SmartParking Fines for Inverness Car Park

Kazann69

This is my first time using this forum and would appreciate any help or advice you can give. We visited Inverness town centre in April this year. We parked our car in the car park behind the train station and purchased a ticket for 2 hours. Our problem is that when I paid for the ticket I didn't enter our registration no (why would the machine allow me to purchase a ticket without entering the reg no?),I noticed after I pressed the "issue ticket" button that there was a keypad to enter the registration no. I didn't think anything of it to be honest until a couple of weeks later a letter has come through the post showing pictures of us entering and leaving the car park 90 mins later and in their opinion without paying. Unfortunately as we had been camping our car was full of rubbish so once we were home my husband gave the car a good clean, hence, we have no proof of the ticket
However, we have appealed this fine twice now and twice they have rejected it, so now they are asking for immediate payment. We asked them to provide us with CCTV footage so we could prove we paid at the machine but they say there are no cameras on site? If this is the case how come they have photos of us entering and leaving this car park? I am really angry at this fine and really don't want to have to pay for it but at the same time I'm worried it will escalate into something more which I want to avoid. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

waamo

Is this a council or private ticket? If it is a private company which one?

Quentin

Everyone is politely asked to read the newbies FAQ thread near the top of the forum before starting a new thread. You will find good news about pcns issued in Scotland assuming yours is from a ppc not the council

You need to edit your post to remove details of who was driving.

As long as you haven't already done so to the PPC when contacting them!!

pogofish

Is this Strothers Lane..?



If so, there are several threads here telling you exactly what to do - and take heed of the Scotland-specific advice in the Newbies Sticky too.

I'll be looking forward to see if I get a ticket there soon. Three times now I've not been lucky!

Herzlos

Have you identified the driver in any way?
In either case, ignore the parking company and any debt collectors. It's very unlikely to go anywhere and you can defend if they tried to take it to court.

The photos are from an ANPR system on entry/exit; a camera took a photo of you enter, with timetstamp and recorded your vehicle reg, and did the same on exit. Since there was no reg on the ticket the system didn't find a match and issued the invoice. The reason the system lets you buy a ticket without entering a valid reg number is purely so the system will fail to find a match and issue a ticket - it's in their interests to fire out these spurious invoices.

Coupon-mad

However, we have appealed this fine twice now and twice they have rejected it,

You didn't go and tell them who was driving, did you...? Not in Scotland, obvs. I hope you said 'we' in the appeal and not 'I parked and then I did this'.

We asked them to provide us with CCTV footage so we could prove we paid at the machine but they say there are no cameras on site? If this is the case how come they have photos of us entering and leaving this car park?

There aren't any CCTV cameras pointing at the machine. They use ANPR (numberplate cameras only).

Please, read the NEWBIES thread as you should have done before posting. Scotland is covered already, you should never have appealed. Ignore them unless they try a small claim in the Sheriff's court (defendable).