N*pier POPLA Appeal Rejected - Initial Appeal & Response

nigelbb

AoD wrote: »

So, when do Napier incur these costs? The POPLA assessor has accepted that the full £90 / £100 (or whatever it was) charge is represented by the time spent by the CEO and Napier staff in processing the appeal.

If the OP had ignored the NtD / NtK, the charge would have jumped to £90 / £100 anyway, but surely at that stage the only amount spent by Napier would be the small DVLA cost and the cost of one template letter!! And what about the NtD stage? Surely at that stage their costs were nothing so what does the amount they are claiming then represent.

It really doesn't add up does it?

Exactly! It's nonsense just like the whole PPC business model based on their only income being from losses caused by breach of contract. If they were successful in preventing parking contraventions they would have no income. They only make money when they do a less than perfect job.

teabelly

If the CEO personally spends 2 hours of their time on each appeal then only 20 appeals a week would take up their time. I smell BS...

If GPEOL doesn't work then how do you word something to deal with whatever their rebuttal is about GPEOL?

Coupon-mad

bazster wrote: »

So that's that then. It was only a matter of time before the PoPLA kangaroo court trumped up a way of avoiding the GPEOL trap.

No it's not really a comparable business model with ParkingEye. Because N/pier are a bit different, own some of their car parks and use different wording on their signs, it was one which should NOT have relied on a standard template paragraph about 'no GPEOL' unless the t&cs of the website were cited in detail, and unless their evidence was rebutted when the OP got the evidence pack before the decision.*

More was needed at POPLA and this was said at the start and is covered in the newbies thread in terms of certain named PPCs (Napier being one). District Enforcement and CPS being two others, off the top of my head, which attempt to show their charge as an agreed contractual fee for parking.

Nothing like the other 99% of PPC World.

I agree it's in the t&cs of the car park that it is 'breach' but I don't think this was pointed out quite clearly enough at the POPLA appeal. The website t&cs in this specific regard were not mentioned in the heading about 'no GPEOL' and the Assessor isn't going to go looking for them of course. So the Assessor would have gone with the signage wording and was obviously convinced by that and by the breakdown provided by Napier.*

nigelbb wrote: »

I don't usually need to contradict C-M but this is incorrect. The T&Cs for every N/pier car park claim their charges are for breach of contract. http://www.napierparking.co.uk/napier-car-parks/terms/

The relevant paragraph for the Boston car park is typical

Yep, should have been a specially written POPLA appeal concentrating on that and making bigger reference to Unfair Terms which are actually 'breaches dressed up as charges', it's a penalty clause, etc. Now it will be (perhaps) harder to argue if Napier take it to a hearing, because the Judge might think the POPLA appeal decision is worth considering.

At least at a hearing the amount in play is only the PCN amount (plus small costs like Court fees). I seem to recall there's one on N/pier's website where the OP lost but only had to pay £80 or so. Therefore this is no biggie if lost, but worth some in depth pepipoo small claims cases research by the OP before defending it.



* Just a thought - Farah Ahmad (who might be a newer one) is ALSO the Assessor that lesnmandy are about to send a complaint about, in terms of a similar decision in a case against another PPC which attempts to show a contractual charge but fails (CPM I think). Shinkansen did you ever get an evidence pack from Napier before the POPLA decision was made? lesnmandy didnt; please read their thread as it would be great if you could get your POPLA decision reopened even at this late stage!

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4811265

bazster

It's not true that "this is different because it's Napier". I quote from the assessor's determination:

In response to the appellant’s submission that the parking charge is not a genuine pre-estimate of loss, the operator has made several submissions which show the consequential losses arising from the
appellant’s breach.

It's exactly the same as every other appeal: the assessor looked at in in terms of losses arising from a breach. The only difference in this case is that the operator trumped up some codswallop about the cost of staff time in looking at the case file (as if the staff weren't already employed anyway) and the assessor swallowed it hook line and sinker.

PoPLA has served its purpose, as the odious Norman Baker demonstrated when he said this some months ago:

‘This report shows that motorists are using this new free appeals service in significant numbers and, in more than half of cases, having their appeals upheld. This shows the new system is working for drivers and for the parking industry.’

