ParkingEye and hired car, advice needed

Redx

It says you identified as the Registered Keeper , which you are not

The hire or rental company is the Registered Keeper

Most rental vehicle PCN.s fail because the hire docs plus Keeper/hirer details are rarely passed to the parking company. I cannot recall any where the hire docs were passed to the PPC

Meaning that the PPC nearly always fail POFA

Check your popla appeal to see what entity you appealed as , normally it's keeper as a hirer or as a lessee , definitely not as Registered Keeper

If popla are saying you were the RK , email a complaint to John Gallagher as a procedural error because these assessors keep making POFA errors , timescales was the recent one , but hire docs and RK issues is yet another failure

The strategy is correct , it's assessor training that is poor

Ps , reading the thread it seems that Parking Eye were not pursuing it under POFA , so I have no idea why the assessor used POFA , which parking Eye seem to have failed anyway

Plus it seems no landowner contract was filed , so another failure by the assessor

Perhaps the assessor is new and is still reading Mr Men books ?

nosferatu1001

Indeed, thats a complaint
- the PPC didnt try to use POFA so the assessor cannot give them something theyve never claimed
- it cant have been compliant anyway, thanks to (presumably) another mistake by the assessor
- and they didnt submit landowner contract anyway, so they must have failed

At least three areas of complaint.

Coupon-mad

Any idea what went wrong?

The Assessor didn't consider the landowner authority - was it in your POPLA appeal?

From our side, as the POPLA decision cannot be challenged,

It can, read Brucella's therad. He did. Others have done too and you describe it as a PROCEDURAL ERROR when emailing POPLA's complaints team.

we are probably going to pay the fine now.

A truly dumb plan. Sorry, don't do that.

Read Brucella's thread and send an email complaint if you had as a appeal point, 'no landowner authority' in your POPLA appeal and the PPC failed to answer that with a contract or witness statement, then the POPLA Assessor has made a clear procedural error by failing to consider that point.

He/she also failed to consider the Notice to Hirer rules abut enclosures, under the POFA para 13 and 14.

MistyZ

That's one of the worst POPLA decisions I've seen.

Everything's wrong with it. It reads as if written by a parking company, there is very little attention given to the substance of your appeal and towards the end it just becomes a lecture.

Absolutely no acknowledgement of the fact that the hire car documents outlined in the PoFA 13 were not passed to the hirer by ParkingEye - that clearly went over the assessor's head. Is there even any recognition that this involved a hire car?

Obviously the lack of any evidence from P.E. re. their authority to operate was completely ignored.

This assessor doesn't know what they're doing at all. A bit of incompetentence is commonplace, but this one takes the biscuit. And please tell me the report didn't come in one wall of text as it appears here ....

This one has to be the subject of a strong complaint. There's such a disconnect from it and the appeal to which it allegedly relates that even the BPA must surely act on it.

Brucella's paved the way, her post outlines who to write to and when ....

Umkomaas

And please tell me the report didn't come in one wall of text as it appears here ....

I'm afraid they all do. How utterly cheap and unprofessional. And they still use the term 'Assessor rational' (sic).

And no one seems to have ever spotted the spelling error - uneducated rabble! But it does pose a major management question - where is the oversight when such a minor spelling, but obvious error, is overlooked and when major errors in the understanding of the law are blindly supported, against the interests of the consumer.

Wind this lot up! Pretty hopeless from top to bottom!

germantourist

Ok, I will be going to prepare the escalation step(s) following the Brucella case in which I will dive into over the weekend. To answer some of your questions:

• Our initial appeal included arguments A to F (outlined in the appeal and repeated in the rebuttal):
  A) ParkingEye failed to comply with the strict requirements of POFA
  ParkingEye have not shown that the individual who it is pursuing is in fact the driver who was liable for the charge.
  C) ParkingEye has no standing or authority to pursue charges or to form contracts with drivers using this particular car park.
  D) The charge is a penalty, breaches the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and is prohibited/unfair under the CPUTRs. It is not saved by ParkingEye v. Beavis.
  E) ParkingEye failed to provide information requested in the direct appeal
  F) There was no breach of the parking terms and conditions
• From the POPLA response it seems the assessor is not aware that it was indeed a hire car
• The is no formatting or structuring in the text (section named "Assessor supporting rational for decision", all came in a single paragraph.
• Assessor was Ami Edwards, and she seems to be on board since some time, at least I found her being mentioned in this forum already 2-3 years ago.

Next step will then be a formal complaint to POPLA claiming "Procedural Errors".

MistyZ

germantourist wrote: »

Ok, I will be going to prepare the escalation step(s) following the Brucella case in which I will dive into over the weekend. To answer some of your questions:

Thank You!! I hope you get redress.

Don't hold back when complaining. I know your tone will be polite, but emphasise just how incompetent the decision is e.g. 'absolutely no acknowledgement that the appeal involved a hire car' .... 'no reference whatsoever to ParkingEye's failure to produce a valid contract with the landowner' and so on.

I'm not suggesting you use my words, just that every organisation involved in this industry seems to need to have completely obvious things underlined, emphasised, written in capitals and shouted from the rooftops.

