Parking Eye - Ongoing pursuit

danny1990

Hi, thanks for taking the time to read my thread.

Sometime in the middle of last year my partner received two lots of parking charges from a privately owned car-park. With ANPR cameras belonging to Parking Eye. Anyway - I asked my partner what had happened and she had entered the 'registration numbers' example registration BF09 TMP in stead of that she inputted 09, literally the numbers. She did this on two occasions within a week of each other. However, she had kept the receipts which covered the time stayed. Clearly the input of 09 didn't match their database row for our car reg so it was an automatic invoice sent to the address.

I decided to appeal on her behalf, I explained the situation and provided the proof of purchase for the times. Expecting a very quick 'okay, thank you'. However, this has not been the case. They refused to accept them and implied I must pay a £20 fee. To which, I replied by saying I wouldn't be paying anything due to the fact she had purchased the ticket and there was no loss on their behalf, it is not my issue that their parking systems allow an incorrect registration to be entered and it's a loss on their end for not having setup proper error handling in their software design. Eventually, they dropped the case for one ticket and are still pursuing the other. We hadn't heard anything in quite a while and today received a letter from EQUITA - the letter titles 'TAKE FORMAL NOTICE RE: ParkingEye Limited - Outstanding Parking Charge' it then threatens that if a payment of £160 isn't made then there will be proceedings through the County Court.

I am not intimidated, as clearly I have proof of purchase and cannot be held accountable for the proper use of their systems without training. I would obviously just prefer this doesn't go to court; and if it does, I want to counter claim for lost time, earnings and stress.

Can anyone properly advise me on what to do next? My plan is to contact EQUITA tomorrow by phone and explain the situation and that they've likely bought an invoice worth nothing from ParkingEye.

Again, thank you for reading. It would of been better had I checked this forum before responding to any of the threats from Parking Eye. However, I guess I was just in a powerful position holding receipts from the purchase.

EDIT: I will also add that I returned to the car park after receiving the invoices and took photos, explicitly of the instruction to 'Enter Reg Number' on the screen.

Quentin

Forget your plan to contact equita!


Instead read up on this in the newbies faq thread near the top of the forum to get an insight into the game you are caught up in


Ignore debt collector letters - but don't ignore a proper lbcca or court correspondence - advice in #2 of the FAQ


It looks too late, but if you haven't revealed who was driving to the PPC, then you need to edit your OP to remove details of who was driving

Coupon-mad

My plan is to contact EQUITA tomorrow by phone and explain the situation and that they've likely bought an invoice worth nothing from ParkingEye.

Nope, they haven't bought an invoice, they ARE ParkingEye, effectively!

Capita owns Equita

Capita owns ParkingEye.

A double whammy!

The fact they are sending silly Equita letters is a signal that this will not go to a claim and they are trying a last ditch effort to fool you.

They nearly succeeded, you nearly rang Equita!!

Why not spend the weekend reading the forum, search 'ParkingEye Equita' and count the court claims that follow those letters - I believe, NONE.

danny1990

Thank you for the replies, I will just ignore the letter and await the next if it arrives.

Umkomaas

danny1990 wrote: »

Thank you for the replies, I will just ignore the letter and await the next if it arrives.

Good plan. We have seen no evidence of PE progressing to a court case (and they've been the most litigious of all PPCs in the country - over 30,000 court papers issued in a year) where they have used Equita during the process.

PE go straight to issuing proceedings, without delay or the involvement of any other third party. Their use of Equita is, somewhat paradoxically, rather good news for you!