Apcoa parking charge notice - another one I know!

toffee'n'tom

I arrived home yesterday,19th September, to find a parking charge notice from Birmingham airport. My daughter was picked up from there on the 28th August having paid £7 for parking as her luggage was delayed. On leaving the airport a change of driver was necessary as she was being 'ill'! The vehicle was stopped in a safe place to do this. I, as the registered keeper, have now received a notice from Apcoa. I have looked on here etc and have composed the following letter as I'm flippin well determined not to pay this! Could someone please just say that this is ok before I send it off - many thanks in advance


Yesterday I received the above parking charge notice from Apcoa. This is an appeal on the following grounds:
1. The incident took place on the 28th August 2015. The notice is dated the 18th September 2015, received on the 19th September 2015. This notice is therefore invalid as it is in breach of POFA Section 9(5) which states the notice should be served 14 days from the date of the incident.
2. You have sent me the notice as the registered keeper. With regard to POFA 2012 there is no keeper liability as the land is not ‘relevant land’.
3. In addition the duration of the period shown in the enclosed documents was approximately 40 seconds and there was no intention to park so the vehicle could not have failed to park in a designated area.
4. There is a sign immediately adjacent to car in photo says 'Hotel drop off', yet this is outside the drop off area - misleading and confusing signage
5. General signage requires you to stop and read to understand rules, digest, and accept contract, in the absence of driver information there is no evidence of this
[FONT=&quot]The notice is unclear. You claim "a charge of 100.00" is payable... 100 what?! There is no currency symbol or anything so a further example of ambiguous communications[/FONT]

Umkomaas

Please use the initial appeal template from the NEWBIES FAQ sticky and add (only) points 1 and 2 from your above draft.

Points 3 and 4 are general points of mitigation which no one - PPC, POPLA or regulars here are in the slightest bit interested (sorry, but mitigation is a waste of everyone's time as it won't win you anything).

Point 5 seems a bit muddled to me. If you're trying to say what I think you are, it will have no impact. Leave it out.

Your initial appeal's main aim should be hooking a POPLA verification code from the PPC, where your appeal to POPLA should be dealt with (caveat re the new POPLA provider) much more impartially than ever it will by the PPC.

HTH

Imnoexpert_2

H.

Sorry to be a pain but having received a notice from APCOA this week I am keen to know how you are getting on and hopefully hear that you have been successful.

Please keep updated

Coupon-mad

Imnoexpert wrote: »

H.

Sorry to be a pain but having received a notice from APCOA this week I am keen to know how you are getting on and hopefully hear that you have been successful.

Please keep updated

Not yet they won't have succeeded but they will win at POPLA if they follow our guidance. Have you found the NEWBIES thread and appealed as 'keeper' using the forum template? Do NOT write your own appeal.

We have never lost a POPLA appeal and you'd have to try pretty hard to lose against dumb old APCOA as long as you don't name the driver.

You need to start your own thread, when you get to POPLA stage, and show us your draft POPLA appeal (at that time, not yet) like everyone else here does - we will then help. You are not a pain, we want everyone to win. You do NOT need to ask about first appeal stage, that's already covered in the NEWBIES sticky thread.

toffee'n'tom

I've now received a reponse to my letter to apcoa. They state that my appeal to them has been unsuccessful. The first part of their letter refers to the face we were stopped at the hotel drop off etc and that the driver doesn't proceed to enter the hotel and the no stopping signs etc. This is the rest of the response to my letter:
"In response to our comment made in your letter, please note notices only need to be issued within 14 days if the notice issued mentions "under Protection of Freedoms Act". According to British Parking Association (BPA) guidelines the maximum permitted time to notify the registered keeper is no more that 28 days after receiving keeper date from DVLA which takes no more than 35 days. Once we receive the registered keeper information we issue a notice to the customer and no more that six months after the unauthorised parking event. It is our understanding that as we have not referred to this act in our documentation we are able to work in accordance with the BPA code of practise (June 2013) which states we have up to 28 days to deliver a postal PCN from the date of contravention.

Please note as the registered keeper of this vehicle you are liable for this ticket unless details of the driver are provided.

Recently the court of Appeal unanimousy dismissed the case of Beavis vs Parking eye (2015). This case considered two key arguments a. whether a parking charge for contravention of the parking conditions is enforceable at common law because it is a penalty and b. whether it is unfair and therefore unenforceable by virtue of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999.

The judges rules that the PCN that Mr. Beavis had received from Parking Eye for overstaying a two hour limit 'is not extravagant or unconsciouable'. They added that the terms and conditions of a car park should 'provide a disencentive to drivers which will make them tend to comply' and that this is afforded by thePCN of £85. The judges went on to say that the charge was justifiable by a 'combination of factors, social as well as commercial.'

The guidelines issued by the BPA make clear that they 'would not expect this aount to be more than £100'. We therefore believe that this parking charge is fair and reasonable at £100 reduced to £50 if paid within 14 days. This sum has been approved and agreed by the landowner.

Therefore we do not agree that claiming that the PCN is not a genine pre estimate of loss is a suitable premise on which to base appeals.
As your vehicle was parked in contravention of theterms and conditions of thecar park we are satisfiedthat the notice was correctly issued in accordance with the BPS code of practise and are therefore not able to waiver the charge on this occasion.

They then go on to say methods of payment and the popla appeal. By the way codes of practise is their spelling not mine.

Can anyone offer any further advice on this now please. I am really determined not to pay this charge. Although I have not given the name of the driver andmy reasons for stopping etc (It may have caused an accident if I hadn't) I would really like to know what to do next.

thanks in advance

Janet

toffee'n'tom

I also forgot to mention they have enclosed a poor photocopy of a letter which has their logo on the top right hand corner and Birmingham airport logo on the top left which is datedthe 29th June with the addressee being apcoa parking. The letter purports to be from the chief operating officer of birmingham airport giving apcoa authority for parking control etc.

The_Slithy_Tove

toffeentom wrote: »

"...Protection of Freedoms Act. ... It is our understanding that as we have not referred to this act in our documentation...

Please note as the registered keeper of this vehicle you are liable for this ticket unless details of the driver are provided.

Oops. How do they say the keeper is liable when they've only just stated they are not using POFA. And you've already given them 2 reasons why in your initial correspondence.

As for "authority for parking control etc."
a) What is the "etc"
b) It wasn't parking anyway, so irrelevant (though see (a))

nigelbb

toffeentom wrote: »

Please note as the registered keeper of this vehicle you are liable for this ticket unless details of the driver are provided.

This is an out & out lie. You could report this to Trading Standards as an unfair commercial practise & also to the police for attempting to obtain pecuniary advantage by deception i.e. fraud.

toffee'n'tom

Sorry - I'm not really understanding this now. It just seems to me that their letter if full of stuff intending to confuse?

Redx

correct, all of them do this, its designed on purpose to bamboozle you

more importantly, did they include a popla code ?

if yes , when is the expiry date ?

post #2 told you this

if yes and its valid, construct a popla appeal based on previous examples on here, but not including the aspects denied to Beavis yesterday

toffee'n'tom

Hi

Yes, they have given me a POPLA verification number which expires 28 days from date of their letter 3rd November. To be honest I don't really know now what my grounds are - if anyone could help? What I don't want to be left with is having to pay £100 instead of £50. If, they are definitely in the wrong I will pursue it. If I'm trying to wheedle my way out of paying a fine I should really pay then I suppose I'd rather pay it?

thanks again to everyone for their replies