Overstayed by 12 minutes should I appeal

HelpPlease4321

Hi All,

Firstly thanks to all that contribute to this forum its a fantastic resource for people in need.

6 days ago a PCN for £100 (reduced to £60 if paid within 14 days) from Enterprise parking solutions was sent to my address for the vehicle i own for a parking overstay. On the PCN letter it has a camera image of my vehicle arriving at 13:20 and leaving the car park 15:35. Parking had been paid for 2 hours they say the vehicle was in the car park for 2h15m. It took some minutes for the driver to park up and get a ticket and the ticket is still available for proof so in reality the claim is that the driver overstayed the ticket by 12 minutes after taking into account the time to buy the ticket. It might be worth noting that the time stamp on image they have sent on the PCN is too small to be readable so there is no clear evidence of the time in the car park.

I have read around the forum a bit and have seen others gotten PCN cancelled with a similar overstay though I understand that 10 mins is the usual grace period (after ticket has expired) which was allegedly narrowly missed in this case.

My questions are
1.) If an appeal is unsuccessful will the full charge £100 be due? or will the reduced price still be available if it is paid shortly after receiving the result of the appeal?
2.) If the answer to question 1 is "yes the higher price would be chargeable if the appeal is unsuccessful" is it likely to be worth taking the risk based on specifics of this situation?
3.) If there is a good chance of successfully appealing the charge should I use the template appeal (blue text posted in the **NEWBIES!! PRIVATE PARKING TICKET? OLD OR NEW? **READ THESE FAQS FIRST!** thread) and if so should anything be added that is specific to this situation.

Thanks so much in advanced for any advise you might be able to give

Happy Christmas

Fruitcake

Ediit your post to remove information about who parked, who paid, and how long it took them to buy a ticket.

Only ever refer to The Driver and The Keeper, who are two different people. Get rid of any information that helps the scammers and does the opposite to you.

Do this before you do anything else.

You should know this having read the NEWBIES.

Send the appeal template in blue from post 1 of the NEWBIES, unaltered, from the keeper, just like it tells you in the NEWBIES.

What happened when the keeper complained to the landowner/retail manager?

Complain to your MP about this unregulated scam.

Read Section 13 of the BPA CoP concerning grace periods, plural, and search this forum for "split grace periods" but set the search to show posts.

It is not a fine.

Your questions 1 and 2 about paying are irrelevant. Nobody will suggest you pay a scammer, ever, unless a judge tells you to.

Re-read the NEWBIES as you seem to have missed a lot of the information given there.

The_Deep

You are asking questions, the answers to which are contained in the stickies, please read them.

Of course you should appeal, the whole industry is a scam. Do not even think of paying, appeal, and if that fails, take your chance in court, judges are well aware of these bogus claims for breach of contract..

HelpPlease4321

Dear Fruitcake and The Deep, thanks for your response and advise I have updated the post accordingly (i think).

I appreciate and agree completely with what you are saying. I do not want to engage with or help support this unreasonable and borderline criminal behaviour. But its not so simple I don't have much legal nous nor do I have excess money or time so I am just trying to figure out what is involved and my chance of a reasonable resolution. The only thing that would be more painful at this stage is if my actions could ultimately cause me to be even further out of pocket and use up a lot of time in the process. I am also scared of things escalating.

The car park in question was not related to any sort of retail premises and I have no idea who the land owner is and I resided in the other side of the country so can't find this information out easily. Complaining to the MP in the area where it happened will likely take too long to see a result and hence increase my chances of paying a higher fine.

With regards to a grace periods from what I have read because the vehicle is alleged to have left 12mins after the ticket expired it is outside of the 10mins grace period and therefor seems hard to contest?

From what I have read if I appeal I will forfeit the chance to pay a reduced charge. Have I understood this correctly?

I have seen a website called parkingfine . org . uk who claim to be able to deal with an appeal risk free for a fee of £18. Might this be a good option for someone like me who has limited legal knowledge and time to appeal?

thanks again

Le_Kirk

Read reviews of this organisation before parting with any money.

Castle

HelpPlease4321 wrote: »

With regards to a grace periods from what I have read because the vehicle is alleged to have left 12mins after the ticket expired it is outside of the 10mins grace period and therefor seems hard to contest?

You do realise that the PPC uses two different clocks which are not synchronised; as demonstrated in this particular example where the driver is alleged to have bought their ticket 4 minutes before entering the car park!
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=76644047&postcount=28

Coupon-mad

The website you talk about is at least not the one with the most awful Trustpilot reviews known to man and woman (ALWAYS check Trustpilot first) however we never recommend any paid-for service.

