Use ParkingTicketAppeals, go it alone, or pay up?

Redx

maybe they are finally trying to save the planet by stopping the 500 page drivel they send out ? who knows ? (nobody cares really m8, honest)

just do the popla appeal if you have a popla code , that is more important then semantics

4consumerrights

Parking Eye have condensed their original rejection letter as far as I am aware. They are saving their paper for the court bundles

To the OP if you are struggling and dithering with this then we will gladly do it for you - the choice is yours .

You will get help on the forum - but you need to put the effort in yourself and it is advisable to get it checked out to avoid any silly mistakes.

Oh in case you are wondering who I represent look at my Avatar .....

Fergie76

Nodding_Donkey wrote: »

That's a really hard one

Do you pay:
£70 to scammers
£40 to the same scammers

Or

£16 to someone who will ensure the scammers get £0


What to do, what to do.

Do it yourself, using the help that is on here for £0.00 (other than a wee bit of your time).

115vaw

I've finished my appeal :j.
I changed very little from the template and would appreciate if anyone can check it's ok.

I added a bit in #3 about signs being obscured by trees so would appreciate if someone could check that bit in particular.

Thanks in advance.


ParkingEye PCN, reference code *******
POPLA Code: *********


Dear POPLA,

I am the registered keeper and I wish to appeal a recent parking charge from ParkingEye. I submit the points below to show that I am not liable for the parking charge:

1) No genuine pre-estimate of loss
2) No standing or authority to pursue charges nor form contracts with drivers
3) No valid contract formed between ParkingEye and the driver
4) The ANPR system is unreliable and neither synchronised nor accurate


1) No genuine pre-estimate of loss
The demand for a payment of £70 (discounted to £40 if paid within 14 days) is punitive, unreasonable, exceeds an appropriate amount, and has no relationship to the loss that would have been suffered by the Landowner. The keeper declares that the charge is punitive and therefore an unenforceable penalty.

Parking Eye’s sign states the charge is for ‘failure to comply’ so this Operator must prove the charge to be a genuine pre-estimate of loss. Where there is an initial loss directly caused by the presence of a vehicle in breach of the conditions (e.g. loss of revenue from failure to pay a tariff) this loss will be obvious. There is no loss flowing from this parking event because there can be no loss of potential income in a free car park. An initial loss is fundamental to a parking charge and, without it, costs incurred by issuing the parking charge notice cannot be said to have been caused by the driver's alleged breach. Heads of cost such as normal operational costs and tax-deductible back office functions, debt collection, etc. cannot possibly flow as a direct consequence of this parking event. The Operator would have been in the same position had the parking charge notice not been issued, and would have had many of the same business overheads even if no vehicles breached any terms at all. Given that ParkingEye charge the same lump sum for a 12 minute overstay as they would for 3 hours, and the same fixed charge applies to any alleged contravention (whether serious/damaging or trifling), it is clear there has been no regard paid to establishing that this charge is a genuine pre-estimate of loss caused by this incident in this car park.
In ParkingEye v Smith at Manchester County Court in 2011, claim number 1XJ81016, the original claim of £240 was deemed an unrecoverable penalty, unrelated to damages incurred and the only sum that could be recovered was deemed to be £15 (the amount of the pay and display fee for more than one visit). The entirety of the parking charge must be a genuine pre-estimate of loss in order to be enforceable. As the PCN sum is massively inflated, I require ParkingEye to submit a breakdown of how this sum was calculated prior to the parking event, as being capable of directly flowing from a minor alleged breach.
The DfT Guidance and BPA Code of Practice require that a parking charge for an alleged breach must be an estimate of losses flowing from the incident. ParkingEye cannot change this requirement so they have no option but to show POPLA their genuine pre-estimate of loss for this charge, not some subsequently penned 'commercial justification' statement they may have devised afterwards (since this would not be a pre-estimate):

The British Parking Association Code of Practice uses the word 'MUST':
"19.5 If the parking charge that the driver is being asked to pay is for a breach of contract or act of trespass, this charge must be based on the genuine pre-estimate of loss that you suffer.''

