Pure Gym NPS parking charge - advice needed

Henners10101

I hope someone could give me some advice on a parking charge.

I received a parking ticket from Northern Parking Services in December 2015. I had parked in a private car park outside Pure Gym. Inside the gym is a keypad on which members should enter their car registration number within 10 minutes of arrival, which allows 2 hours of free parking.

On this occasion I forgot to use the keypad. I was in the gym for about 90 minutes and removed the car from the car park within that time and certainly within the 2 hour limit. On previous visits I have logged the registration number correctly.

I emailed NPS explaining what had happened, naively assuming they would be reasonable and cancel the ticket.

As Pure Gym has a member PIN system for both entering and exiting the gym, I stated in the email that the gym should be able to provide evidence of the timing of my arrival and departure.

NPS rejected the appeal immediately, citing contractual arrangements that were displayed in the car park, one of which was that the registration be logged inside the gym within 10 minutes of arrival.

A few days later I discussed the matter with the gym manager. He told me Pure Gym was unable to help resolve the problem. He did provide me with photographic evidence of my arrival and departure times on the day I received the ticket.

Shortly after this, I emailed this evidence to NPS and requested them to cancel the charge. I had no reply to this email.

Earlier this month (Feb 2016) I received a notice to keeper from NPS requesting payment of the £100 charge.

I was considering appealing to POPLA but it looks as though there is a 28 day time limit which I have now missed.

As an aside, NPS lost the contract to manage this car park effective 31 Dec 2015. I understand this was partly due to their over zealous ticketing activities including issuing tickets to cars parked on the street where they had no authority to do so.

Any comments on my best strategy at this point would be appreciated.

Redx

NPS is an IPC member so popla was never on offer

Northern Parking Services (North East) Ltd (Trading as Northern Parking Services)

13/02/2015 www.northernparkingservices.co.uk

you possibly had 21 days to appeal to the IAS, which lapsed anyway, and the IPC and IAS are a waste of time , kangaroo court, discussed to death on here over the last 12 to 18 months

in other words you were never going to win

all you can do now is wait for any LBC or MCOL in the next 6 years and if one arrives you put your case to the court or judge, keep any paperwork backing up your case, especially from PUREGYM or the landowner

it was always going to be this way unless the landowner cancelled the charge, now its ignore the debt collectors and only deal with an LBC from the PPC or an MCOL from Nortampton or Salford (or a county court)

the NEWBIES sticky thread (third thread down) explains all of this, just read the IPC and IAS sections, plus post #4 about debt collectors as well

Ralph-y

good advice above .....

as for PUREGYM

looks like they are heading for a

'avoid' tag

this is the third / forth thread about the customers being hassled in a week or so :eek:

Ralph:cool:

Fruitcake

Contact Pure Gym and demand they cancel this ticket or you will become an instant ex-member who will not be renewing their membership.
Remember, other gyms are available. Eventually Pure Gym will get the message.


Tell all your friends ad family about this scam, and get everyone you know to read this and sign the petition.


https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5365003


In addition, leave negative feedback on trapadvisor, [EMAIL="tw@tter"]tw@tter[/EMAIL], and fakebook.

dazster

What Fruitcake says. Now that the parking scum have been kicked out of the car park there is no reason for Pure Gym not to write them a letter, copied to you, telling them that as NPS' principal at the time the alleged charge was incurred Pure Gym demands that they cancel the charge.

The parking scum will ignore this of course, but it'll be gold dust for you should they be stupid enough to try taking things further.

Henners10101

Thanks all for the advice and replies to my post.

I have spoken to several people from Pure Gym, both within the Gym and on their customer services helpline. The standard line is there is nothing they can do about it. My impression is that management are washing their hands of the issue having got entirely sick of dealing with complaints from members related to this particular site. I guess that is part of the reason NPC lost the contract.

In the circumstances I will ignore the demand for payment and will only respond if I receive court papers. I suspect I have a good chance of winning if it were to go to court.

Henners10101

Hello all
It's been a while since I posted on this thread about this issue.

Since last posting I have been back in touch with Pure Gym who have been entirely unhelpful and unwilling to intervene. I have cancelled my gym contract with them as a result.

I have also received various bits of correspondence requesting payment, firstly from NPS and latterly on HFM (Hamilton Financial Management) headed paper. I have also most recently received a letter from DFDL.

I have read and understood the advice given on this forum and given the circumstances I had intended to ignore all correspondence except any official notification of court action. For my own peace of mind I wonder whether anyone could take a quick look at the most recent letters and confirm this is still the most appropriate course of action.

Please see letters via the following link:

http://s347.photobucket.com/user/henners10101/library/

Umkomaas

Both debt crawlers - ignore.

Well, well, well, just check out the signature of 'Anne Stone' of DRP (letter at the bottom of the linked page) .....

https://bmpa.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203589972-Debt-Recovery-Plus-Ltd-also-t-as-Parking-Collection-Services-Zenith-Collections

....... and the signature of 'Alan Stoke' of Hamilton FM.

http://s347.photobucket.com/user/henners10101/media/IMG_3576_zpsufk1bzxu.jpg.html?sort=3&o=2

Notice anything familiar?

Therefore DRP = PCS = Zenith = Hamilton.

The murky world you now find yourself in!

Coupon-mad

The Parking Prankster has advice about that DCBL letter here:

http://parking-prankster.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/excel-parking-change-debt-collectors.html

HTH

Henners10101

Umkomaas wrote: »

Both debt crawlers - ignore.

Well, well, well, just check out the signature of 'Anne Stone' of DRP (letter at the bottom of the linked page) .....

https://bmpa.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203589972-Debt-Recovery-Plus-Ltd-also-t-as-Parking-Collection-Services-Zenith-Collections

....... and the signature of 'Alan Stoke' of Hamilton FM.

http://s347.photobucket.com/user/henners10101/media/IMG_3576_zpsufk1bzxu.jpg.html?sort=3&o=2

Notice anything familiar?

Therefore DRP = PCS = Zenith = Hamilton.

The murky world you now find yourself in!

Amazing! Could it be that neither Alan Stoke nor Anne Stone actually exist? Just a figment of someone's imagination?

Henners10101

Coupon-mad wrote: »

The Parking Prankster has advice about that DCBL letter here:

http://parking-prankster.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/excel-parking-change-debt-collectors.html

HTH

Thanks for the link. He is saying it is worthwhile contacting DCBL to keep a lid on potential costs in the event the parking company does decide to go to court. In the case he is looking at, the parking company is Excel and apparently they do sometimes go to court. I had understood that NPS was statistically less likely than other parking companies to take claims to court. Would you think there may be a downside in contacting DCBL in the format Parking Prankster suggests?