Advice after POPLA appeal refused

shaw85

Hi,

I am looking for advice after my appeal was recently rejected by POPLA. I don't know whether to not pay the £70 and let this go through the court as I believe the parking charge to be unfair.

This is what I sent to POPLA:

" I received a ticket on he 15/08/2014 as my parking permit on display was expired. My old permit was on display as I hadn’t received my latest one from Excel. I have an image which I will submit which shows the that the postage stamp on the envelope in which the permit arrived as the 13/08/14 yet the permit itself shows that it is valid from the 01/08/14. It would have been impossible for me to display the permit between the 1st and the 15th as the permit was not in my possession. I was given a ticket for not displaying a valid permit when Excel hadn't sent the permit for me to displaying even though I had paid for it. For some reason excel sent this to my work address but it is a personal permit I have with excel. It has nothing to do with my employer. Previous communication has been send to my home address. If there is anything else I can submit to help my case please let me know. thanks"

This is what I received:

"It is not in dispute that the appellant parked in the car park without displaying a valid ticket or permit. A parking charge notice was issued when the operator’s employee observed this.

The appellant made representations, stating that this occurred because their new permit had been sent out late.

The operator rejected these representations, stating that the appellant was still required to display a valid ticket or permit.

Considering all the evidence before me, I find that the appellant was required by the terms of parking displayed on the signs shown in the operator’s evidence to display a valid ticket or permit. As the appellant did not, they were parked in breach of the terms of parking. This is not affected by the fact that their permit was sent out late, as the term did not stop applying to the appellant because of this. Therefore the parking charge was validly issued.

Accordingly, the appeal must be refused

Christopher Monk

Assessor"

The permit payment was taken on the 14/08/2014, the day before I received the ticket. But the new permit was still dated from the 01/08/2014. I had paid to be in that car park on that day. I was unable to display the permit as excel hadn't sent it.

Any good advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

bazster

Just shows what a crock of s**t PoPLA is and what scum Excel are. "Pay us £70 because we haven't sent you the permit you paid for." And PoPLA thinks this is OK.

Just ignore them now unless you get a real Letter Before Claim (from Excel themselves, not some toothless debt collector) or real court papers. Seems pretty unlikely since the fault is entirely Excel's.

In fact if I were you I'd report them to Trading Standards for an aggressive commercial practice under the Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.

Northlakes

The last thing I would be doing is paying this. It's a shame it was a wasted appeal as you appealed understandably on mitigating factors not on points of law which are required by POPLA.

Even though you have lost at POPLA I think Excel would be stupid taking you to court as it looks like it was their system which caused this problem (and failed to mitigate your loss). There is no obligation for you to pay this and my opinion would be to tough this one out because as soon as this went legal the claimant would then be shown to have caused the loss to you.

Northlakes

Start your own thread when required

bazster

The OP did not appeal on mitigating circumstances, he appealed on the perfectly reasonable fact that he couldn't display the permit because Excel themselves hadn't sent it to him, therefore the entire situation is Excel's fault.

Any reasonable person would accept this and I'd like to think that any court of law would also accept it. That PoPLA refused to do so is a huge failing by PoPLA, not by the OP.

Coupon-mad

Both those POPLA appeals were sh1te (sorry) and Chris Monk is one of the best Assessors. You gave him no way you could win it! Why don't people Google 'How to win at POPLA' as it's unknown to them and clearly important to get right? Why write about the story of what happened when even a cursory glance at POPLA's website and how to appeal tells you that they can only consider points of law, not mitigation (i.e. NOT the 'story')?

Both would have been sooo easy to win, especially with that Assessor, if only you had both said there was no GPEOL. A one-liner would have won it. And FLITWICK-PARKING-FARCE could merely have appealed as keeper (not saying who was driving) and pointed out that the keeper cannot be held liable in a station car park, as we all know, due to byelaws taking precedence it's not 'relevant land' under the POFA 2012. Such a simple one to have won.

But DO NOT PAY.

Just puts you both squarely back in the 'old advice' mode before POPLA existed. If you waste a POPLA appeal and then you just need to ignore the debt collectors like we always used to for many years. Start a new thread IF the PPC try court but no threads or posts about the tedious letters from debt collectors, please. It's already here too many times over, easy to search for. Just like 'how to win at POPLA' was...