Paid for parking but POLA appeal refused.

gallonofmagnet

Think i'm nearly there.

gallonofmagnet

Re: POPLA Appeal Reference 25614*****

(Appellant) v Excel Parking Services Limited (Excel)

Assessor: Farah Ahmad


Dear POPLA adjudicator,

I am writing to request that the PoPLA appeal decision in this case is re-examined as I do not believe the following point which was included in our original appeal has been covered.

• The car park in question is a pay and display facility and even though there was a misunderstanding as to what constitutes a valid ticket, the loss incurred by the operator is a matter of the time spent in the car park without making the relevant payment. This is a quantifiable loss as can be seen on the sign which displays the actual normal parking fee. In this case the correct amount - £1.20 - was paid at the time it was requested to Excel Parking Services via their own supplied Pay and Display machine. Therefore the amount outstanding to be paid in this instance is £0.00. Any greater amount MUST be deemed to be a penalty, which of course is non compliant to the BPA Code of Practice itself which states that the use of fine or penalty may not be used.

No evidence to the contrary has been supplied by Excel during the appeal to POPLA. If this point had been addressed correctly I would of expected a defence to have been entered by Excel.

POPLA and the assessor Farah Ahmad have failed to address this point in its entirety.

Chris Adamson the Senior Assessor is well known to have made the point on several occasions that an initial loss is fundamental to any claim for damages as a genuine pre-estimate of loss and without an initial loss any costs incurred subsequently cannot be reasonably claimed to have been caused by the breach. With this in mind I feel it is imperative that this point is covered in Farah Ahmad's determination which it is not.

Yours faithfully,

Do you think the point about Excel not being given the right to defend the point will help? I thought if it appeared unfair from both sides there was more chance of it being re-addressed. Also I thought the point raised relating to Chris Adamson shows that it is a fundamental part of POPLA appeals process to address these points however they are worded.

I was also given a name of Sylvia Edohasim to direct this too. Is that the best person or is there a better contact to send it too?

Look OK now? Hopefully final draft. Thanks!!!!

gallonofmagnet

Coupon-mad wrote: »

If you definitely had this point (below) with the word 'loss' in it then I would be emailing POPLA's Service Manager to point out the Assessor has missed your assertion that it was not a GPEOL in your final paragraph which said:

'the loss incurred by the operator is a matter of the time spent in the car park without making the relevant payment. This is a quantifiable loss as can be seen on the sign which displays the actual normal parking fee. In this case the correct amount - £1.20 - was paid at the time it was requested to Excel Parking Services via their own supplied Pay and Display machine. Therefore the amount outstanding to be paid in this instance is £0.00. '

rreeve@popla.org.uk

Ask for the case to be reviewed because the question of no quantifiable loss was ignored.

Do you know the full name of rreeve?

Umkomaas

gallonofmagnet wrote: »

Do you know the full name of rreeve?

Google is your friend!

gallonofmagnet

Sent the letter to Sylvia Edohasim at London Councils and Richard Reeve, so fingers crossed.
:money:

gallonofmagnet

Just out of interest would anyone have paid the £10.00 cancellation fee they offered? I'm beginning to wish I had.

Coupon-mad

The silence is deafening - nope.

Guys_Dad

I have long contended that kitchen sink appeals carry the danger of being turned down unless they are clearly indexed, have the magic bullet words prominently displayed and stick to the relevant facts.

Can I say that this latest version of your appeal has a danger of being turned down too for the same reason?

As I see it, you are saying that the appeal was wrongly turned down because they missed your point that it wasn't a GPEOL. YOU ARE STILL NOT USING THE MAGIC WORDS IN YOUR LATEST VERSION PROMINENTLY ENOUGH.

Others have said that assessors may be latching on to the magic words and may miss the point if they don't see them. There was another case of a rambling appeal that DID contain a reference to no real loss that was also rejected because of a mixture of layout and missing magic words.

I would add in the opening paragraph something along the lines of "My original appeal on the charge not being a genuine pre-estimate of loss appears to have been overlooked perhaps because I used different terminology." And then go on with your appeal.

I still advise shorter wording on POPLA appeals, much more along the recent lines that c-m provided for another newbie. Keep it short, relevant, use the main points as adjudicators should, by now, be well conversant with the silver bullets . And use the correct wording.

Redx

I agree with guys dad, shout this NOT A GPEOL from the rooftops and dont bury it down the bottom or deflect from it by arguing yet again about signage, ie:- quit the tunnel vision on signage and concentrate on the winning point that should have been seen by the assessor, especially with the lead adjudicator etc

as for the £10 offer , last year my relative received a pcn from excel on a car park that was free for so long, then p&d and didnt know about this forum so rang them up and actually offered £10 which was turned down, by the time I heard about it and researched it he had a popla code, so we went to popla and won and he paid nothing at all, so their loss as he would have paid up to £20 to make it "go away" , so the £16 now offered by parkingticketappeals would have been attractive to him

then another relative got a PE one which I helped them to challenge and they cancelled due to a heavy spend in multiple retail shops so no offer was made but that person would have paid £10 had it been offered

both wins were documented on here by me last year

its certainly one option even though we advocate "not paying them a penny" but is totally dependent on circumstances as you may feel something is owed to them, or you may be aggrieved and feel you owe them nothing at all for various reasons

so a hard one to pin down and each case has its own points to consider

gallonofmagnet

London councils have now responded to my letter stating they are not prepared to get involved. Email to rreeve@popla.org has been answered by the admin team as follows. The assessors it's decision is final and I should pay up. Not the exact words but close enough. Is it worth trying to re-state the case again or is it unlikely to be taken seriously by anyone? Might take it to parking appeals for 16 as really not got the time to fight all the debt collector rubbish that is heading this way.