County Court Claim from ParkingEye (Welcome Break)

hedge2004

Hi all,

Any help or advice would be much appreciated. I've read as many threads which I thought applicable to my circumstances. The recent judgement in the Beavis case has dented my confidence in successfully challenging ParkingEye's (PE) Parking Charge Notice (PCN) issued to me. I’m going to add as much detail below as possible, to help others fight unfair PCN.

1st lesson – DO NOT IGNORE PE LETTERS - I didn’t respond to any letters, this previously worked for me in 2011 or 2012 (I can’t remember the exact year). Now I have received a County Court Claim, I think this would have been far simpler to resolve at an earlier stage.

Currently I have County Court Claim from ParkingEye issued on the 12/09/16. I had 14 days to respond from the day of service (day of service is 5 days after the issue date). I have registered to Money Claim to file an Acknowledgement of Service (AoS) as of 25/09/16, which gives me another 14 days to respond. Please can someone clarify, does that mean I have 14 days from today or tomorrow when the court papers are filed. The website mentioned that court papers filed after 4 pm are not processed until the next working day?

Details of the case / parking offence:

My car’s windscreen wipers got jammed affecting my visibility whilst driving back to London on 06.12.15. I was able to make it to Fleet Services owned by Welcome Break; according to PE I arrived at 17:43 and left at 21:17 – total time 3 hours 34 minutes.

PE letters received:

10/12/15 - £100 fine reduced to £60 if paid within 14 days.

02/03/16 - £60 fine if paid within 14 days (sent to new address). No details of fine value if paid after this date.

20/04/16 – Letter Before County Court Claim (LBCCC) £100 fine payable within 14 days.

12/09/16 - County Court Claim for £175 (£100 amount claimed, £25 court fee and £50 legal costs)

Evidence gathered:

Breakdown incident details - includes the date of incident and the time of incident (initial call to recovery company) 18.36 and the time the breakdown service arrived 20.55, there was a wait of 2 hours and 19 minutes for the breakdown service to arrive. This excludes the initial time spent investigating the car fault, in the hope to resolve without breakdown assistance.

Credit card statement - whilst waiting for the breakdown service I had a dinner from Tossed which I purchased on my credit card.

Action taken:

Contacted Welcome Break to overturn the parking fine with the evidence gathered. I have sent an e-mail which I will be following up with a phone call tomorrow.

Possible action:

Contact PE to appeal decision (however I have missed their imposed deadline).

Contact Parking on Private Lands Appeals (POPLA) manages British Parking Association (BPA) appeals which PE is a member (As I have not appealed to PE, can I appeal to POPLA).

Unsure how to progress, I want to challenge it via the County Court but I do not want to waste anymore time if I was to be unsuccessful. I'll post further updates once I make further progress.

Coupon-mad

1st lesson – DO NOT IGNORE PE LETTERS - I didn’t respond to any letters, this previously worked for me in 2011 or 2012 (I can’t remember the exact year). Now I have received a County Court Claim, I think this would have been far simpler to resolve at an earlier stage.

Agreed - and the evidence you have would have got this cancelled within a week.

We have not advised people ignore PE since 2013, when they started getting aggressive with court claims against innocent ordinary drivers, to the tune of 30,000 being issued in one year.

Please can someone clarify, does that mean I have 14 days from today or tomorrow when the court papers are filed. The website mentioned that court papers filed after 4 pm are not processed until the next working day?

It gives you 28 days in total, from service of the court papers. So court papers dated 12.9.16 add 28 days takes you to 10th but you can also add up to five days for service of those court papers (but don't push it till the last day 33!).

Basically you MUST defend by the w/c 10.10.16.

Evidence gathered:

Breakdown incident details - includes the date of incident and the time of incident (initial call to recovery company) 18.36 and the time the breakdown service arrived 20.55, there was a wait of 2 hours and 19 minutes for the breakdown service to arrive. This excludes the initial time spent investigating the car fault, in the hope to resolve without breakdown assistance.

Credit card statement - whilst waiting for the breakdown service I had a dinner from Tossed which I purchased on my credit card.

Action taken:

Contacted Welcome Break to overturn the parking fine with the evidence gathered. I have sent an e-mail which I will be following up with a phone call tomorrow.

Good, that should at least get WB to assist you in possibly getting PE to settle (for maybe £60, hopefully less) to bring an end to it. Better than nothing and in fact had you asked WB or PE at the time they'd almost certainly have cancelled it.

Possible action:

Contact PE to appeal decision (however I have missed their imposed deadline).

You can't appeal now but you can email PE and show them the evidence you are showing to WB and offer to pay £15 or whatever the 'over two hours' rate was - but expect PE to want a pound of flesh, more like £60. Their legal stage email addy is:

enforcement@parkingeye.co.uk

Contact Parking on Private Lands Appeals (POPLA) manages British Parking Association (BPA) appeals which PE is a member (As I have not appealed to PE, can I appeal to POPLA).

You can't do this. Pointless, forget it.

hedge2004

Thanks for the quick response Coupon-mad. I've contacted WB at the following e-mail address parking@WelcomeBreak.co.uk, they have said the following:

"Having looked into your PCN I can confirm due to the time frame and the original PCN dating back to December 2015 this was issued with a court summons on the 12th September 2016.

This now means Welcome Break are unable to cancel or revoke this for you as it is has now been taken out of our hands. This could have been prevented if you would have made contact with Welcome Break sooner or lodged an appeal direct with Parking eye regarding your PCN.

The only way Welcome Break can now help you is to instruct the removal of the court summons which will require a £60 charge to do so."

I've received a letter from ParkingEye 2 days later wanting £60. I've paid it as I didn't want to take this to the small claims court. Will I need to respond to small claims court demand saying this has now been resolved?

Thanks again for all the help.

The_Slithy_Tove

hedge2004 wrote: »

The only way Welcome Break can now help you is to instruct the removal of the court summons which will require a £60 charge to do so."

That's a complete lie, as PE would have no case if WB, the principal, instructed them so to cancel. But academic now.

hedge2004 wrote: »

I've received a letter from ParkingEye 2 days later wanting £60. I've paid it as I didn't want to take this to the small claims court. Will I need to respond to small claims court demand saying this has now been resolved?

You MUST get in writing from PE that they are withdrawing the case, and confirmation from the court. Until then, it's still a "live" case.

Marktheshark

Look everyone how Welcome break motorway services treat customers.
Company of the year here....
Not !

beamerguy

If Parking Eye could stop action for £60, Welcome Break could have done this by instructing PE.

What a disgusting company PE are.
I often wonder if their staff really enjoy scamming people, if so, it's very sad they class themselves as human.

Welcome Break .... I for one will never drive into Welcome Break because everything is too expensive and I feel it's one big scam

Coupon-mad

Email enforcement@parkingeye.co.uk and ask for confirmation that the £60 has been accepted as full and final settlement and that the court claim has been withdrawn. Give them a short time limit (maybe five working days - i.e. next week) to confirm this, tell them 'time is of the essence' otherwise your position is unclear as regards the claim.

I don't blame you for settling at £60. A harsh lesson, seeing as this would have been cancelled at the outset, had you told PE and/or WB of the circumstances. Always check current advice on this forum and if there is a breakdown situation, state what happened as soon as possible.

catfunt

I strongly advise you to edit your original post to remove some detail that may identify you.
See this post:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5532696

Also... not "I" "my" etc.. but "the driver" or "the driver's".