Newbie admin fee for pcn charge

Slimmersaz

Hello, I have read the "newbies" section but I am still a bit confused on what I should do. I have received a letter (3rd Sept) from Europcar to say they have been notified that a traffic violation occurred during my recent vehicle hire. Attached to the letter is an invoice for a £40 admin fee, and a copy of a Parking Charge Notice from ParkingEye which has 2 photos of the car and the arrival and departure time, this was in Gordano Services on the 3rd August, the letter also states that they have passed my details onto to ParkingEye as the primary driver. Nowhere on the PCN does it state why they have issued the PCN. I have checked the T&C's of the hire and cannot see anything around PCN in the charges section. I have drafted the email below to sent to Europcar - do you think this is sufficient?




Good Afternoon


I write in regards to the letter dated 27th August 2018 that I have received in relation to my rental of a car for the period of 3rd August 2018 to 6th August 2018 with Rental Agreement 148389147.


As detailed in this letter, a £40 admin fee will be deducted from my credit card on the 15th day following this letter. The documentation that you have provided in support of this transaction is a speculative an unenforceable invoice from a private company called ParkingEye for a “Parking Charge Notice” for the 3rd August 2018.


In the terms and conditions of hire quoted on your website section 9.3.1 -



9.3.1.


Relating to Fines and Penalties 9.3.1.1.


You are responsible for and will pay all charges arising from:


•


any congestion or parking charges (or failure to pay them);


•


a breach of any parking restrictions or a road traffic offence or any other offence or


infringement involving the Vehicle such as (but not limited to) lane infringement,


tunnel, turning and bus lane charges including the costs from the Vehicle being


clamped, seized or towed away and any other charges/costs (or failure to pay them)


levied by a relevant organisation or issuing authority



The invoice issued by ParkingEye is not a Penalty Charge Notice, nor is it a fine, nor any kind of notification of traffic offence. It has not been issued by any UK authority and was not issued as a result of a contravention of any current UK traffic legislation. It is therefore not covered under the terms of my rental agreement with Europcar and Europcar has no authority to charge my credit card for any fee as there was no requirement on Europcar to take any action on receipt of this invoice.
**
I am really in a panic over this as I cannot afford to pay.
thank you all in advance.

Quentin

The £40 is the hirers admin fee.


Presumably the PE charge is far more??


You were the "day to day keeper" of the vehicle at the time of the incident, not the "driver"


Are you asking what to do about the PCN or the dispute with Europcar?

Slimmersaz

I am asking about the dispute with Europcar, I have not received a PCN in my name but I am guessing it will come soon enough as Europcar has provided my name and address to them as I was the named person on the rental.

Coupon-mad

Same as always, rental/hire/lessee cases are always winnable if you appeal cannily.

Appeal the PCN when it arrives, choosing 'hirer/lessee' in the dropdown menu and using Edna Basher's special appeal wording for hire/lease cars (in the hire/company cars section of the NEWBIES thread).

When you win, either first go or later, with the 100% slam dunk win that awaits you at POPLA - by appealing as hirer/lessee and pointing to the lack of compliance with para 13/14 of the POFA - then show Europcar the ParkingEye cancellation email, and ask them to refund the 'admin fee' wrongly charged for a baseless fake PCN that was easy to quash. And say if they do not refund it you will dispute it with your card provider so the charge is bounced and you will make a formal complaint about Europcar to the BVRLA because £40 is not what it costs a lease firm to send one template letter.

So you have to do the above in the right order. Some lease firms refund the fee when shown that a PCN was cancelled, so it might not be a fight in the end, because as a hirer/lessee you have 100% slam dunk win as long as you play it right.

No blabbing about the driver or assuming PE ''know''. They do not and nor do the rental firm.

Slimmersaz

I haven’t received any notification from PE yet and was wondering should I phone Europcar to put the Admin Charge invoice in dispute, on the letter I received from them they gave me 14 days to challenge the admin fee before they charge my credit card, the 14 days are up on the 11th September, (took 6 days for the letter to get to me!)

Coupon-mad

Yes dispute it but obviously not with a phone call...you can't do such things on the phone, you'd have no proof of dispute!

You also need to tell your Bank or card provider not to pay it.

beamerguy

Check the terms and conditions with Europcar.

