Do not ignore a parking charge notice

Umkomaas

I never fail to shake my head in utter disbelief with every new thread that opens with 'I've read on this and other forums that I should ignore my parking charge notice, but now I realise .............' (aka - 'I've left it late, will you dig me out of the sticky stuff!').

So, I thought I'd look back to the time when we stopped giving the advice to ignore PCNs. I think there's general agreement that it was March last year (2013).

I had to go back to forum index page 280 to reach March 2013, and with 20 threads per page, that's 5,600 new threads where the advice has been 'DO NOT IGNORE PCNs IN ENGLAND AND WALES'.

I wonder how many more of the above opening lines we're going to have to read before the penny finally drops.

In case anyone picks this thread up from a Google search, here's a repeat of the current (2014) advice:

DO NOT IGNORE PCNs IN ENGLAND AND WALES

Stroma

The problem of course is that ignore is a viable option, as very few operators currently take court action. And those that do only a tiny fraction will proceed there. I do feel that we are actually perpetuating the problem somewhat, and doing the parking company's job for them by spreading fear.

But saying that for those that come here we are offering the correct advice in going to popla etc, and writing to the parking companies to dispute any letters before claim that come.

Umkomaas

Stroma wrote: »

The problem of course is that ignore is a viable option, as very few operators currently take court action. And those that do only a tiny fraction will proceed there. I do feel that we are actually perpetuating the problem somewhat, and doing the parking company's job for them by spreading fear.

But saying that for those that come here we are offering the correct advice in going to popla etc, and writing to the parking companies to dispute any letters before claim that come.

But many of the 'Help, I've ignored........' posts have been at the court papers stage from the likes of PE, CEL, UKCPS, when the effort the OP then needs from both a research/understanding point of view and the physical effort to put together the technical paperwork necessary to defend successfully, and this is in addition to the accompanying anxiety, is far greater than utilising the two well tested initial and POPLA appeals templates.

And for the first-timer, who has absolutely no idea about any of this stuff, they have similarly no idea whether they are dealing with a dove or a hawk. Following an ignore strategy should really only be recommended for those with knowledge and experience of the landscape.

In fact the 2 x appeals are much easier than dealing with the (benign) paperwork that comes even from the 'doves' when their demands are ignored.

Stroma

But the people who are ignoring are generally the ones who can see that these invoices are exactly that. And probably the ones that have been advised by friends and family to do that.

If you look at parking eye, they have issued 8k claims to the court to the year Oct 2013, in that period they gave about 750k tickets, as a conservative estimate 30% of those tickets are not paid, so 225k would be about it. So about 3.5% have a claim against them.

So what should be happening is that we telling people the truth about this, there is a 96.5% chance of ignoring working, not just blindly saying that you must not ignore. And if you look at other litigant companies those figures will come down some.

As for popla, yes people should use it as we win there as you know 100% of the time, but they are in the back pockets of the bpa, what will happen when they refusing gpeol, no contracts etc as appeal points that win? I have said from the start that they are not fit for purpose. I reiterate that now, they are as bad as the scammers themselves

Coupon-mad

It's because people search Google for the name of the Parking company, then of course one of the results is an ancient 2009 thread about Parking Eye or something - and they actually READ it! People don't know that on any forum thread they are one click away from the first page of advice, and they never take that step.

Nothing we can do to stop this, IMHO.

ColliesCarer

Although P E issue the most Court cases - they are not the most likely to sue in %terms.
If we use Stroma's conservative estimate of 30% of the number of keeper requests don't pay as a general rule then taking the top three suers, the order of which is most likely to sue becomes
1/ UKCPS at about 8%
2/ CEL 4.5%
3/ PE 3.5%
This order stays the same in terms of who is most likely to sue even if it's just based on court cases as a % of keeper detail requests without trying to estimate how many don't pay.
One of the problems of trying to give advice on likelihood is we don't have their figures for non-payers and the % could vary widely from company to company. For example it wouldn't have to vary by much in UKCPS's case for 1 in 10 ignorers to face court.
Plus if more people begin to ignore the number of court cases may rise too.

Stroma

The answer of course is to get 2m motorists a year to completely ignore private parking companies, and only to respond to court claims. We should then go down to about zero the number of parking companies.

And Coupon you are of course right, google who is everyone's friend simply goes and lists threads as far back as 2010, the parking eye nasty tricks thread is there, and that is why its bumped so often

https://www.google.co.uk/#q=parking+eye

berni84

Hi,


I received a parking eye pcn in Bristol today. What should I do? Is it now best to contact them and appeal or is there still a likely chance that ignoring will work?
Thanks

Stroma

Create your own thread instead of hijacking this one , and read coupon mad's sticky thread in the main parking forum

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=163

thanks

prosnap

I still feel like we are winning the battles but losing the war.


We need more awareness about this plague on society. Winning one small battle at a time is taking too long. Thousands are still paying up every month.


Parking companies are not going out of business and It's still a very profitable business to be in!


Fresh ideas needed

gourmetguy

delete the old threads deemed to have bad advice.
The new threads cover everything necessary surely?