Parking "fines" taken directly from account by a lease company

DrBeardface

Hi everybody,


This is more of a hypothetical than soemthing that has actually happened to me. But I was recently chatting with a friend who has a leased car and he was telling me that parking charge notices are taken directly from his account by the lease company and can only be refunded by directly appealing to the company making the charge. This is included as a clause in his lease contract.


Now I am wondering how one could theoretically go about appealing such a thing. It was my understanding that once the parking company had got their money they usually slither back under their rocks and it is impossible to get a refund. What is the legal position on this? Is it something that anybody has come across before?


Regards,


Dr B

Johno100

Are you sure they're paying the parking charge notice or are they just levying an admin charge?

Half_way

As ever the exact terms of the lease are important, most mention fines and penalties, most people think that private company's fine/issue penalties, including staff and customers of/at lease and hire company's.
Private parking company's do not issue fines or penalties, the industry is not regulated, and the methods that PPCs use are not exactly accurate by any system of the imagination. Take so called double dips, ticketing on land they have no right to, from the public highway to someone's own personal space.

Council parking on the other hand is regulated and has a fairly independent and impartial appeals system (although getting through isn't always easy )

So a lease/hire company charging for private /unregulated tickets there could be a few issues.
It wouldn't take much if a hire/lease vehicle could be identified fur a PPC to target such vehicles as easy money.

The_Deep

Private parking company's do not issue fines or penalties

Indeed, they issue invoices for alleged damage caused by alleged breaches of alleged contracts, In nearly every case, no, or only part of the alleged debt is owed, and until a County Court Judge has ruled, the invoice is purely speculative.

Whatever a private hire company may put in their contract, taking monies to pay scammers is, imo, unlawful, and should be reported to Trading Standards and the Industry regulator, the BVLRA.

https://www.bvrla.co.uk/

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 House of Commons recently

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

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

Computersaysno

Lease and hirecos are usually manned by cretins who just press buttons....similar to parking scumcos....


So they will take whatever money they want and then rely on most people not being smart enough of motivated enough to do anything about it....for £35 ish


If you can be bothered and they dig in then there's usually an extra £250 in it for you...

The_Deep

If you can be bothered and they dig in then there's usually an extra £250 in it for you...

More details please.

Computersaysno

The_Deep wrote: »

If you can be bothered and they dig in then there's usually an extra £250 in it for you...

More details please.

Here you go...


Ask for refund and compensation for inconvenience...they refuse


LBA...they refuse


Issue papers online


They cough up.


Simples

DrBeardface

Computersaysno wrote: »

Ask for refund and compensation for inconvenience...they refuse

But if it says in your contract that they can levy "fines" and the only way to recover that money is from the original company then how can you get around that? I know WE know they're not real fines, but that sounds like a fairly lengthy legal struggle to show the distinction, and that the lease company had no right to essentially admit fault on your behalf. As for appealing to the parking company that levied the charge in the first place, surely you've got more chance of getting bloody out of a stone than getting them to give you your money back.


It does seem like a loophole that robs people of their options in this scam.

Half_way

What do you mean by original company - if you are talking about the paring company then there's no chance.
However if the lease/hire company has paid then forwarded the charge together with a nice little admin fee, then the money should be refunded from the lease/hire company.


If the Hire company has been stupid enough to pay, then its of no concern of the customer.
What is of concern is that the hire/lease company has taken a payment without authorisation, and ( probably) in breach of its own terms and conditions, which probably only mention fines/penaltys/authorities etc.


And then even if they did try and include PPC tickets, a whole new can of worms is opened up, as i previously mentioned, although you would have some work in proving an unfair term - not that its impossible to do so.

Half_way

CEL are well known for proceeding to court, and then bailing out at the last minute, if they are aware of the Registered keeper ( at the time ) passing away, and they still continue then there could be some grounds for filing a counter claim for distress/harassment and unreasonable behavior

StaffsSW

Computersaysno wrote: »

Lease and hirecos are usually manned by cretins who just press buttons....similar to parking scumcos....

Oi! I resemble that remark....


As a leasing/hire company insider with a relatively lofty position and a bit of a reputation within the parking industry, I can set the record straight. Or straight-ish....

