Parking Eye - A very sticky situation.

JamesFews

Hi,


This is a tad convoluted and I did look through the main post but couldnt see any advice that would help with my particular situation and to be honest I am very skint and very worried.



So on the 21st April 2018 I parked in a Parking Eye run car park in Tintagel in Cornwall. I came back from holiday and then a few days after I got back I recieved a charge saying I had not paid. Well, I had but I put in my old car's numberplate which I got rid of a month before my holiday.



I wrote to them explaining the situation and sent in proof that I did own the other car in the form of insurance papers. I told them it was a genuine mistake, advised that my freind actually put more money on when it was due to run out and he put in the right reg number and sent in both tickets which thankfully I kept. The chances of my old car being there would be very very slim!



So a few days went by and it was signed for at the other end but I had recieved no notifcation, a phone call, anything and time was running out to pay the smaller charge. So I went online to try to find someone to speak to see if my case was being looked at. I then logged another claim online to see if I could access any way of talking to someone and thats where its all gone pear shaped.



I called them and went through to thier department for actual owners of car parks the next day as I just needed an answer and she was very rude but when I explained it she said it will be seen as a duplicate claim so dont worry about it and that they dont acknowledge postal claims but they do online ones! Thanks for telling me that on the first letter! Useless!



So a few days after that I got a letter saying they would drop the payment to £20 which I was happy to pay as I was a bit of an idiopt for putting in the wrong reg. So went online on the Monday to pay it and the charge was still £60!



I called them up again and the woman who was nicer this time explained that because I claimed online and didnt put the proof in it has been declined... I explained to her that it was a duplicate and she said



"I can see its a duplicate but I cant do anything about it as im not the appeals department and they dont have a phone line, you will have to write in again and explain whats happened"


After much moaning and getting nowhere I wrote in again explaining that they had already dropped the carge to £20, sent in proof of that letter with the drop in fine and said please can you give me some way to pay it. Literally the day I sent that letter off I came home to the latest letter from them saying that "my appeal has been unsuccesful, heres a popla code. You have 14 days from the date of this letter to appeal"


I didnt get that letter till 5 days after the date on the top!



I have checked on the royal mail site that they have recieved my latest letter explaining whats going on and signed for it, that they must know its a duplicate charge, why they are not seeing the error and fixing it and how to pay the £20. I keep checking the website to see if its been knocked down to £20 again but nothing yet and still no letter and I only have till Friday berfore the fine goes back up to £100.



It is such a messy situation, I just want it over and done with and if they had a damn phone department this could have been sorted 2 weeks ago!



Please help me on this, I am really worried about it.

Guys_Dad

Not much we can do to help. You have admitted who was driving, that you knew what to do to pay and you made a mistake in entering the wrong registration.

POPLA won't help as your appeal would be on mitigation and POPLA don't do mitigation.

You are in the hands of the PPC and should pursue your £20 offer or wait till they send court papers and make your case to a judge. You might win there as they look at all the facts and circumstances.

The_Deep

This is an entirely unregulated industry which is scamming the public with inflated claims for minor breaches of contracts for alleged parking offences, aided and abetted by a handful of low-rent solicitors.

Parking Eye, CPM, Smart, and another company have already been named and shamed, as has Gladstones Solicitors, and BW Legal, (these two law firms take hundreds of these cases to court each year). They lose most of them, and have been reported to the regulatory authority by an M.P. for unprofessional conduct

Hospital car parks and residential complex tickets have been especially mentioned.

The problem has become so rampant that MPs have agreed to enact a Bill to regulate these scammers. Watch the video of the Second Reading in the HofC recently.

http://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/2f0384f2-eba5-4fff-ab07-cf24b6a22918?in=12:49:41

and complain in the most robust terms to your MP. With a fair wind they will be out of business by Christmas.

Half_way

Who's car park was this?

Handbags-at-dawn

You actually have a strong defence.

POPLA probably won't get it as they don't have sufficient understanding of the law. They seem to think that the "penalty rule" (whereby pre-agreed damages for breach of contract should not exceed a genuine pre-estimate of loss) was abolished by the Supreme Court in Parking Eye v Beavis. It wasn't. It was re-worded and softened, but it's still there.

Here are a couple of handy quotes from that case:
Para 28: "A damages clause may properly be justified by some other consideration than the desire to recover compensation for a breach. This must depend upon whether the innocent party has a legitimate interest in performance extending beyond the prospect of pecuniary compensation flowing directly from the breach in question

Para 32: The true test is whether the impugned provision is a secondary obligation which imposes a detriment to the contract-breaker out of all proportion to any legitimate interest of the innocent party in the enforcement of the primary obligation. The innocent party can have no proper interest in simply punishing the defaulter."

So it's up to Parking Eye to prove there was a legitimate interest for charging you - what? £90? - for making an innocent mistake. At the moment, and without any evidence from them to the contrary, it's clearly a punishment. Not allowed.

JamesFews

Half_way wrote: »

Who's car park was this?

It was a car park in Tintagel in Cornwall.

JamesFews

Guys_Dad wrote: »

Not much we can do to help. You have admitted who was driving,

I didnt say anywhere in the letter who was driving though.

JamesFews

To be honest I am reading through all the posts and its just swimming in my head. I really dont have the sort of mind to be able to make sense of all the things you have to do and prove and say.

fisherjim

JamesFews wrote: »

I didnt say anywhere in the letter who was driving though.

I suggest you look at your first post, PPC's view this forum too you know!!


You have also phoned them which is a sure fire way of dropping yourself in the mire!

JamesFews

fisherjim wrote: »

I suggest you look at your first post, PPC's view this forum too you know!!


You have also phoned them which is a sure fire way of dropping yourself in the mire!

Ok fair one, I didnt know about any of this, I just went into panic.

[Deleted User]

There is no loss for them to claim for. They can manually reconcile their system to check your payment. It's unattractive to argue that they want £100 in addition.

If it all proceeds to a claim, make a settlement offer of £20 towards their notional admin (the manual reconciling of the data) whilst making clear that there is no loss or claim for them to otherwise pursue.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, Beavis is not a panacea and in fact was considered/weighed up as to whether the charge was punitive. Here there is no overstay and no lack of payment.

Indeed a more sophisticated system could prevent drivers entering registration numbers for vehicles that hadn't entered the carpark. The whole point of ANPR is automatic detection and logging of vehicles. That is done on entry - even before you park and pay.