Neither is this charge 'commercially justified'. In answer to that proposition from a PPC which had got over-excited about the ParkingEye v Beavis small claims decision (now being taken to the Court of Appeal by Mr Beavis anyway) POPLA Assessor Chris Adamson has stated in June 2014 that:

''In each case that I have seen from the higher courts,...it is made clear that a charge cannot be commercially justified where the dominant purpose of the charge is to deter the other party from breach. This is most clearly stated in Lordsvale Finance Plc v Bank of Zambia [1996] QB 752, quoted approvingly at paragraph 15 in Cine Bes Filmcilik Ve Yapimcilik & Anor v United International Pictures & Ors [2003] EWHC Civ 1669 when Coleman J states a clause should not be struck down as a penalty, “if the increase could in the circumstances be explained as commercially justifiable, provided always that its dominant purpose was not to deter the other party from breach”.

This supports the principle that the aim of damages is to be compensatory, beginning with the idea that the aim is to put the parties in the position they would have been in had the contract been performed. It also seems that courts have been unwilling to allow clauses designed to deter breach as this undermines the binding nature of the initial promise made. Whilst the courts have reasonably moved away from a strict interpretation of what constitutes a genuine pre-estimate of loss, recognising that in complex commercial situations an accurate pre-estimate will not always be possible, nevertheless it remains that a charge for damages must be compensatory in nature rather than punitive.''


2) No standing or authority to pursue charges nor form contracts with drivers

I believe that this Operator has no proprietary interest in the land, so they have no standing to make contracts with drivers in their own right, nor to pursue charges for breach in their own name. In the absence of such title, Parking Eye must have assignment of rights from the landowner to pursue charges for breach in their own right, including at court level. This has not been produced by the operator in their rejection statement so I have no proof that such a document is in existence. I contend that Parking Eye merely hold a bare licence to supply and maintain (non compliant) signs and to post out 'tickets' as a deterrent. A commercial site agent for the true landholder has no automatic standing nor authority in their own right which would meet the strict requirements of section 7 of the BPA Code of Practice.

I therefore put Parking Eye to strict proof to provide POPLA and myself with an unredacted, contemporaneous copy of the contract between Parking Eye and the landowner. This is required so that POPLA and myself can check that it allows this Operator to make contracts with drivers themselves and provides them with full authority to pursue charges, including a right to pursue them in court in their own name. Please note that a witness statement to the effect that a contract is in place will not be sufficient to provide sufficient detail of the contract terms (such as revenue sharing, genuine intentions of these restrictions and charges, set amounts to charge for each stated contravention, etc.). In any case, Parking Eye's witness statements have been exposed as photocopy templates from clients who may well have no knowledge of any individual parking event and the signatory may never even have seen the contract.

3) No valid contract formed between ParkingEye and the driver

I believe that ParkingEye place their signs too high and do not maintain them to keep them unobscured by growing trees and any photographs supplied by ParkingEye to POPLA will no doubt show the signs with the misleading aid of a close up camera & flash and the angle may well not show how high the signs are. As such, I require ParkingEye to state the height of each sign in their response and to prove that each sign is not obscured in any way.

Unreadable signage breaches Appendix B of the BPA Code of Practice which states that terms on entrance signs must be clearly readable without the driver having to turn away from the road ahead. A notice is not imported into the contract unless brought home so prominently that the party ‘must’ have known of it and agreed terms beforehand. The driver was not aware of any charges as there was no clear signage anywhere near the area where the car was parked. Nothing about this Operator’s onerous inflated ‘parking charges’ was sufficiently prominent and it is clear that the requirements for forming a contract (i.e. consideration flowing between the two parties, offer, acceptance and fairness and transparency of terms offered in good faith) were not satisfied.

4) The ANPR system is unreliable and neither synchronised nor accurate

If ParkingEye's ANPR records are completely reliable (which I contest) then this Operator claims the car was parked for 12 minutes more than the free time allocated. And yet their evidence shows no parking time, merely photos of a car driving in and out which does not discount the possibility of a double visit. It is unreasonable for this operator to record the start of the ‘parking time’ as the moment of arrival in moving traffic. The exit photo is not evidence of ‘parking time’ at all.

