ParkingEye - My Experience (Abridged Version)

simusik31

Hello there. I just wanted to quickly share my own experience relating to ParkingEye. It all began back in July 2013 when we (carelessly) decided to park at the Tower Road car park in Newquay.

We drove in and found a space. We went up to the pay machine and observed the ticket prices (we didn't bother looking at any T&Cs). We didn't have enough money to pay for the 3 hours planned stay so we decided to pay through the mobile pay service.

*Note: Because we paid by mobile phone we didn't have a ticket to place on the dash. We assumed PE would have an automatic method of knowing that we'd paid up...mmm* We paid the £5.00 for p to 3 hours and everything was hunky dory, great stuff....off to the beach we went.;)

After about 2.5 hours we arrived back at the car and left the car park without any issues. Everything was fine until about one month later when my wife received a PCN from PE stating that we'd either not paid or overstayed without paying the extra amount due and that we had to pay £100.00 or, I think it was £60.00, if settled within 14 days.

We had paid the car park fee, and we definitely did not overstay. I wrote back to PE stating that we had paid and that we were not going to pay the fine. I even sent PE a copy of my bank statement showing the £5.00 payment being made. Nothing was heard for quite a while, maybe a few months, until we received another letter stating that we still had to pay the fine.

After scouring the net for advice we saw that the best course of action was to simply ignore the letter and hope that PE would get bored and go away. This we did. Move forward to early December 2014 (yes, one year later!) and yet another letter arrives. This one was of the classic 'pay up or we're taking you to court' variety. Not very nice and quite intimidating, truth be told.

Anyway, after reading through the advice on this site we wrote back to PE re-iterating the facts. I gain asked them to provide the actual reason why they were so adamant in fining us. We again provided evidence of our payment and also asked them to kindly refrain from sending out auto generated templates and to reply properly i.e. via a real life human being. We gave them 30 days to reply.

Then lo and behold just yesterday (8th January 2015) PE duly replied. They said that after due consideration blah blah blah they were willing to drop the 'case' against us blah blah blah. The letter was from their legal dept and it was carefully worded to appear as if they were doing us a favour...no apology or anything of that nature, oh no, perish the thought! We are keeping this letter as evidence ...just in case!

So, what have we learned from this sorry affair? A few things actually:

1. Be careful where you park. Try and avoid a private car park run by PE or any of the other twonks out there.

2. On arrival take a photo of where you park, a photo of the current time and a photo of your parking ticket. Might be wise to also keep the ticket.

3. Paying by mobile might be the way to go if the option is available.

4. If you receive an 'unfair' PCN, and you are sure you have the evidence to back this unfairness up, then use the letter template(s) provided on this site to reply to PE or whoever. Once they see that you mean business and have foolproof evidence they will back down

I hope this helps.
Good luck to you all!

pogofish

This won't help anyone at all really - PE don't issue fines and ignoring has not been a reliable option since POFA came into force in late 2012. Since then, PE have become one of the most litigious PPCs and many folk have found the hard way that they won't often go away.

You would have helped yourself much better by coming here earlier and finding the correct way to challenge PE as outlined in the Newbies Sticky at the top of the forum - This contains all the most up to date and effective info that has enabled a great many people to successfully challenge their contractual charges.

Fruitcake

You were obviously given duff gen about ignoring a PCN. The advice for over two years now has been, Do NOT ignore so not sure where you got your incorrect out of date info from. It most certainly was not here.


You mention that this was a fine.


It is not. It was a speculative invoice that MUST not be paid.

The_Deep

Poor advice. You would have been better not ignoring but collecting a paper trail, judges love well documented defences.

hoohoo

You did the right thing with your initial appeal. ParkingEye are chaotic where mail is concerned and there are many reports of mail going missing.

Following the second letter your best strategy to knock this on the head would have been to complain to the BPA, but luckily this all resolved itself in the end.

BenefitMaster

hoohoo wrote: »

You did the right thing with your initial appeal. ParkingEye are chaotic where mail is concerned and there are many reports of mail going missing.

Indeed.

Either use their online appeal, or fax your correspondence and get a fax receipt.