We do this free, and you will learn so much to fight other rogue PCNs in future.

Enterprise parking solutions

Who are they? BPA or IPC? Do they offer POPLA in the blurb about appeals? When argued properly, this wins at POPLA for you with our help:

the claim is that the driver overstayed the ticket by 12 minutes after taking into account the time to buy the ticket.

Not a contravention, you need a few minutes to park and pay and POPLA get that, if you state it clearly. But are they in the BPA AOS?

Fruitcake

HelpPlease4321 wrote: »

With regards to a grace periods from what I have read because the vehicle is alleged to have left 12mins after the ticket expired it is outside of the 10mins grace period and therefor seems hard to contest?



thanks again

Again, read the relevant part of the BPA CoP where it refers to TWO grace periods, one at the beginning and one at the end ot the parking period.

HelpPlease4321 wrote: »

From what I have read if I appeal I will forfeit the chance to pay a reduced charge. Have I understood this correctly?

Yes. So what? Surely you want the 100% MSE discount?

HelpPlease4321 wrote: »

I have seen a website called parkingfine . org . uk who claim to be able to deal with an appeal risk free for a fee of £18. Might this be a good option for someone like me who has limited legal knowledge and time to appeal?

All the information and help you need to beat this can be found here on MSE. The help is bespoke and free.

You are perfectly entitled to pay someone to do this for you if you wish. I have no knowledge or experience of the site you mention.
I had no legal knowledge when I was asked to help with colleagues at work when I was a union member, so I came to this site.
I won both cases, one council and one private. I have since beaten my own bus lane infringement.

I now give back what I can by learning and helping others.

What will you do if the company you use fails to get this cancelled for what ever reason? Will you come back here again?
Will you have all the information used in the appeal on your behalf to know what to do next?

Using the information here means you get bespoke help and you are in control all the way.

Sup chew innit. I know what I would do.

As for an MP complaint, it is partly to help yourself, partly to help us, partly to help others; all in the hope that the excesses of these scammers will be curbed.

You need to complain to your MP. You can send a copy to the MP of the location where this occurred as well.
It's an unregulated scam and you want to know when the mandatory code of practice will be introduced to stop the scam, and want to know how the motoring public will get their chance to have their say at the consultation stage.

HelpPlease4321

Thanks again, for all your support and feedback.

Of course the driver wants to resist this sort of behaviour which really degrades our society and the driver definitely doesn't want to part with their hard earned money but at first it all seems like a large and scary undertaking which has come at an awkward time of year which is why, although not ideal, it is tempting to use this paid service.

Castle, thanks for pointing out issues with timing as I mentioned before the driver believes they did not over stay and there is no legible time stamp on the exit photo... but how can this be proved from the drivers perspective?

Coupon-mad, Enterprise solution are in the BPA and they do offer POPLA. Yes
the reviews for parkingfines . org . uk seem ok but there are not many so i'm not sure how useful this is.

Fruitcake, I have read BPA CoP section 13 on grace periods. As mentioned before it mentions a grace period of 10 minutes before and after the purchase and expiry of the ticket respectively and as far as i can tell this cannot be added to make a total of 20 additional minutes in the car park (unless the ticket was purchased exactly 10 minutes after entry). As such I don't see how this helps in this case (am i missing something?)

The only thing holding the driver back from appealing the case themselves is that there is no clear route to having a strong appeal case. If the over stay was 10 mins of less then there would be but this is not the case and as such the driver feels like an appeal will not win and they will end up paying even more.

Coupon-mad

The only thing holding the driver back from appealing the case themselves is that there is no clear route to having a strong appeal case.

Yes there is.

Search POPLA split grace periods and change to SHOW RESULTS AS POSTS.

Fruitcake

As I said previously, there are TWO grace periods, not one. They are both of at least ten minutes. When I was at school that certainly did make twenty.

The Driver is not involved in any of this. They should sit on their hands in the corner and say and do nothing.
The Keeper has received the charge and it is they that should be dealing with this. The Keeper has protections in law that The Driver does not.

Other appeal points are available such as Inadequate signage, Not the landowner, No standing to issue charges in their own name, NTK PoFA failures, BPA CoP breaches, and anything else relevant.

All the information you need about this is in the NEWBIES.

Start with the initial appeal template in blue then continue from there.

The NEWBIES answers every question you have asked so far. It is designed for you to read so we don't have to keep answering the same questions a hundred times a day.