Help! Excel parking fines

Heathere_3

I need some advice! I have parked in the peel centre a few times, and over the past year managed to get three fines, the most recent in the 5th January, however on this date the machines were taped up and not in use.
I haven't paid any of these fines and have recieved many threatening letters and each parking fine has always come seperate for the different dates.
This morning I've recieved another letter from them conjoining all three fines saying i owe £300 and if I don't get in touch within two weeks they will start legal proceedings.
This has been singed with pen and is the first one which has linked all there fines together.
Should I pay this now or will they not take me to court?

Fruitcake

Heathere wrote: »

I need some advice! I have parked in the peel centre a few times, and over the past year managed to get three fines, the most recent in the 5th January, however on this date the machines were taped up and not in use.
I haven't paid any of these fines and have recieved many threatening letters and each parking fine has always come seperate for the different dates.
This morning I've recieved another letter from them conjoining all three fines saying i owe £300 and if I don't get in touch within two weeks they will start legal proceedings.
This has been singed with pen and is the first one which has linked all there fines together.
Should I pay this now or will they not take me to court?

Start by reading this at the top of the page. **NEWBIES!! PRIVATE PARKING TICKET? OLD OR NEW? **READ THESE FAQS FIRST!** Thankyou!

This has all the information you need to appeal against these charges. They are NOT fines so please don't call them that. Appealing at this stage is much easier than letting it get to court.

When you have the information you need, come back and the more experienced posters will be able to help you.

ColliesCarer

Firstly edit your post to remove any reference to the "I" word and replace it with things like "The car was parked" "The registered keeper received... " "The Driver ...." etc

And you need to stop thinking about these as FINES - they are not.
They are really just speculative INVOICES i.e. demands for money

This car park is notorious. Excel have been known to issue proceedings in the small claims court but not often - and by the sound of it nothing you have received so far is a Letter before County Court Action.

You need to checkout the information on the NEWBIES sticky thread (link below)

Look particularly at the information regarding the distinction between the Registered Keeper and Driver identities and the information about what can be done to re-set the clock back to the appeal stage for EACH invoice separately and see if this could apply in your circumstances.

Dig out all the mail received - hopefully it was kept by the registered keeper

Here is the link

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4816822

@Fruitcake - apols for the crossover

Redx

you need to pay and display on there, and keep the tickets for 6 months afterwards - just in case

if and when you do receive a postal PCN from Excel, you need to appeal it like mentioned in the NEWBIES thread (and stop ignoring them)

here is a flowchart of how you deal with any new pcn in future

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4922055

as for these, you can appeal them to Excel using the appeal template in the NEWBIES thread, but if you are out of time and cannot reset the clock by naming the driver you will have to ignore DR+ and only deal with it IF you get a LBC or court papers from northampton or salford (small claims) on behalf of Excel

a shame you did not appeal in the beginning as so easy to beat Excel at POPLA , at nil cost too

Coupon-mad

Heathere wrote: »

I need some advice! I have parked in the peel centre a few times, and over the past year managed to get three fines, the most recent in the 5th January, however on this date the machines were taped up and not in use.
I haven't paid any of these fines and have recieved many threatening letters and each parking fine has always come seperate for the different dates.
This morning I've recieved another letter from them conjoining all three fines saying i owe £300 and if I don't get in touch within two weeks they will start legal proceedings.
This has been singed with pen and is the first one which has linked all there fines together.
Should I pay this now or will they not take me to court?

That's a Letter before Court Claim! You must acknowledge and formally respond to it and must read the sticky threads in Crabman's top thread, as you need to follow the advice already here in the LBCCC Fightback sticky thread...which is one of Crabman's linked threads you seem to have missed.

Unless you can truthfully NAME SOMEONE ELSE AS THE DRIVER - WHICH REWINDS THE APPEAL CLOCK - you have really missed the POPLA appeal boat with these and you are indeed close to a court claim, yes. What an utter shame - you'd have won at POPLA if you'd only read current advice - we haven't said to ignore these for over a YEAR and we beat Excel easily at POPLA every time, 100% record. But unless someone else was the driver on the other occasions then you've thrown all that away.

You could also send them a separate sheet headed 'without prejudice, save as to costs' if you want to make them an offer to pay a small amount to resolve the matter. But you should certainly refuse the one where the machines were covered up seeing as there are dozens of threads about that. We know it happened and we know Excel have cancelled plenty of these ones when people complain to the Peel Centre - but ONLY the one where the machine was covered - the others, the Centre won't be bothered about and it will be down to you to defend.

What you don't do, IMHO, is to just pay what they are asking, seeing as if you lose in court it won't be much more than that - and you have a chance to defend and win (especially if you can get evidence from the Peel Centre which acknowledges that they 'know' the machines were covered up). If you argue your defence well then you might pay nothing especially if they lump into the claim the one where you had no means of paying - in fact if you simply do a Google search about that you'll find LOADS of forum threads about those days when they covered the machines.

Also the Peel Centre signs changed in July 2013 so read about that in other threads - might help your older ticket arguments? This is getting a bit silly that we hare having to reply on a case by case basis with the same old stuff about the tedious old Peel Centre that's already here umpteen times over, for the sake of a search. This is particularly frustrating when we all know you'd have knocked them into touch at POPLA if only you'd looked here earlier.

Not to say you can't win at Court because you can - but the best advice would be to read the LBCCC Fightback sticky and also my sticky thread, 'Private Parking ticket? NEWBIES please read these FAQs first' - which I assume you've already read first, but skim-read maybe? So you've missed the advice about what to do if too late to appeal, how to rewind the appeal clock if someone else was driving and it was a postal PCN (which yours were) etc. And it has details about small claims court defence and how people have won cases, if you are up for the fight.

So far though your lack of research, ignoring a firm which has started court claims in 2013, and the fact you are calling these 'fines' doesn't bode well for a strong well-researched defence...which you will need to be familiar with for your hearing, not us. Sorry to be harsh but only a robust defence could stand a chance of winning. I hope you prove me wrong and sort out a fantastic rebuttal to that Letter before Claim by reading the threads you should have done in the first place. And I hope you at least act to get the 'covered machine one' cancelled by complaining to the Peel Centre - after all there's another sticky all about 'Successful Complaints about PPCs' which already has the Peel Centre staff emails in it. Sticky threads, at the top of the forum.