsewhere on the internet) the retail park is managed by Tandem Property Asset Management, Birmingham. They were kindly forwarded my email by the landowner (M7 UK). 

Tandem dealt with the issue promptly and politely, cancelling the notice and explaining in more detail how things work down there so fair play. It's good to know that there are people behind some of these anon companies running in the background but it might take some effort to find them if the stores don't play ball.  

Once again thanks to the team on here for the newbies guide - believe in it !

nopcns

FinancialDunce said:

SUCCESS STORY! Nearly two years after the ParkingEye PCN and with a County Court date set for later this year, I just received a Notice of Discontinuance from DCB Legal.

Location: Welcome Break Membury
Claimant: ParkingEye
Claimant's solicitors: DCB Legal
Defence used: Disability discrimination under The Equality Act 2010 (neurodiversity / ADHD) and insufficient signage.

Here's a link to the original thread with a full update and defence submitted. Hopefully this win will be useful for others citing disability discrimination and for neurodivergent people.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6427057/county-court-claim-parkingeye-dcb-defence-for-review-discrimination-under-equality-act-2010

Attention @Umkomaas, AOBTD for the DCB Legal discontinuation thread.