Parking Eye PCN - Bognor Regis

BinkyStottom

Greetings good people of the moneysavingexpert forums :hello:

I'm a new user here looking to get some advice, here's the brief story..

26/08/13 - Entered Morrisons (of Bognor Regis) carpark, I'd never parked in there before, it's really tatty with an old broken barrier and one of those buttons you push for a ticket which just makes a noise and doesn't give you anything.

I've never had to pay in a supermarket carpark before so when the button did nothing, I figured it was no big deal and went in with the missus and did some shopping.

14/09/13 - Two letters drop through the door for me, both from a company called "Parking Eye" one dated 29/08/13 and the other 07/09/13 saying that I owe them £85 or £50 if paid by 12/09/13 (2 days before I got the letters)

I did some research over the weekend, the first impression I got was that I should ignore it but then I discovered that something changed on the 1st October 2012 and that ignoring these guys is no longer what you do although I can't seem to find out what exactly has changed, in what way do these people have more power?

So here I am and there's my story. The missus managed to find the Morrisons receipt (she paid by credit card and keeps all receipts for months afterwards just in case)

Obviously I have no intention of paying these people a penny if I can possibly help it but I need your advice on how to deal with it and in what order I should go about it, who do I need to complain to first?

Lets go!

Hovite_2

1. Complain like hell to the retailer.
2. Appeal to Parking Eye saying you were shopping
3. Appeal to POPLA when PE reject your appeal ( read the POPLA Decisions thread for successful appeal points )

The above will cost Parking Eye £32 and the BPA ( their cosy little club ) £100 !

BinkyStottom

Parking Eye will be out of pocket by £32 and the BPA by £100?

That's a disappointingly small sum I must say.

Umkomaas

BinkyStottom wrote: »

Parking Eye will be out of pocket by £32 and the BPA by £100?

That's a disappointingly small sum I must say.

How much were you thinking?

Guys_Dad

Just to expand on the advice above.

Parking Eye have been known to cancel tickets if you were a genuine shopper. I would appeal to them asap - today - telling hem what happened and sending a photocopy of your receipt. Ask them to cancel the charge or, if they won't do that, send you a POPLA code.

In parallel, send another copy of your receipt with the same story to Morrisons asking them if they would ask PE to cancel the charge as you were a genuine shopper.

Plenty of time to start firing the big guns if they refuse, but a nice , friendly appeal first.

BinkyStottom

Thanks for the advice everyone, I'll start off nice and friendly as Guys Dad suggests and see where it goes.

And of course I'll update this thread when anything changes.

BinkyStottom

Well I've heard back from Parking Eye who rejected my nice friendly appeal and supplied me with a POPLA code but I have heard absolutely Jack sh*t from Morrisons.

I visited the store, asked to see the manager by name but was told he was not available so I gave a staff member a letter of complaint/appeal to pass on to him and that's the last I heard of it.

So here I go to the next step, the POPLA appeal. I'm gonna read through the appropriate threads and gather up some successful points and report back here before I submit the appeal.

trisontana

If you go for both the "pre-estimate of loss" and "contract to take people to court" angle , then you are on a winner.

Coupon-mad

BinkyStottom wrote: »

Well I've heard back from Parking Eye who rejected my nice friendly appeal and supplied me with a POPLA code but I have heard absolutely Jack sh*t from Morrisons.

I visited the store, asked to see the manager by name but was told he was not available so I gave a staff member a letter of complaint/appeal to pass on to him and that's the last I heard of it.

So here I go to the next step, the POPLA appeal. I'm gonna read through the appropriate threads and gather up some successful points and report back here before I submit the appeal.

The way to complain to Morrisons (CEO, Dalton Philips) is shown in the sticky thread currently second to top 'Successful Complaints about PPCs'. I wrote a stinking complaint letter about Parking Eye, shown on the linked Morrisons case on there, which worked within a week!

So I would say that's your next step. Adapt the letter to suit your case as it was written from an Equality Act breach perspective. If you remove those bits and add your own take on it, you will STILL have a strong complaint email to send off!

Complain mainly about PE but also about the store not sorting it out even though you have a receipt.

You have 28 days from the rejection letter date to get a POPLA appeal in so if that's a good time from now, make the complaint your priority first this week.

BinkyStottom

Good news! I won my appeal! But thanks to you guys, it was never in any doubt.

POPLA sent me an email confirming my appeal had been successful on the "genuine pre-estimate of loss" angle. 5 days later I got a letter from ParkingEye simply stating that the parking charge had been cancelled.

When drafting out my appeal, I came across a template by Custard Pie which was so good that I just customised it for my situation and submitted it.

As I'm a new user, I'm not allowed to post a link, search for Custard Pie and it shouldn't be too hard to find.

I didn't write a letter to Dalton Philips as I did not want him to cancel the PCN, I wanted to see it through.

Going by their facebook page and the general vibe over the internet, Morrisons seem to get plenty of complaints anyway and yet they still allow Parking Eye to "manage" their car parks, they don't seem to care or do much about complaints so I'll get around to it sometime but it's not my top priority.

My priority now is to incur further PCN's and to jam myself as far up ParkingEye's nose as I can.

Thank you good citizens of moneysavingexpert.com for your excellent advice, I hope I can return the favour :beer: