Help With Excel parking fine and POPLA appeal refusal

wakattack888

Hi all,


I am in desperate need of some help regarding an unfair parking fine from Excel parking.


The series of events is as follows.


1. I parked for less than 15mins at a car park in the north west.
2. I paid in full and did not outstay my welcome. I also parked within a correct space and did not receive a notice placed on the car.
3. Two weeks later a PCN came through the post with pictures of my car entering and leaving the car park. The mistake I made was to only enter the number of the car registration and not the complete registration, into the pay and display machine (i.e 53 instead of xx53 xxx).
4. As there was no notice placed on the car I had no reason to keep the ticket therefore binned it soon after.
5. I appealed to POPLA and although Excel admit that they have a record of my payment with the reg number 53 the appeal was refused.


The latest correspondence from Excel is headed NOTICE OF INTENED COURT PROCEEDINGS


I now have no idea of my next step, do I pay up, write again to POPLA and ask for a reconsideration, or do I simply just not pay.

Nodding_Donkey

POPLA don't 'do' mitigation. All you can do now is either pay or hunker down and be prepared to defend the charge in court. The fact that you did pay, and the PPC have found that payment can then obviously be used to prove that the operator suffered no loss.

Stroma

So they admit you paid, so there is no loss, and they want to take you to court? Well that is just not going to happen IMO, they would be nuts to take it further now that they admit that you paid, and they want to punish you for making a mistake, which in other words penalise you, which is unlawful.

I believe as well that popla would not be sending that but excel would be. You need to reply to this though as it looks like a notice before claim, read coupon mad's sticky thread on the main parking forum, it will aid you in the letter to send.

da_rule

POPLA only consider whether the PCN has been issued lawfully, they do not consider mitigation, which unfortunately your defence relied upon. Its a shame you didn't visit the forum first to get advice. If the signage states that the full registration must be entered (which POPLA have held to be the case), then technically you have breached the terms. You would have still won the POPLA appeal on the more standard grounds, but hindsight is an amazing thing.

Now you have 2 choices:
1) Pay
2) Wait to see if Excel actually take matters further. If they do decide to take this matter to court then they will be claiming damages based on their loss, but as they've accepted that you paid it would be hard for them to prove loss. As you have already lost any early discount then it may be worth hanging on in there to see if they do take things further. If they send you any letters which specifically refer to the Civil Procedure Rules then do not ignore it, and if you receive any documents from the court then do not ignore these either.

Also, remove your registration number from your original post (in the POLA wording) as PPC's monitor these forums.

Stroma

They will know who this is even if the reg number is removed, would recommend to remove the entire popla wording

wakattack888

Thanks for you information. I have removed any info that may help trace the post back to me. I will look into the thread mentioned by Stroma thanks again.

Half_way

POPLA only consider whether the PCN has been issued lawfully

anyone can lawfully issue you with a ticket/bill demanding money, however weather or not its enforceable or not is an entirely different matter.
by reading the above you are agreeing to pay me the sum of £100 reduced to £60 for early payment, failiure to pay may result in the matter being passed onto a debt recovery agent.

da_rule

Half_way wrote: »

anyone can lawfully issue you with a ticket/bill demanding money, however weather or not its enforceable or not is an entirely different matter.
by reading the above you are agreeing to pay me the sum of £100 reduced to £60 for early payment, failiure to pay may result in the matter being passed onto a debt recovery agent.

I get what you're saying on a technical point, but without enforceability legality is pointless. If you can't go to court and rely on the notice then it cannot be correct in law (as many PPC's are finding). The POFA makes these notices enforceable when issued by landowners or PPC's (if any of them could actually be bothered to comply with the legislation).

Coupon-mad

There are FOUR other cases on the first few pages today where people have got a letter like that from Excel because they've not appealed to POPLA (yours is similar, a wasted POPLA appeal in your case, oh dear...). If it is from Excel then respond to it as per the 'LBCCC Fightback' sticky (linked in Crabman's sticky threads).

If it's from a debt collector, ignore it but keep it. You don't have to respond to middle-men unless it was a solicitor.

Please read the other Excel threads because we are repeating ourselves today. You may get a court 'small claim' but with proper research this time, if you do need to defend, we can help you with that. Please start by reading back a few pages, finding the Excel cases and reading what's already just been said to the other 4 posters who also wasted their chance to appeal and may end up defending a small claim - which is NO BIGGIE by the way.

And finally next time please think to look here as you'd have won at POPLA with our appeal wording. What a terrible waste of your golden ticket of the POPLA code.