Napier/IAS Experience, 2016

thedrumdoctor

Can't find a lot about Napier Parking on this board so thought I'd add my experience, though it isn't positive...

I've won a handful of cases for people via POPLA using the 'not a genuine pre-estimate of loss' argument, but I’m far from experienced. When a relative received a ‘windscreen invoice’ from Napier Parking I naturally offered to help. All she had done was forgotten to enter her registration number on a free residential visitors parking permit, which was enough to be in breach of their alleged parking contract.

Anyway, thinking I’d be a smart-a**e, I offered to fight it for her, having found them lose under POPLA in older cases using the not a GPEOL argument with the rulings that their fixed parking notice charges were based on “liquidated damages”. Fantastic, so I thought, but I did sort of wonder why there wasn’t much about Napier Parking on various forums in the same sort of volume as the usual other parking operator suspects.

Having sent off my ‘soft-appeal’ letter to Napier asking for the usual POPLA number etc, expecting to go to second stage appeal, I got quite a shock from their reply when I saw they used the IAS as their ‘independent’ appeals service which in this case, wanted £15 to lodge an appeal. At some point they had changed from being a BPA member to an IPC member, who don’t use POPLA…

Now, IAS Internet research on forums comes up with divided opinion on their true state of independence, but I decided to go with the view of them being a biased ‘Kangaroo court’ and reading far too many “for God’s sake, don’t pay IAS the £15!” comments.

This of course leaves you with the option of not appealing and simply ignoring any further threatening letters about debt recovery from the operator and calling their bluff to take you to small claims court. With many of the other operators looking after car parks on land they don’t own, it does appear that small claims is a step too far to be bothered with.

Napier Parking on the other hand are bit different, because my research found Napier actually own the land their car parks are sitting on! This apparently makes a huge difference and furthermore, I found an FOI request querying the number of times Napier took people to small claims and their respective win rate. Let’s put it this way, at that point I decided to advise my relative to pay the reduced invoice whilst she still had the chance, unless she wanted to go to Milton Keynes small claims court sometime in the near future.

To be clear, Napier Parking currently have a policy of pursuing everyone to small claims and no longer being under the BPA wing, don’t even offer a possibly fairer POPLA appeal. Obviously this forum would benefit from other people’s stories who have decided to call Napier’s bluff from 2016 onwards, but as a land owner with a vested interest to claw back money on their core investments, I fear they’re more than happy to see you in Milton Keynes small claims court.

beamerguy

Assume you work for Napier then ??

You will know that the IPC/IAS are a cowboy operation and so are the PPC's who are members

Herzlos

They can still be beaten, it's just a bit harder work because as you said, they (or a sister company, at least) own the land so the contracts are usually pretty good, they also throw a lot of money at court cases to ensure wins, and tend to throw a huge strop when they lose (like banning people from the car parks).

The commercial justification is still lacking, their signage may not be perfect, and they may not have managed to gain keeper liability.

Personally, I'd still fight them, but I can see it being a lot easier for most people to just pay up (and never use their car parks again).

Coupon-mad

This post definitely looks like propaganda to me...

pappa_golf

any case held in "Milton Keynes small claims court." would smack if a situation where they are attempting a default win , by failing to tell the "accused" of an impending CC claim

System

To be clear, Napier Parking currently have a policy of pursuing everyone to small claims and no longer being under the BPA wing

Must be secret courts as they don't appear on any court lists. Have a claim number?

The_Deep

As IAS adjudications are fatally flawed, I would urge everyone to appeal. Then, if the PPC takes the matter to court, the anonymous adjudication can form part of the defence in that the PPC does not offer and independent appeal process as required by POFA.


I am pretty sure that OP is not a Napier employee, read his/her previous posts.

pogofish

thedrumdoctor wrote: »

Can't find a lot about Napier Parking on this board

There are nearly forty threads from the last year alone and over 300 individual posts discussing Napier.

Is that somehow not enough?

pappa_golf

pogofish wrote: »

There are nearly forty threads from the last year alone and over 300 individual posts discussing Napier.

Is that somehow not enough?

do any of those show that napier instigated court action and followed it thru ?


apart from 2 cases in 2014 , court searches revel a very NON active court record
http://www.bmpa.eu/companydata/Napier_Parking.html

thedrumdoctor

beamerguy wrote: »

Assume you work for Napier then ??

Nope, definitely NOT!

thedrumdoctor

pogofish wrote: »

There are nearly forty threads from the last year alone and over 300 individual posts discussing Napier.

Is that somehow not enough?

You're right, but I swear when I searched the forum previously it came up with nothing about Napier when I searched on 'Napier Parking' or 'Napier' :embarasse. It's the first thing I did which is why I gave up on here and searched in Parking prankster and Pepipoo. Now it comes with tons of threads I wish I'd seen. It was as though the company didn't exist when I tried searching at the end of July when the charge was issued.