Met Parking Fine - McDonalds

Umkomaas

tatty123 said:

Umkomaas said:

tatty123 said:

Umkomaas said:

Can we see your initial appeal to MET so we know what has already been said; we can then advise in a more targeted way as to how you focus your POPLA appeal. 

On the 'Grace Period' point, by how much did you exceed the 90 minutes?

Oh, I exceeded 12 minutes. 

That might help on Grace Periods. So you calculate the time taken at the entry to the car park to when your vehicle was actually parked ... and account for it, e.g.  very busy as a result of people shaking off COVID lockdown and restaurants reopening. It was a Wednesday in August when 'Rishi's Dishies' scheme was in full flow and there were so many more customers taking absolute advantage of a half-price McD's cholesterol assault on their bodies. So, that took your family 5 minutes to find a spot in which to park. 

Then, on leaving the car park, the slow moving queue of cars waiting to exit the premises meant a further 7 minutes were used.  The 5 minutes front end falls within the recently down-rated BPA entry/consideration criterion and the 7 minutes to leave is below the BPA's mandatory 10 minutes grace period for exit. 

But ... if you've blabbed to MET that you were late leaving because you were having a nice friendly family chat, while your parking time clock was rapidly running down, then all my explanation above can be screwed up and thrown into your bin. That's why I said it was important to see what you've already said to MET. 

Is there any way to view what I wrote to them again? I'm not sure how to access the appeal to MET? 

Yes, send MET a SAR - what it is, how to do it and a link to a template request form are shown in the NEWBIES FAQ sticky, second post. But they do have a month to reply, and that might be too late for your POPLA appeal should they drag their heels. 

But get it off to them now, draft your POPLA appeal including the 'Grace Period' point and should you receive your SAR reply in time, and your appeal did blow off your toes, simply remove it from the POPLA draft. 

If you don't get the response in time, leave the GP in your POPLA appeal, send it off and hope for the best. 

As well as doing the SAR, you could try a quick email to MET saying that as their appeal portal seemed not to allow you to retain a copy of your initial appeal, would they be good enough to attach one in their reply to you. 

Try your best to get a copy of that initial appeal back in your hands. 

tatty123

Yes, will do. I will try to get the letter. But Yeah, i probably will still include the grace period.
Thanks. 

Redx

You would be a fool not to !!

Coupon-mad

tatty123 said:

Yes, will do. I will try to get the letter. But Yeah, i probably will still include the grace period.
Thanks. 

Not probably.  Winning or losing this one at POPLA will be down PURELY to how compellingly you write why it took your car six minutes to find a parking space after driving past the 'in' camera and why it took six minutes to get out of the busy car park. 

You will ONLY win if you go to town on that, as Umkomaas showed you.

tatty123

Coupon-mad said:

tatty123 said:

Yes, will do. I will try to get the letter. But Yeah, i probably will still include the grace period.
Thanks. 

Not probably.  Winning or losing this one at POPLA will be down PURELY to how compellingly you write why it took your car six minutes to find a parking space after driving past the 'in' camera and why it took six minutes to get out of the busy car park. 

You will ONLY win if you go to town on that, as Umkomaas showed you.

Hi Coupon_mad, thanks for your advice. I do have a few reasons on why it took so long especially I have twins travelling together. 
Anyway, do the other points that I tend to insert still valid as I thought will only need to win only one of the points? Or are things different now? I did read 2 of the appeals previously made in 2019 to MCD had failed, therefore I'm just wondering. 

Coupon-mad

Do it this way round and remove 'no keeper liability' and ' The ANPR system is neither reliable nor accurate'.

1.     Grace Period - there were compelling reasons why it took 4/5 mins to find a parking space on arrival and 7/8mins to leave* 

2.     No evidence of Landowner Authority 

3.     The signage was inadequate so there was no valid contract formed

* I've changed my advice for your case, to four on arrival and eight to leave, because that makes it harder for the PPC because you are not admitting to exceeding either the 5 minute consideration period not the minimum ten min grace period.  

Technically, you can't have both but you should - and so you must say why and what happened.

So, you MUST still explain in point #1, blow by blow, everything that held you up (except staying to chat!) - things like how busy the car park was, how there were no spaces and you needed to wait for a P&C bay because you had toddler(?) twins in the back, and then how busy it was to drive round and get out after firstly strapping the twins back into the car, which is not 'parking' in itself...blah blah...

   

tatty123

Coupon-mad said:

Do it this way round and remove 'no keeper liability' and ' The ANPR system is neither reliable nor accurate'.

1.     Grace Period - there were compelling reasons why it took 4/5 mins to find a parking space on arrival and 7/8mins to leave* 

2.     No evidence of Landowner Authority 

3.     The signage was inadequate so there was no valid contract formed

* I've changed my advice for your case, to four on arrival and eight to leave, because that makes it harder for the PPC because you are not admitting to exceeding either the 5 minute consideration period not the minimum ten min grace period.  

Technically, you can't have both but you should - and so you must say why and what happened.

So, you MUST still explain in point #1, blow by blow, everything that held you up (except staying to chat!) - things like how busy the car park was, how there were no spaces and you needed to wait for a P&C bay because you had toddler(?) twins in the back, and then how busy it was to drive round and get out after firstly strapping the twins back into the car, which is not 'parking' in itself...blah blah...

   

Ok. Noted. Thanks for your kind advice. 
Can I just ask why the No keeper's liability to be removed out? What is the rule now or is it because of my scenario that you think it's not a suitable point to argue.
Thanks. 

Coupon-mad

It was because the NTK you showed has the POFA wording and POPLA can't see beyond that.  Unless it arrived after day 14?

tatty123

Coupon-mad said:

It was because the NTK you showed has the POFA wording and POPLA can't see beyond that.  Unless it arrived after day 14?

Thank you for that. It makes a lot more sense now. I will keep you posted how it goes. 

tatty123

Hi guys, any advice what I shall do. I requested MET to send me my appeal letter. And they did, but it wasn't my appeal letter. It was someone's else. It seems like this is a breach of GDPR. They came back and said they were not going to report to ICO after reviewing it. Do you think i have anything against them for sending me someone's appeal letter? Should I include in my POPLA appeal to say that I can't trust how they are using anyone's data if such breach has been made?