Parking eye and rental company

jencek

Hello everyone,

I would like to ask for your advice on my problem with parking eye.

List of events:

10.November.2018: I am visiting my girlfriend in Bristol, she is studying there for one semester and I come for couple days visit and I rent a car in GREENMOTION in Bristol . We go shopping to a supermarket with the car. This was the first time driving in UK (left side) so you can imagine that I was really scared and I worried about other things than checking the park time limit in supermarket. I exceeded the time limit 1,5 hours by 22 minutes (1:52 minutes in total). I have a bank statement that proves that we went shopping. Of course I don't have the bill but luckily I paid with a credit card.

17. December.2018 my credit card is charged by GREENMOTION 56 GBP, I did not receive any email or any statement. Of course I contact GREENMOTION and they send me an email saying: The charge was for a traffic offence. We have an automated system where we send emails out to notify each customer. We can only presume the email we have on file is incorrect or ended up in your spam folder. See attached notice we've received dated when you had the car on rent. At this point I look at the attachement and see a paper which says that I have to pay 40 pounds and if I dont pay until 28.12.2018 the fine will go up to 70 pounds. Because I thought that GREENMOTION took care of it I supposed that 40 pounds was the fine and 16 pounds was the fee for the car rental company. I know that I should have paid more attention, but I was very bussy with work and Christmas were comming. So I was like screw it 56 pounds and I dont have to deal with it. So until today I thought that everything was taken care of.

10.1.2019 I receive two letters (I live in the Czech republic and I am Czech citizen) from PARKINGEYE that say that I have to pay 70 pounds. One of them is already a reminder. It also says that I have to pay until 12.1.2018. So I go on their website and make an appeal. I selected the "hirer/lessee" option and then I selected that I was a customer at the property and attached banking statement that proves I really shopped at the supermarket on 10.11.2018.

Now I would like to ask what should I do? Should I pay? Should I ask Greenmotion for my money back (I did not receive any official bill or anything). Can parking eye do something to me here in the Czech Republic? Should I do something with POPLA? I dont plan on going to UK anytime soon...

Thank you

Coupon-mad

10.1.2019 I receive two letters (I live in the Czech republic and I am Czech citizen) from PARKINGEYE that say that I have to pay 70 pounds. One of them is already a reminder. It also says that I have to pay until 12.1.2018. So I go on their website and make an appeal. I selected the "hirer/lessee" option and then I selected that I was a customer at the property and attached banking statement that proves I really shopped at the supermarket

OK so you appealed and you uploaded your statement that proves you were shopping. That's good and if you spent more than about £30 you should find that Parking Eye will cancel it.

Stop looking at the date of 12th January to 'pay it' because the charge is currently on hold, due to the appeal you submitted online. You need take no more action until you hear from ParkingEye about the appeal.

Check your emails regularly as they sometimes reply by email and it might not be recognised and go into your 'spam' email folder.

So, I think it will be cancelled, but you can make this more likely by also emailing the Supermarket Head Office, to complain about being fined for doing Xmas shopping, in a very busy week, when the car park was full and of course it took longer than usual to find a parking space, and in the shop it took a long time in the queue to pay, as the shop was busy, etc.

So tell them how angry you are as a foreign visitor to England, to find that Supermarkets allow scam parking firms to fine people, and made no attempt to get the 1.5 hours extended during the pre-Xmas busy shopping time, when more people are likely to be caught out. tell them it is shocking and that you are attaching proof of patronage at the shop and it would restore your faith in them if they can please tell Parking eye (who you have appealed to) to cancel the charge immediately.

Once it is cancelled, then show proof to Green Motion and ask that part of their admin fee be refunded, given the fact that £56 for handling one letter is completely unreasonable and the cancellation proves there was no valid parking charge in play at all.

Some lease firms will refund or partly refund the admin fee, when you prove you've got the PCN cancelled, so follow those steps and let us know.

Can parking eye do something to me here in the Czech Republic?

No, nothing at all.

DO NOT PAY.

jencek

Hi, thank you for the answer. After some fighting the ticket was canceled. Now I would like to get back my money from the car rental - green motion. However I would like to ask you about your opinion.

Greenmotion charged me 56 GBP for the ticket (sending my details to parkingeye) In their terms and contition it says this:

15. Fines, Penalties and Administration Charges
It is the responsibility of each hirer to cover the cost of any parking fines and traffic violations including but not limited to unpaid tolls and Congestion Charges. When fines or traffic violations occur and a Green Motion location is involved in administering the violation a management fee will be charged. The charge is location specific, please check with the renting branch for details. This is a non waiverable fee.

I am not that skilled in english law to understand if I can ask for my money and the way how to write the email/letter to them.

Is there and native english speaker, who would tell me: 1) is there any chance of getting my money back from the rental company (in other post I saw that there was a possibility)

2) What and how should I write the email. The thing is I have only email address to Bristol branch.

Thanks for any ideas/comments.

KeithP

jencek wrote: »

15. Fines, Penalties and Administration Charges
It is the responsibility of each hirer to cover the cost of any parking fines and traffic violations including but not limited to unpaid tolls and Congestion Charges. When fines or traffic violations occur and a Green Motion location is involved in administering the violation a management fee will be charged. The charge is location specific, please check with the renting branch for details. This is a non waiverable fee.

There is nothing in there about parking charges on private land.

Explicitly, a parking charge on private land is just a speculative invoice.
It is not a 'parking fine'.
It is not a'traffic violation'.
It is not an 'unpaid toll'.
It is not a 'Congestion Charge'.

Coupon-mad

Send them proof it was cancelled (email from ParkingEye) and ask, simply, for them to refund the admin fee, or if they refuse, to justify it with a breakdown of how they arrived at £56.

jencek

Thank you for your help, I just sent en email to Greenmotion, I will let you know the result!

jencek

Hello, so after quite some time I received an answer:

Dear XXX

As detailed in our terms Green Motion have been involved in administering this parking fine. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this exchange of emails.
It says 'any parking fines and traffic violations including but not limited to unpaid tolls and Congestion Charges.

It was a fine for parking.
The problem is, regardless of the validiity of the fine, we cannot be a position to judge this- if we receive a notice of this kind we are involved and we have to answer it. If we don't we risk proceeedings against us. We cannot be in this position so we have to respond with the hirer details.

These are leased vehicles so the fine originally goes to the lease company. The lease company invoice us for each and every one they receive (many thousands) and we have to employ someone here to respond to the many hundreds we receive. This is a cost to the business and this is why this cost is passed onto the customer.

We cannot be expected to bear these costs which is why we make the charge and is why we are not able to offer a refund of this.

We're sorry if this is not the answer you'd hoped for.

Regards

Is there something more I could do? The problem is that I can contact only their branch in Bristol, on their website they dont have an email or any contact to their headquarters except phone - which will not be useful I think. Do you know about some customer protection agency that I could turn to? Any help will be appreciated, thank you

KeithP

It was a fine for parking.

Ask them to show you exactly where is says it is a fine.

They will not be able to do that.

Coupon-mad

Ask them to show the breakdown of how their action costs £56, and ask them to confirm that this is their final answer as you intend to complain to the BVRLA about an excessive admin fee.