First off, everything is generally referred to as a "fine" for ease of process. Virtually everything is treated the same - toll charge, S172 request, private or local authority parking - it's just referred to as a fines process.
We've heard the whole "but it's an invoice not a fine" argument gazillions of times, and it usually gives us a fair indication of how reasonable the person is likely to be to deal with. Spoiler alert - "not very reasonable" in the overwhelming majority of times....

The standard T&Cs for the majority of rental companies were revised by the BVRLA in June 2016, and it specifically does distinguish between fines, parking charges and "any other costs incurred".
Not every rental company is in the BVRLA, but their standard T&Cs are used by the vast majority of the rental operators in the UK - members or not. Bear in mind that rental agreements are supplied in batches of 5000 or so. For the smaller companies, that could be a 3 or 4 year supply, so it shouldn't be a surprise if older rental agreements are still in circulation.

Many hire and leasing companies will attempt to transfer liability - I meet regularly with my industry peers from all the big fleet suppliers and generally this is the intention across the board. There are some that can't be transferred for various reasons - Bus lanes inside the M25 if the hire is less than 6 months, congestion charges if the hire period exceeds 6 months, and Humber Bridge for any hire vehicle.

We all try to transfer liability on private parking charges, but admittedly not everyone is as familiar with the industry as I am. Many of the PPCs will reject anything from a leasing or hire company on any spurious point - UKPC have a template reply letter for leasing companies, and DRP even have a team dedicated to dealing with leasing and hire companies.

I'm quite happy to fight back, even to go as far as court hearings - I have the full support of my directors and shareholders on that, but as anyone who has dealt with a court claim knows, it is a long and time consuming task. Not every leasing or hire company wants to do that, so they pay up and recharge the driver. I don't personally agree with it, but it's their business and purely a commercial decision. Sorry to spoil the illusion, but they don't do it just to pi55 you off.

I speak with many drivers regularly who give me the whole threatening-pseudo-legal-jargon, borderline Freeman of The Land wibblehead nonsense, and I also speak to many drivers who don't know what to do and are generally polite and listen to me, and they value my 20 odd years experience of doing this....
Guess which group of people tend to get the quicker result? It;s nothing to do with being on a power trip - I'm just another human, with wife, kids, dog and a mortgage - talk to me like I'm sh17, don't be surprised if you don't get my full attention and help.

The volumes of tickets issued are massive - not just PPC, but speeding, double yellows, box junctions, congestion and dart charge. Our run rate is around 30,000 "fines" received each year and we have two employees solely dedicated to processing them, along with me to deal with the messy ones, amongst the many other tasks and responsibilities I have.
And we only have 8,000 vehicles registered to us - some fleet operators are 100,000+ vehicles. I challenge any one reading this to find a better process that works on that volume on the timescales permitted under LLAA/TMA/RTA/POFA etc.

In short - it is a tangible cost to the business. Besides the salaries, we also have to absorb a fair chunk of cost on these - it's not unusual to get a charge cert as the first notification, or as we are getting now, a driver paid a few £1000 worth of fines with a stolen credit card then vanished - it was reversed, so the local authority have come after us as a Registered Keeper. We have no comeback on that one....

We also refund any admin charges that are subsequently cancelled as a gesture of goodwill, even though we have still had a processing cost, £15+vat is not worth upsetting a customer over. Contractually we are well within our rights to keep that admin charge, but you know that when you start being pedantic and snipey about wording, it only ever ends one way.

The BVRLA have set up a Memorandum of Understanding with both the BPA and IPC, but it's not a binding agreement on either side, simply lip service. And besides, the BVRLA does not represent every single rental or leasing company in the UK.

And just for one final plot twist - very few leasing and hire companies make their profit on the hire charges. We buy very cheap, and sell at CAP clean/average. The bit in between covers the running costs of the business, but the profit is made through effective purchasing and disposal of the asset.

So please consider that not all rental and leasing companies are the same when it comes to "fines", and remember that some of us deal with these day in, day out and have done for many years, and we've seen more tickets and scenarios than virtually anyone else in the forums.


But going back to the original point - once a private parking charge is paid, only direct intervention from the contract holder is likely to get any payment reversed. Yes, you can go through a lengthy and arduous court claim process, but it's far far easier to speak to the landowner/agent and arrange it that way.

It's hard work, but not impossible.