Edit: I searched for Ami Edwards. Found this decision from her in post 1,939 of the Newbies' thread, I suspect you've seen it already. There's therefore really no excuse for the failure to address P.E.'s lack of evidence re. landowner contract in your case:

'The appellant states the operator does have the authority of the landowner to issue and pursue parking charge notices (PCN). Section 7 of the British Parking Association (BPA) code of practice requires operators to own the land or to have written authority from the landowner to operate on the land. As the operator has failed to provide any evidence in response to this ground of appeal, it has failed to prove that it has the required authority to operate on the land in question. I acknowledge that the appellant has raised other grounds for appeal, but as I have allowed the appeal on this basis, I have not considered them.'

Le_Kirk

And they still use the term 'Assessor rational' (sic).

.....when clearly they are not! It just goes to prove that a lot of what they "write" is copy and paste. Amazing that the parking companies don't complain about this, as they seem to do about defences! If this simple error can go on for as long as it has it goes to show how "unfit for purpose" POPLA is or has become.

germantourist

[FONT=&quot]Many thanks for all encouraging posts. I will address the complaint to the e-mail address POPLA is providing for complaints. In a first step I tried to reconstruct the original appeal from POPLA web-site in order to understand if there was any error in the input from my side, or documents not being uploaded, but this seems not to be possible due to the structure of the user interface. Due to limitations in the appeal text box I had written down the lodge of the case in a text document which I uploaded, and reading the answer it seems this document was not considered at all. However, the points A-F had been in the summary I entered in the text box and in the rebuttal, but I will attach the document again to the mail. The format of my letter is a little bit nicer than in the template below, but it should allow for proofreading. Any comment please let me know.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]If the complaint is not successful I am also considering complaining at BPA.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Dear John Gallagher,[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Dear POPLA Complaint Officer,[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]I am writing to you in reference to your recent decision in my case XX. After carefully reading the assessor's reasons I came to the conclusion that there is are obviously procedural errors in this decision. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]It is important to note that I had uploaded a PDF document “Complete Outline and Evidence” together with my appeal. In this document I have detailed all points, while in the appeal form of the PoPLA web interface I only entered a summary due to space and formatting limitations. From the assessor comment it seems that this uploaded document was not considered. So I am wondering whether the upload has worked correctly or if there was also a technical problem with the website. For your convenience I am attaching the PDF document again to this mail.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]In particular I am complaining about the following points:[/FONT]

1. [FONT=&quot]I am referred to as “Registered keeper” in the “Assessor rational” section. I am not sure how the assessor came to this conclusion, it was a hired car and I have made the appeal as “hirer” of the car, which was clearly stated in the appeal.[/FONT]
2. [FONT=&quot]I had listed in total six points why I believe the appeal must be approved. In the Assessor response there are points which are not referred to at all (2.a) or in an unsatisfying way leaving out important aspects (2.b):
   [/FONT]
   [FONT=&quot]a.[/FONT][FONT=&quot] ParkingEye has no standing or authority to pursue charges or to form contracts with drivers using (originally point C):[/FONT][FONT=&quot] As this operator does not have proprietary interest in the land I required that they produce an unredacted copy of the contract with the landowner. ParkingEye completely failed to provide the landowner contract.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
   b. ParkingEye failed to comply with the strict requirements of POFA (originally point A):[/FONT][FONT=&quot] The entire communication and information by ParkingEye is not compliant with the POFA requirements, especially for the following points:[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
   
   [FONT=&quot]i. [/FONT]ParkingEye failed to refer to keeper liability in the first PCN (Notice to Keeper). There is no mentioning of Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 in the first PCN/NTK. After receiving my (the car hirer) contact information, ParkingEye sent me another PCN (Notice to Hirer). Also from the PCN/NTH any reference to keeper/hirer liability is missing, Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 is not mentioned in this notice either.
   
   ii. The PCN/NTH that we received, as if it was a Notice to Hirer, had no enclosures at all. This means it was not compliant with the POFA 2012 (specifically, para 14) and as hirer, I cannot be held liable. Paragraph 14(2) and (3) of POFA 2012 covers transferring liability to a hirer, and it says:
   [/FONT][FONT=&quot](2) The conditions are that -[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
   (a) The creditor has within the relevant period given the hirer a notice in accordance with sub-paragraph (5) (a “notice to hirer”), together with a copy of the documents mentioned in paragraph 13(2) and the notice to keeper; the documents mentioned under 13(2) are e.g.:[/FONT]
   · [FONT=&quot]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;[/FONT]· [FONT=&quot]a copy of the hire agreement and[/FONT]
   · [FONT=&quot]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)).[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
   ParkingEye did not provide me with a copy of any of these documents.
   
   iii. ParkingEye failed to send the first PCN/NTK to the registered keeper (hire company) within 14 days. The parking event occurred on August 15, and the first PCN/NTK is dated August 29. Assuming a domestic letter run-time of two days, this PCN/NTK was delivered on September 02, which is 18 calendar days after the event.[/FONT]
3. [FONT=&quot]ParkingEye stated that the PCNs were not issued under PoFA (and as pointed out earlier they are obviously not compliant with PoFA regulations), but the assessor has considered them under PoFA regulations.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Point 1 suggests that the assessor has not seen my complete input and the assessment was made under incorrect assumptions. The arguments under 2.a and 2.b have been part of my original appeal, I am not trying to bring in new aspects. However, they have not been considered in an adequate way. Therefore I am asking to review my case again due to procedural (and perhaps also technical) errors.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Sincerely,[/FONT]

Le_Kirk

I am referred to as “Registered keeper” in the “Assessor rational” section

Not your fault but the spelling used by POPLA is ALWAYS incorrect, it should be: -

I am referred to as “Registered keeper” in the “Assessor [strike]rational[/strike] rationale” section