Failed POPLA, Parking Eye charge, Tower Road Newquay

JulieDurrell

I would be really grateful for help and advice. First of all I must apologise. I failed my POPLA appeal because I stupidly thought that if I told them the plain facts I would win my it. I did mentioned unclear signage, but didn't feel I had the time nor the skills to do a proper appeal. I cannot afford the parking charge, but feel now we have no other options. I have just written to the landowner, but just wanted to ask on here is there anything else I can do? I do not really want to go to court. Thank you for your help.

I cannot find the copy of my original appeal to POPLA nor my response to parking eyes evidence but this is what I sent to Parking Eye. I can post a copy of the POPLA judgment though which has extracts of my appeal.

We purchased a 5 hour ticket and returned to our car within that time. There is no CLEAR signage saying you will be charged for the time from entering and leaving and since no other car park does this, this is extremely misleading. Your fine records us arriving at on 5/8/16 at 15:01:43 and leaving at 20:26:36. The additional 24 minutes was spent trying unsuccessfully to get a ticket from the machine. The machine kept rejecting all of our coins and you can tell by the amount of scratches on the machine that we are not the only ones to have experienced this. My husband tried at first whilst I got the kids out of the car. Then I tried. Then we hunted for different coins. Then we tried another machine. Eventually we decided to try to do it by text and after reading the instructions I sent a text at 15:19 to 65565 with "REG ????????" to which I received a reply "Sorry your message is in the wrong format. To park send the location number, followed by duration, 3 digit CVV & number plate. e.g. 1234 10m 123 PLATE". So I rang up instead. The call was to 03304007275 and was made at 15:21 and lasted 5 minutes. I was asked if I wanted a text confirmation of my parking but declined as it cost 20p. So basically, we FINALLY got our tickets at 15:26, over 24 minutes after arriving at the car park. SO, are you trying to tell me that despite no CLEAR signage saying charges are from entrance to exit time and the fact that a faulty machine was entirely the cause of our delay, we were supposed to have paid £4 extra for our parking, which is what the extra time would have cost us . In addition, I was billed on 8/8/16 £5.70 by ParkingEye. I paid £5.50 over the phone for 5 hours parking. As said previously I declined the confirmation text at 20p and as expected didn’t receive such a text. However, I was charged for this and hence wrongly charged. For this error I will be charging ParkingEye £100. If this amount is paid within 14 days it will be discounted to £60. I look forward to having my appeal accepted as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I will never get the time I have wasted on this appeal back again. Thank you Parking Eye.

Redx

its either pay or ignore , your choice

if you ignore it is likely that PE will issue a court case within the next 6 years, which means you can prepare a betetr defence for a judge than you did for popla

the circumstances on the day rarely matter as its a legal case, although a judge may look favourably on mitigation, but legal arguments tend to win , both at popla and in court

as you say , your popla appeal was ill thought out and we could have told you that it would fail , had you posted it here first

because you have proof that you paid for 5 hours , a judge might find in your favour

The_Deep

Tell it to the judge

http://parking-prankster.blogspot.com.es/2014/03/waiting-for-space-is-not-parking.html


I have great faith in the courts, I believe that if they were daft enough to try it they would get a bloody nose.

Coupon-mad

The_Deep wrote: »

Tell it to the judge

http://parking-prankster.blogspot.com.es/2014/03/waiting-for-space-is-not-parking.html

I have great faith in the courts, I believe that if they were daft enough to try it they would get a bloody nose.

I agree - in this case, she has so much evidence of doing her best to pay and did so. Very different from the Beavis case.

JulieDurrell wrote: »

I would be really grateful for help and advice. First of all I must apologise. I failed my POPLA appeal because I stupidly thought that if I told them the plain facts I would win my it. I did mentioned unclear signage, but didn't feel I had the time nor the skills to do a proper appeal. I cannot afford the parking charge, but feel now we have no other options. I have just written to the landowner, but just wanted to ask on here is there anything else I can do? I do not really want to go to court. Thank you for your help.

I cannot find the copy of my original appeal to POPLA nor my response to parking eyes evidence but this is what I sent to Parking Eye. I can post a copy of the POPLA judgment though which has extracts of my appeal.

We purchased a 5 hour ticket and returned to our car within that time. There is no CLEAR signage saying you will be charged for the time from entering and leaving and since no other car park does this, this is extremely misleading. Your fine records us arriving at on 5/8/16 at 15:01:43 and leaving at 20:26:36. The additional 24 minutes was spent trying unsuccessfully to get a ticket from the machine. The machine kept rejecting all of our coins and you can tell by the amount of scratches on the machine that we are not the only ones to have experienced this. My husband tried at first whilst I got the kids out of the car. Then I tried. Then we hunted for different coins. Then we tried another machine.

