Parking Eye taking me to small claims

user139

In May we were out shopping, and parked in the usual 2 hour max stay car park. Whilst doing the last shop in Lidl there was a huge queue, people with trolleys to the brim and only one person on tills..you get the idea..so we were in a rush to leave then.

So, a week later, low and behold we got a letter from Parking Eye with a PCN charge.. hurry up and pay like a good boy and we'll reduce it.. etc.. so went online and did a bit of looking. All forums sounding off with the same advice "Ignore it" "There is no debt" "Not ligellay binding etc".. so we did just that. More letter came, we ignored them too..

But now, we've got a letter from Northampton small claims for the sum of £150. (£85 + £15 court + £50 solicitor)

Not sure where to go from here.. we only overstayed be a measly 12minutes! So would it be a good idea to admit PART of the claim and offer them £12.. a pound for every minute? (generous in my opinion) or dispute it all, claiming that its unfair contract terms and the loss to the landowner is disproportionately high.. £150 is a lot of money to park for 12mins!

Please help, need some sound advice for the next steps..

Coupon-mad

Nope. You acknowledge the claim and say you will defend in full. Then that gets the 14 days extended to 28 days to get a skeleton defence in. Make no offer.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/63033805#Comment_63033805

Loads of links leading from that thread, please follow them as these will tell you how to defend and some links also simply explain that this is less of a big deal than it would seem to be. Doesn't even affect your credit rating and they can be beaten.

As soon as you have acknowledged this claim, get onto, first of all, urgently COMPLAINING to the retailer and Retail Park Management/CEO. Look how many have been cancelled recently, even at court stage:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4766249

...but you MUST NOT miss your defence deadline either so after acknowledging, only spend a week assertively emailing and personally complaining - then move on to pulling together your defence points as per the links above on that innocuous-looking thread.

As an aside, what a shame you got this in May and must have read old advice. This - May in particular - was a time when PE were already issuing LOADS of small claims and we were NEVER advising people to ignore these fake PCNS at that time on this forum front pages! If only you had read the current threads in May, rather than probably doing a search and reading an older thread.

Never rely on old forum advice.

user139

Thanks Coupon-mad, sorry for late reply.

I've filed a defense now.. but do you know what happens next? obviously it hasnt gone to PE appeals then Popla. Does it get 'assessed' and a decision is made, or is it a day in court next?

oh and I've tried calling Lidl to their call centre and all the woman could offer was Parking Eyes number! saying I have to take it up with them..

Stroma

Have you had help with your defence ?

spacey2012

A few points they are reluctant to go to court on, VCA accreditation or rather the lack of it for ANPR evidential standards and right of audience in which hand they act and for whom, have come up trumps in batting them off, but only where the parker neither admits or denies they were on site.

The_Slithy_Tove

user139 wrote: »

I've filed a defense now.. but do you know what happens next? obviously it hasnt gone to PE appeals then Popla. Does it get 'assessed' and a decision is made, or is it a day in court next?

Of course it hasn't been to an appeals process. It's submitted to the court, an entirely different thing.

user139 wrote: »

oh and I've tried calling Lidl to their call centre and all the woman could offer was Parking Eyes number! saying I have to take it up with them..

Don't bother with call centres on such an important issue. Either march into the store and demand that this is stopped right now, or write to the CEO of Lidl.

This whole thing demonstrates what utter low-life scum PE are with such dispicable behaviour with complete disregard to the BPA Code of Practice. 12 minutes is well within any grace period them MUST give, and to issue court procedings in such circumstances reveals PE to be the morally totally corrupt vermin that they are.

Maybe contanct the BPA with a massive complaint also that PE are taking you to court over a trifle that is covered by their CoP, and that THEY must tell PE to stop this. Complain also to DVLA. Not that either will stop this bulldozer.

user139

I researched a while before writing defense, have gone with most of the stuff they lose on, such as not the landowner and thus no authority, that the charge is excessive and unfair under unfair contracts act and that there is no grace period.

The whole system needs overhauling, I'm sure if it was on a sliding scale, i.e. the more you overstayed the more you paid (at a reasonable price) then I'm sure 99% would be happy to pay. But no, Parking Eye are a business and ALL businesses want is to make money. They're just so underhand and weasley about it, hiding under the guise of looking after the shops, but if anything its a hefty penalty if you get caught short. This retail park would've easily got £150 out of me spending it in their shops at Christmas, helping the economy, boosting sales.. but nope! PE grinches want it all

Coupon-mad

Email or write to the CEO (BY NAME) like in the successful complaint cases I already linked (I was sure there's a Lidl success on there). This is no time for tentative phone calls to busy shop-floor or student call-centre people, who will just fob you off. This must be an official written and urgent complaint, pointing out that Lidl are not only liable for the actions of their agent but the TINY 12 minute delay itself was caused by the queues at the Lidl tills!

I take the view that you could even say to Lidl that you are minded to sue THEM after this is all over, for the way they have allowed their agent to cause you loss and distress when the insignificant extra time was actually caused by them. You could include in your letter a suggestion that Lidl would be well advised to look long and hard at what has been happening to their rivals Aldi in the last 4 months on their facebook page; taken over with complaints about people (customers) being sued by out-of-control PE.

This is not just unacceptable treatment of customers, it's actionable harassment.

EDITED TO ADD, read this example complaint I wrote which a poster emailed to the CEO of Morrisons:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4762460

You can use some of that strong wording, just remove the stuff about the Equality Act but leave in the rest & change the details of the incident to suit your case.

As for the small claim, you should hear from the Court soon and if PE pay the hearing fee, it will be heard in a court nearby to you (not near them). Unless you ask for the case to be heard in your absence (this is OK if you can't face it but means you can't state your case) then you will need to turn up and not be intimidated by their lawyers telling you that you'll lose or urging you to settle. Be familiar with your defence, ready to show that this charge was no compensation for any loss at all and that it was a penalty like in these cases:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=62971894&postcount=65

In many cases there is no hearing - let's hope your defence is enough to make them choose other cases for hearings, not yours. And if you lose it really is less of a big deal than people think (as I hope you found from the first link I gave you in my post before).

Hovite_2

Go straight to the top of Lidl :

CEO - [EMAIL="Ronny.Gottschlich@lidl.co.uk"]Ronny.Gottschlich@lidl.co.uk[/EMAIL]

user139

Just a quick update..

Parking eye seemed very wiling to take it all the way and it got to a stage before court where you can opt for 'mediation' we said yes, but the decision is for parking eye to make and they declined wanting to go to court.

The 'fine' is in my partners name (her car she was driving), and she at many points along the way faltered and spoke to her friends who scare mongered and said she'd be getting CCJ's and baliffs. So she decided to email parkingEye and ask them if there was a way of stopping court action, they agreed to take it no further if she paid the fine of £85. (It was £150 if it was going to court) so she agreed to that.

We've gone halves and heard no more. Not an ideal result as *I* would've gone all the way (I even put £150 on the table and said id pay it all if we lost) but c'est la vis!

Redx

frankly, I believe you should send a bill to LIDL for this seeing as they caused it, if necessary to the boss himself

they could and should have cancelled the charge