This Operator is obliged to ensure their ANPR equipment is maintained as described in paragraph 21.3 of the BPA Code of Practice and to have signs stating how the data will be stored/used. I say that Parking Eye have failed to clearly inform drivers about the cameras and what the data will be used for and how it will be used and stored. If there was such a sign at all then it was not prominent, since the driver did not see it. I have also seen no evidence that they have complied with the other requirements in that section of the code in terms of ANPR logs and maintenance and I put this Operator to strict proof of full ANPR compliance.

In addition I question the entire reliability of the system. I require that ParkingEye present records as to the dates and times of when the cameras at this car park were checked, adjusted, calibrated, synchronised with the timer which stamps the photos and generally maintained to ensure the accuracy of the dates and times of any ANPR images. This is important because the entirety of the charge is founded on two images purporting to show my vehicle entering and exiting at specific times. It is vital that this Operator must produce evidence in response and explain to POPLA how their system differs (if at all) from the flawed ANPR system which was wholly responsible for the court loss recently in ParkingEye v Fox-Jones on 8 Nov 2013. That case was dismissed when the judge said the evidence from ParkingEye was fundamentally flawed because the synchronisation of the camera pictures with the timer had been called into question and the operator could not rebut the point.

So, in addition to showing their maintenance records, I require ParkingEye to show evidence to rebut the following assertion. I suggest that in the case of my vehicle being in this car park, a local camera took the image but a remote server added the time stamp. As the two are disconnected by the internet and do not have a common "time synchronisation system", there is no proof that the time stamp added is actually the exact time of the image. The operator appears to use WIFI which introduces a delay through buffering, so "live" is not really "live". Hence without a synchronised time stamp there is no evidence that the image is ever time stamped with an accurate time. Therefore I contend that this ANPR "evidence" from the cameras in this car park is just as unreliable and unsynchronised as the evidence in the Fox-Jones case.

I request that my appeal is allowed.

Yours faithfully,

And just for interest, I thought you might like to see one of their signs.

Coupon-mad

That's very good - it will do the trick! Good pic of the tree (oh is there a sign behind it too?!).

115vaw

Coupon-mad wrote: »

That's very good - it will do the trick! Good pic of the tree (oh is there a sign behind it too?!).

Glad you liked the pic coupon-mad. I know I was advised no pics required with my appeal, but as it is such a nice tree is it worth including?

And one final question .. and I know some people won't like me asking this, but I would really like to know.. if it is so certain that I will win my appeal, how come 62% of appeals to PE in the year to Mar 2014 were refused?

Many thanks again to all for reading and replying.

Redx

if we knew why PE and other ppc`s behave in the way they do we would be well paid medical doctors, clearly they had their brains removed in favour of profit margins, as no common sense seems to exist in any of those PPC,s from what we see on here

I would say yes, include the pic , should make the assessor laugh and that bodes well for you, not that the result is in doubt if using a popla appeal from here

115vaw

I am shaking as I type having just submitted my appeal to POPLA online.:eek:
Nearly had kittens when I read the automatic email from them containing this
Why they are appealing:
Parked improperly
Charge exceeded
Not liable

That is very misleading. They could at least say NOT parked improperly, and charge exceeded appropriate amount!!

I submitted a photo as evidence - should I get a confirmation email for that?
And will they give me an timescale for the decision (sure I read they do but can't find it now).


Thanks for the helpful advice. As soon as I know the result, you'll know!:)

bazster

115vaw wrote: »

And one final question .. and I know some people won't like me asking this, but I would really like to know.. if it is so certain that I will win my appeal, how come 62% of appeals to PE in the year to Mar 2014 were refused?

Most people appeal to PoPLA without even knowing this place exists. Consequently they submit appeals blithering on about how they were having a coffee and lost track of time or how the ticket must've fallen on the floor or how little Hermione just peed her pants or whatever: in other words, mitigation which is doomed to fail.

Those who come here and learn about appealing on points of law always win.

It's a terrible indictment of PoPLA really. PoPLA says it doesn't expect appellants to be lawyers, but the truth is that if you don't become a bit of a lawyer you haven't a prayer of winning.