Eventually we decided to try to do it by text and after reading the instructions I sent a text at 15:19 to 65565 with "REG ????????" to which I received a reply "Sorry your message is in the wrong format. To park send the location number, followed by duration, 3 digit CVV & number plate. e.g. 1234 10m 123 PLATE".

So I rang up instead. The call was to 03304007275 and was made at 15:21 and lasted 5 minutes. I was asked if I wanted a text confirmation of my parking but declined as it cost 20p. So basically, we FINALLY got our tickets at 15:26, over 24 minutes after arriving at the car park.

SO, are you trying to tell me that despite no CLEAR signage saying charges are from entrance to exit time and the fact that a faulty machine was entirely the cause of our delay, we were supposed to have paid £4 extra for our parking, which is what the extra time would have cost us . In addition, I was billed on 8/8/16 £5.70 by ParkingEye. I paid £5.50 over the phone for 5 hours parking. As said previously I declined the confirmation text at 20p and as expected didn’t receive such a text. However, I was charged for this and hence wrongly charged. For this error I will be charging ParkingEye £100. If this amount is paid within 14 days it will be discounted to £60.

If you are up for defending this case at a hearing at your local court you have OODLES of evidence that the time at the start was time spent trying to pay to park. And we all know that the signs talk about 'parking tariffs' not entrance fees so no driver can possibly guess that their time has been secretly recorded earlier by the cameras that you probably thought were there for security reasons!

I cannot afford the parking charge, but feel now we have no other options

You do. It will cost you nothing except time and research to defend this with our help. Your case differs from the Beavis case and in fact yours was a 'distance contract' in the end, which the Parking Prankster is something of an expert in arguing (and he takes a particular interest in ParkingEye cases). Distance contracts have all sorts of extra requirements which will not have been fulfilled.

And the bottom line is that the machine/system let you down for those few minutes, for which a consumer cannot be liable (you can certainly argue all this at a hearing but you need to know how to phrase a defence which is how we can help):

http://parking-prankster.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/parkingeye-lose-in-court-unsolved.html?showComment=1477780841740

That is about a different machine malfunction but it is the SAME car park and the upshot was the same. The Defendant won!

I say come back when you get your LBCCC letter from PE and we can help with a robust response, then a robust defence that as I say costs you nothing and risks nothing more than (if you lose) paying £150 - £190 instead of the £100 they are trying to extort now. Worst case scenario - not awful is it? No CCJ, no effect on your credit rating and you can even ask a Judge if you lose, to pay in instalments which a Judge will listen to (much fairer than the appeal).

And if you WIN you pay nothing and can claim your expenses for turning up to your local court - which area are you in please?

Ivor_Pecheque

I have the transcript of "circling isn't parking" if you need it.

The_Deep

Also, if they take you to court and you win, you can ask for your costs for the time you spent reasearching this matter. If you can convincethe judge that, in bringing the case, the PPC's action were unreasonable the judge can award costs ubder CPR27.14,(2) (g).


http://insurance.dwf.law/news-updates/2014/12/what-amounts-to-unreasonable-behaviour-in-the-small-claims-track/

JulieDurrell

Thank you so much everyone for your help and advise. I have so much respect for all of you taking the time to help people. I'm sorry I didn't reply sooner but I'm new to the forum and was having difficulty using it properly. We live in Wivenhoe in Essex. We were in Newquay on a family camping holiday, so cannot revisit the car park for research purposes.

I don't mind going to court, but I do struggle to understand all the legal arguments and am worried I will not be able to fight our corner in court effectively. We are struggling financially at the moment and I am worried about having to pay more if we lose and as I am self-employed, if we lose, I will also have loss of earnings that I cannot recoup. I am also concerned about the amount of time fighting Parking Eye will take. On the other hand, I damned if I'm going to hand money over to them without a fight.

So, we have decided to wait to see if we get a LBCCC from PE and get in touch again if we do. If that happens we'd be really grateful for your help in what to do next and putting together our defence.



Incidentally, I was at a new Aldi Parking Eye car park this week and noticed that all the signs were so high the small print couldn't possibly be read. I've had several PE charges for parking over the specified time limit in Aldi car parks, but Aldi Head Office have always cancelled them. I have requested this from the Golf Club that I believe own the Newquay car park but if I get a response at all I expect it to be a standard one saying there is nothing they can do.

Coupon-mad

Great to hear you are up to fight it. Keep all the letters in case you later need them and do not mistake PE going quiet as them having dropped it. I think they are a bit quiet with court cases right now because they want to be seen to be playing nicely while the DCLG are planning whatever they are going to say as a result of the consultation on parking enforcement.

I have no faith in the outcome. Too much money involved. Too much lobbying and spiel that Governments tend to lap up.

JulieDurrell

I have requested copies of my phone call/text from O2 today and will file it and the letters away. If it does go to court should we come here for support and seek advice from the Parking Prankster or is he on here. Thanks again everyone. x