Advice requested: is it worth fighting this PCN further?

KeithP

OP, have you have based your forum username on your real name? If so, you may want to get your forum username changed to something completely anonymous.

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Rob18

Ah, yes, will get that done.

Rob18

UPDATE: letter to the CEO of the hotel chain just produced a reply from their customer services people saying it's nothing they can do anything about, I need to deal with Parking Eye.  I got the ParkingEye "letter before county court claim" letter this morning asking me to pay £100.  I propose to tick Box D, "I dispute the debt" and attach as evidence the receipt from my Tesla charging.

Any generic advice on how to form the text of my dispute before I start writing it?

EDIT: have just read post #2 in the sticky:
"The exception is PARKINGEYE: If you get a LBCCC from ParkingEye, send a SAR using the form on their PRIVACY page if you are missing evidence/letters, but also email their litigation team to try to resolve the dispute:
enforcement@parkingeye.co.uk
Treat the ParkingEye email now as your 'last gasp' chance to appeal, because ParkingEye can and will stop a case and revert to appeal stage, or they will accept you naming the driver & postal address (and will reissue the PCN and start again with the driver being allowed to appeal). Or send them relevant things you really should have sent earlier as an appeal - such as a copy of the Blue Badge, or bank statement/shopping receipts."

So plan is instead to e-mail enforcement@parkingeye.co.uk repeating my explanation that I was charging my Tesla vehicle legitimately and attaching a copy of the Tesla charging receipt. 

Will see what they say before deciding what to do next.

Fruitcake

Do you have pics of the site and signage from entrance to charging point, and pics of the Ts and Cs on the charging point itself?
Have you heard back from Tesla yet? I wouldn't be happy about having to pay an extra £100 to charge my car. Did Tesla warn you about this when you bought the car/signed up to the payment contract for charging?
Does the £14 charging payment include "renting" the space upon which the car sits whilst charging? Were you warned there may be extra charges for leaving the car in a charging space on top of the cost of the ekectrickery itself?
Would "refuelling" a car be covered by the Jopson vs Homeguard case perhaps? The judge there stated that loading/unloading is not parking, and neither is attending to a small vicissitude. Loading electrons into a car would surely come under either or both of these.

Rob18

Thanks for the questions.

Parking Eye sent pictures of the site as part of the POPLA appeal process but, for some reason, included none whatsoever of the Tesla signage and their plan of the car-park made no mention of the existence of Tesla charging stations, not that this made any difference when I pointed it out during the appeal process.  The site is an hour's drive away from here so I don't have my own pictures of the signage.

I'm not disputing that there are signs. I don't believe it is in dispute that I was permitted to charge my Tesla vehicle at the Tesla charging station at that location and that I should not have to pay additional chargers to do so, the issue is that I didn't comply with Parking Eye's registration mechanism at the time, I didn't do the Parking Eye dance, and it seem impossible to sort that out afterwards.  Registered Tesla vehicle, 50 minute stay at a Tesla charging station late on a Sunday afternoon: it should be clear to any reasonable person what I was doing and typing my registration number into a Parking Eye terminal at the time would not have made it any clearer.

Tesla are notoriously bad at replying to e-mails: I have the charging receipt, that's likely the best I can get from them.

I don't have a contract with Tesla for supercharging as far as I am aware, it's just a function of using the car.  If you click on this Tesla charging location it says down the bottom that you have to register to avoid getting a fine from Parking Eye but you don't need to click on anything to charge there, you just drive to the location and plug in.

My reason for continuing to dispute this PCN is that driving into a car park and using it in the intended manner should not mean I have to pay Parking Eye anything at all.  Sure, fine those people who are not parking legitimately but fining those who are parking legitimately and can prove it seems, well, wrong, a bad thing to let pass.

Le_Kirk

Fruitcake said:

Would "refuelling" a car be covered by the Jopson vs Homeguard case perhaps? The judge there stated that loading/unloading is not parking, and neither is attending to a small vicissitude. Loading electrons into a car would surely come under either or both of these.

Nice, although I think you might be stretching a point!

Fruitcake

Please tell us the location of the car park as someone may know it or have images that could help.
In addition, Google Street View might show at least entrance signs, even if the camera car didn't enter the car park.

If you are facing a possible £175 court case, I would suggest it might be cost effective to visit the site in order to take photos yourself. You could combine it with a visit to a beauty spot and a picnic meal as part of a grand day out. 

I am suspicious of the fact that the scammers have not included signs at or near the charging point, nor any reference to charging in the entrance signs. This makes me suspect that there might be something in the signage that would help the motorist, and therefore worth the effort and time of a photo visit.

Fruitcake

Le_Kirk said:

Fruitcake said:

Would "refuelling" a car be covered by the Jopson vs Homeguard case perhaps? The judge there stated that loading/unloading is not parking, and neither is attending to a small vicissitude. Loading electrons into a car would surely come under either or both of these.

Nice, although I think you might be stretching a point!

It would all come down to the wording used, and how a judge would view it. You wouldn't be expected to register a VRM to fill up with liquid or gas fuel, so being required to do so for charging an electric vehicle is not the norm, or extraordinary. I would suggest that the man on the Clapham Omnibus might agree.
The vehicle cannot go anywhere else whilst being charged. It cannot be used for anything else. It's primary reason for being stopped at the prescribed location is to refuel, not parking.

Coupon-mad

I got the ParkingEye "letter before county court claim" letter this morning asking me to pay £100.  I propose to tick Box D, "I dispute the debt" and attach as evidence the receipt from my Tesla charging.

Nope, email them.  Don't fill out forms:

enforcement@parkingeye.co.uk

Tell them to cancel.  Be robust.  Don't call it an appeal.

Rob18

Fruitcake said:

You wouldn't be expected to register a VRM to fill up with liquid or gas fuel, so being required to do so for charging an electric vehicle is not the norm, or extraordinary. I would suggest that the man on the Clapham Omnibus might agree.

The vehicle cannot go anywhere else whilst being charged. It cannot be used for anything else. It's primary reason for being stopped at the prescribed location is to refuel, not parking.

That's a very good way of looking at it.  I've driven a Tesla since 2014 and this is the first time I've come across anyone other than Tesla attempting to charge me for charging at a Tesla charging station.
But on the signs thing, I'm slightly afraid I'm going to get stuck in a "the law is an !!!!!!" thing here.  To me the signs are irrelevant: forming a contract to do whatever Parking Eye say just by driving into a car park is a preposterous notion, it doesn't matter what the signs say, "turn around three times and hop on one leg or you owe us £100".  No-one is saying that there is a payment due for charging at this Tesla charging station (aside from for the electrons to Tesla), the dispute is that I didn't do whatever this contract/sign says and therefore I owe Parking Eye £100.  As a rider of the Clapham Omnibus, that is surely just plain rubbish?