Saba/Indigo Railway PCN - Queries

Brighton92

Hello, Newbie here

Before talking about this PCN, I just want to say a quick thank you to the hardworking members of this forum who must by now have collectively saved people millions of £'s worth of fines and kept that same money out of the pockets of these unregulated scam artists. Thanks to your advice a previous Highview PCN I received as Keeper was overturned and so am very grateful for you help.

I have read the newbie thread and additionally found a relevant thread which contained a great breakdown of procedure relevant to this case. I do however have a couple of queries at the end of the post I would appreciate guidance on.

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Details of the PCN:
Location: Eastbourne train station (ANPR camera)
Issued by: ZZPS Limited, on behalf of Saba (formerly Indigo), on behalf of Southern Railway.
Driver identity: Undisclosed
Offence date: 12/06/2019
NTO date: 01//07/2019
Requested penalty charge: £100 or £60 in 14days (must be joking)
Reason fine occurred: (Parking Machine Fault)
The driver was unaware of the change of Indigo to Saba Group and so couldn't locate the indigo app as it had been renamed. Opted to use parking machine instead. Parking machine stated "Transaction approved, parking authorised", then threw a wobbly jumping to a loading screen followed by an error and showing an on call message. Saba were contacted by both phone and email on the day to ensure payment had been received to prevent receiving a PCN however they couldn't check parking machine payments on the system and so advised that its best to just wait and see. Unfortunately this conversation was in a phone call and have nothing from them in email form, however they were emailed on the day summarising the conversation. Payment of the original £5.10 parking was offered on multiple occasions but it appears they would rather pursue the PCN.

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Relevant Guidance

I have read the newbie thread and additionally found this relevant thread which contained a great breakdown of procedure which largely met the approval of the forum:

For train station related Byelaw PCN's.
"
1. First off, I should ignore the PCN and wait for the NtK/NtO.
2. Then I respond (in the keeper's name) with the standard BPA appeal template and refuse to name the driver.
3. My appeal will no doubt be refused at which point Indigo won't issue me a POPLA code as BPA says they're no longer letting them use this process because of the Railway Byelaws issue.
4. If I don't reply/pay up the next step will be getting letters from ZZPS which I can ignore or reply to, to string it out (play email ping pong). Next stage will be getting letters from QDR Solicitors threatening to take me to court. Again I can reply/ignore to string it out and wait for the flood of threatening letters but once 6 months has passed from when the ticket is issued there can be no further action in Magistrates.
5. Theoretically they could never take me to Magistrates anyway if they don't know who the driver was? Only the TOC can do that, and they have no incentive as any fines collected go to the Govt..
"

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Queries
My only additional queries to this are:
1. Is my understanding generally correct?
2. On the appeal portal (ipaymyPCN.net), you have to tick a box to say "I am the driver" in order to submit the appeal. Therefore any appeal would be self incriminating. Does one therefore refuse to submit an appeal via the portal and instead send the standard BPA appeal template via email? Basically is an email appeal sufficient?
3. In response to an initial email, customer services at ZZPS stated: "You mentioned in the appeal that you were not the driver. Please note that as this relates to a Penalty Notice issued on railway assets, it is issued through the railway bye laws. The bye law 14(4)(i) confirms that as you are the Registered Keeper of this vehicle, our client will be pursuing you as the liable party of this case regardless of if you were the driver or not." and "Although It is the drivers responsibility to ensure they comply with the site terms and conditions, the liability of this PN lies with you as the owner of the vehicle." - Is this nonsense/phishing, or am I missing something?

Currently waiting for the appeals department to make contact (hoping they just cancel then and there). Will then submit an appeal by email, request POPLA and start playing some ping pong. Will report back with any developments.

Thanks in advance

waamo

1. Generally yes. The current thinking is that playing mail ping pong with them is better than ignoring though.

2. Never admit being the driver. Ever. Do not use any method of appeal that makes you name the driver.

3. It's nonsense. Under byelaws either the driver or owner are responsible. Nowhere does it say registered keeper. If you look at your V5c it says in big at the top that it isn't proof of ownership. The good thing is their idiotic reply does lead to several questions you can ask them.

The_Deep

Nine times out of ten these tickets are scams, especially whwnbye law land is involved, so complain to your MP.

Parliament is well aware of the MO of these private parking companies, and on 15th March 2019 a Bill was enacted to curb the excesses of these shysters. Codes of Practice are being drawn up, an independent appeals service will be set up, and access to the DVLA's date base more rigorously policed, persistent offenders denied access to the DVLA database and unable to operate.

Hopefully life will become impossible for the worst of these scammers, but until this is done you should still complain to your MP, citing the new legislation.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/8/contents/enacted

Just as the clampers were finally closed down, so hopefully will many of these Private Parking Companies.

Le_Kirk

Go here to learn about some delaying tactics and questions to ask SABA.

Brighton92

Thank you all for your assistance with this. I will add that somewhat unsurprisingly the initial appeal to ZZPS has been refused.

The rejection letter offers a secondary external appeal to AS Appeals Service. I assume they are in cahoots and would be just a kangaroo court?

@Waamo, thank you for the clarifications.
@The Deep, Stephen Lloyd MP (Eastbourne) will be hearing all about this, I will reference the new legislation.
@Le_Kirk, I will certainly brush up on some ping pong skills.

Brighton92

Hi, I thought I would report back and conclude this thread.

As expected I received lots of threatening letters from both ZZPS debt collectors and Solicitors.

I set out to email spam and drag it out but soon didn't bother as it didn't seem to be going anywhere. After about month 2 I just forgot about it. Now on month 7 and haven't heard a peep. Nothing has come of it, no damage to credit etc. It really is a charade with toothless threats.

Hopefully this gives a bit more confidence to any person receiving one of these and researching for the first time. (Advice for Train station land byelaw cases only e.g. Saba)

All the best

The_Deep

They have wasted your time, now waste some of theirs. sand them an invoice for your time at £19.00 an hour. When they ignore it send them a letter before action, you then have up to six years to follow it up