Most hire companies have not got to grips with legal
fines and plain invoices which parking companies issue

It's the words in the T&C's that matter for you

Slimmersaz

Europcar have charged my debit card £40 for the admin charge as per their T&C’s, they have also said that if the PCN is cancelled they will refund me. I have not heard anything from PE except for the automated response on the 10.9. In that email it states it could take up to 28 days for a written response. Do I just wait to hear from PE or should I chase them up?

Coupon-mad

Wait. A PPC has 35 days to reject.

You will win the appeal at POPLA stage as long as you continue to appeal as hirer/lessee, and at POPLA stage in October, you will be pointing to para 13/14 of Schedule 4 and explaining no hirer liability can apply.

Steer well clear from implying who was driving. No writing things in your own words unless you are sure. There are plenty of Notice to hirer POFA paragraph 14 POPLA appeals to read in the meantime, on the forum.

Why not search the forum for those (bold) keywords now, while you wait for PE?

You will be so ready to nail this next month if you look now what to use at POPLA, see how others achieved it. Then you win, then you get the £40 back!

Slimmersaz

Just to clarify I am appealing on the grounds of Schedule 4 Para 13 & 14? Nothing about signage or grace periods etc.


Thank you in advance.

Slimmersaz

Could you have a quick look over the below and advise if this is enough please?


I am the hirer and therefore keeper and I am appealing this parking charge from Parkingeye Ltd at ************
To protect the driver, they have not been named.

My appeal as the hirer is as follows:

1)The Operator failed to deliver a Notice to Hirer that was fully compliant with the requirements of Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (POFA).



1) The Operator failed to deliver a Notice to Hirer that was fully compliant with the requirements of Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (POFA).

In order to rely upon POFA to claim unpaid parking charges from a vehicle’s hirer, an operator must deliver a Notice to Hirer in full compliance with POFA’s strict requirements. In this instance, the Operator’s Notice to Hirer did not comply.
The relevant provisions concerning hire vehicles are set out in Paragraphs 13 and 14 of Schedule 4 of POFA with the conditions that the Creditor must meet in order to be able to hold the hirer liable for the charge being set out in Paragraph 14.
Paragraph 14 (2) (a) specifies that in addition to delivering a Notice to Hirer within the relevant period, the Creditor must also provide the Hirer with a copy of the documents mentioned in Paragraph 13 (2) (i.e. ‘(a) a statement signed by or on behalf of the vehicle-hire firm to the effect that at the material time the vehicle was hired to a named person under a hire agreement; (b) a copy of the hire agreement; and (c) a copy of a statement of liability signed by the hirer under that hire agreement’), together with a copy of the Notice to Keeper (i.e. the notice that had originally been sent to the lease company [as Registered Keeper]). The Operator did not provide me with copies of any of these documents.

Should the Operator try to suggest that there is any other method whereby a vehicle’s keeper (or hirer) can be held liable for a charge where a driver is not identified, I draw POPLA’s attention to the guidance given to operators in POPLA's 2015 Annual Report by Henry Greenslade, Chief Adjudicator in which he reminded them of a keeper's (or hirer's) right not to name the driver whilst still not being held liable for an unpaid parking charge under Schedule 4 of POFA. Although I trust that POPLA's assessors are already very familiar with the contents of this report, for ease of reference I refer to the following document:

Keeper Liability (attached)

I draw POPLA’s particular attention to the section entitled “Keeper Liability” on page 12 in which Mr. Greenslade explains that:

‘There appears to be continuing misunderstanding about Schedule 4. Provided certain conditions are strictly complied with, it provides for recovery of unpaid parking charges from the keeper of the vehicle. […] However keeper information is obtained, there is no ‘reasonable presumption’ in law that the registered keeper of a vehicle is the driver. Operators should never suggest anything of the sort. Further, a failure by the recipient of a notice issued under Schedule 4 to name the driver does not of itself mean that the recipient has accepted that they were the driver at the material time. Unlike, for example, a Notice of Intended Prosecution where details of the driver of a vehicle must be supplied when requested by the police, pursuant to Section 172 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, a keeper sent a Schedule 4 notice has no legal obligation to name the driver’.

Through its failure to deliver a compliant Notice to Hirer, the Operator (ParkingEye) has forfeited its right to claim unpaid parking charges from the vehicle’s hirer. For this reason alone, POPLA may determine that the Operator’s claim against me is invalid.



thanks