Overstayed by 00:10:10 at Lidl Mitcham

MrDrem

I've recently received a CPCN from Athena ANPR for overstaying by a whole 10 seconds (once grace period is taken into account). As this is the first time I've ever received a CPCN, I'd like to check that I'm jumping through the hoops in the best way possible.

For the appeal on the Athena website I was planning on sending the following:

Re PCN number: X XXX XXX XXX

I dispute your 'parking charge', as the keeper of the vehicle. I deny any liability or contractual agreement and I will be making a complaint about your predatory conduct to your client landowner.

There will be no admissions as to who was driving and no assumptions can be drawn. Since your CPCN is a vague template, I require an explanation of the allegation and your evidence. You must include a close up actual photograph of the sign you contend was at the location on the material date as well as all of your images of the vehicle. I would also ask for confirmation of the incident date, as this is not made clear on the CPCN.

As the allegation involves an alleged overstay of 10 minutes and 10 seconds, your evidence must include the actual grace period agreed by the landowner.

In order to assist in resolving the dispute I note the following:
The morning of the day I believe is in question was extremely wet. In excess of 4.8mm of rain fell that morning. As a consequence, the car park was full, and it took the driver a number of circuits to find an available parking space.
The driver was eventually able to find a space where another driver was leaving one of the few parent and child spaces. As they had a tired 3 year old with them, and having observed a customer preparing to leave a parent and child space, they decided that waiting whilst the other customer exited one of the spaces provided for such eventualities was sensible at that point. Having the child with them also extended both their shopping and their loading times.
The driver was stopped on their way out of the shop by security, as the security tags on a number of items that they had purchased had not been deactivated at the checkout. This required that the items were recovered from the shopping, the receipt checked, and the security tags deactivated. This further added to the time to return to the vehicle. I am lead to understand from store staff that this is a common occurrence with the self service checkouts at this store.
I see from the photograph that you have provided of the vehicle leaving the car park that exiting the car park onto Love Lane was not immediately possible due to traffic on the road outside, this means that the stay within the carpark was extended due to the requirement to leave the premises in a safe and responsible manner.
I attach a copy of the drivers receipt from the day I believe is in question so as to demonstrate that they were a genuine customer of the store.

In addition to sending the above via the online form, I'm going to send the bits in the 'I note the following' (along with a bit more padding) in an email to christian.haertnagel@lidl.co.uk (MD of Lidl at the moment).

The bits about the date not being clear are because they are using DD/MM/YY as the date format on the CPCN's, rather that DD/MM/YYYY, and the YY therefore comes out as simply 20 (which could be easily mistaken as simply being the start of any of the last 20, or the next 79 years) rather then 2020.

Is there anything that I've missed out, or that I should take away at this stage?

Thanks for your help!

Umkomaas

Don't bother with the appeal to Athena, instead go direct to Lidl's MD and complain. Gets a cancellation every time. Do a search in the forum for Christian Haertnagel and read the dozens of cases we deal with month by month, each one resulting in a positive outcome within a couple of days. The forum search function is not very good, so if it doesn't work for you, use Google, just adding Parking MSE after the name above. 

Coupon-mad

 appeal on the Athena website

Pointless. 

Do as Umkomaas says, as you could have found to be the answer in EVERY Lidl Athena post.

D_P_Dance

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 in some cases, cancellation.

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.

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.