That was the purpose of PoPLA: to provide a fig leaf for the corrupt and fraudulent private parking "industry", and its apologists and cheerleaders in government and the Civil Service. Mission accomplished. It's now accepted by the powers that be that PoPLA is working, so PoPLA no longer needs to faff around allowing appeals on legal technicalities. Any vaguely plausible legal justification for a charge can now be accepted, so long as it is different to those that have previously led to appeals being upheld.

Expect considerably more ingenuity from operators in inventing losses, and considerably more appeals refused despite raising the question of GPEOL.

Getting ParkingEye to lose 100 appeals at PoPLA is exactly what the parking "industry" needed, without materially impacting PE's profits by one jot. Well done all of you, you have made putting this entire "industry" out of business much, much harder.

Coupon-mad

I really think this Assessor may be a little out of her depth, what with these two cases this week.

SevenTowers

Coupon-mad wrote: »

I really think this Assessor may be a little out of her depth, what with these two cases this week.

Do you think this is just an error by this assesor, or could this really be a change of tack by POPLA to kill the GPEOL silver bullet?

nigelbb

SevenTowers wrote: »

Do you think this is just an error by this assesor, or could this really be a change of tack by POPLA to kill the GPEOL silver bullet?

I think that it's a rogue Assessor. There are so many things that are wrong with the PPC's justification of losses e.g. They put the cost of handling the appeal but when the £100 charge is put on the car there is no appeal. Any losses must be those that flow from the action of that motorist in that car park at the moment of committing the parking 'crime'. The costs of running their business e.g. putting up signs cannot be losses nor can the costs of handling an appeal.

AoD

I think this case also shows how important the PPC evidence pack is. It is possible to add comments or evidence to your POPLA appeal once the evidence pack is received so you can refute statements made by the PPC. It is obviously important to do this if the PPC has come up with some bogus justification for their costs.

MikeyTen4

AoD wrote: »

So, when do Napier incur these costs? The POPLA assessor has accepted that the full £90 / £100 (or whatever it was) charge is represented by the time spent by the CEO and Napier staff in processing the appeal.

If the OP had ignored the NtD / NtK, the charge would have jumped to £90 / £100 anyway, but surely at that stage the only amount spent by Napier would be the small DVLA cost and the cost of one template letter!! And what about the NtD stage? Surely at that stage their costs were nothing so what does the amount they are claiming then represent.

It really doesn't add up does it?

nigelbb wrote: »

Exactly! It's nonsense just like the whole PPC business model based on their only income being from losses caused by breach of contract. If they were successful in preventing parking contraventions they would have no income. They only make money when they do a less than perfect job.

nigelbb wrote: »

I think that it's a rogue Assessor. There are so many things that are wrong with the PPC's justification of losses e.g. They put the cost of handling the appeal but when the £100 charge is put on the car there is no appeal. Any losses must be those that flow from the action of that motorist in that car park at the moment of committing the parking 'crime'. The costs of running their business e.g. putting up signs cannot be losses nor can the costs of handling an appeal.

Just been reading this, and most of the comments above are exactly what I thought straight away. So.. this POPLA assessor has actually sucked up the explanation that the 'losses' the PPC are claiming for were caused by the work they had to put into responding to the appeal, NOT by the parking matter in the first place? Is the assessor thick or blind?

I'm stunned to be honest. I've only recently learnt about POPLA, and I thought it was supposed to be a good thing, giving balance and fairness to the industry and ensuring they operate fairly. If POPLA make decisions like this, then they're useless, and if it is a conscious act to "kill the GPEOL silver bullet' as some people have said, then they're just as bad as the PPC's who (I thought) they were supposed to rein in. That would be paramount to colluding with them. Unbelievable.

HO87

SevenTowers wrote: »

Do you think this is just an error by this assesor, or could this really be a change of tack by POPLA to kill the GPEOL silver bullet?

Were it to be a change of tack then it would also have to be a change of tack of the BPA Ltd's entire approach and its AOS CoP in particular, not to mention the "parking" of a range of established case law. What might be a last ditch effort of PPC's to shift the emphasis from GPEOL to commercial justification hangs in tatters and GPEOL represents the only game in town.

That is not to say that there is nothing we should take from this case. It means that we are unlikely to be able to rely any longer on the mere mention of the GPEOL phrase but will have to detail what cases have already set out as being acceptable or unacceptable as losses - and that means both POPLA assessments and county court cases. I'm thinking immediately of VCS -v- Ibbotson and (a non PPC case) A Retailer -v- Ms B and Ms K - the retail loss prevention case from 2012 heard in Oxford.