Hospital PCN - any advice appreciated

ggisbest

Hi all,
In a bit of a quandary,
Received a PCN from Gemini parking at a hospital car park where was a student nurse on a placement. Ran up to the ward as was late on shift and completely forgot to pay for parking. Had paid on all previous and subsequent occasions (previous tickets are even in the windscreen on the pictures they took).
Stumbled upon the forum a bit too late and followed anecdotal advice from family/friends to just ignore and to message the facilities manager to get cancelled. So did not appeal and the fine has gone up from £60 to £130 and am getting letters from the debt collector.
All feels very unreasonable considering was working as a student nurse for free. Facilities manager at the hospital has been very unhelpful in saying they can't help.

Should I cut my losses and just pay at this point? Debt collectors demanding the money before 3/02

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

MistyZ

Hi.

I attend way too many hospital appointments and meet a lot of stressed medics so hearing about yet another NHS worker getting a PCN makes me angry.

Escalate your complaint to the hospital's CEO. Emphasise your good record of paying to park. (Student nurses paying to park?!. Anger levels rising!) Control yours though, just use it to complain with confidence and determination. If necessary, briefly detail your pay v. travelling & parking costs. Emphasise that your key priority was arriving on time. Find a way to describe how outrageous this situation is. Insist on cancellation.

Have you read other Gemini Hospital threads? Word on here is that Gemini are easy to beat at the court stage and that is borne out by one thread after another. It would be a real shame to pay them. The time to act is if you receive a Letter of Claim / Letter before Claim. For now, do not respond to the debt collectors at all.

There's a bit of work involved in preparing for the small claims court, but you have plenty of time to investigate what would be involved. Check out the other Gemini threads and also the Newbies' thread.

The_Deep

the fine has gone up from £60 to £130

It is not a fine, it is an invoice from an ex clamper, for the alleged damage you caused them, pay them not one penny unless a judge so orders it. Also, they appear to be claiming more than the law allows, read this

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6014081/abuse-of-process-district-judge-tells-bwlegal

Have you read this? Have they complied?

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nhs-patient-visitor-and-staff-car-parking-principles/nhs-patient-visitor-and-staff-car-parking-principles

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Nine times out of ten these tickets are scams, so consider complaining to your MP, it can cause the scammer extra costs and work, and has been known to get the charge cancelled.

Parliament is well aware of the MO of these private parking companies, many of whom are former clampers, 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.

[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/8/contents/enacted[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]

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

Coupon-mad

Should I cut my losses and just pay at this point? Debt collectors demanding the money before 3/02

That's not cutting any losses and would be funding the scam against more people.

So the answer is a clear ''NO''!

You are doing the right things to get this cancelled and if they try a small claim they are interesting and the hearing exhilarating when you win, and there is no CCJ risk and nothing scary about it, just a job interview type formal meeting in a room with a Judge, and they are generally very fair. we see wins in 99% of cases.

The only important thing is not to ignore court forms/dates, and if you move house, inform Gemini to erase the old address so they can't use it any more.