Vehicle Control Services / Peel

outwestuk

D_P_Dance said:

IMO, reducing the time during covid falls to be considered under the unfair terms and conditions provisions of the Consumer Rights Act.

https://www.hants.gov.uk/business/tradingstandards/consumeradvice/goodsandservices/unfairtermsconsumer

Yes I agree with you but specifically what parts of the Act do you feel that they contravene?

outwestuk

KeithP said:

Is this related to your other VCS Peel Centre thread?

It is although I thought it was helpful for people to have insight into a WS as I havent come across many of those. Apologies if I shoudl have posted there.

outwestuk

Coupon-mad said:

Not sure it is, if this one is Gloucester Retail Park?

Anyway at 7 they've said you as the 'registered keeper' (which they know you are not) are required to name the driver.  In fact POFA says no such thing and nor are hirer consumer individuals responsible for the use of a car under the law of agency. 

And VCS didn't transfer liability properly to you as hirer under para 13 & 14 of the POFA because they didn't send a compliant NTH with the specified attachments.  So as a matter of fact and law, you are not liable as a result of a defective Notice to Hirer.

What are the signs like there, show us the signage pictures and the landowner authority they've provided.

You can see on the sign they have just stuck 2s over the 3. The signs are high up and not straigtforward to see in a busy car park such that it was missed on 3 occasions. To me looking at the sign I would see that the quarter marked out on the clock would still mean 3 hours. In that way they have not made any effort to obviously show it has changed.

outwestuk

Coupon-mad said:

Not sure it is, if this one is Gloucester Retail Park?

Anyway at 7 they've said you as the 'registered keeper' (which they know you are not) are required to name the driver.  In fact POFA says no such thing and nor are hirer consumer individuals responsible for the use of a car under the law of agency. 

And VCS didn't transfer liability properly to you as hirer under para 13 & 14 of the POFA because they didn't send a compliant NTH with the specified attachments.  So as a matter of fact and law, you are not liable as a result of a defective Notice to Hirer.

What are the signs like there, show us the signage pictures and the landowner authority they've provided.

And here is there statement as an operator. I have asked several times for the contract with no response.

Coupon-mad

OK, probably best to post this instead on the existing thread and we'll reply there.  We have context there.

Let this duplicate thread die.

outwestuk

Successful day in court yesterday, if not entirely what I expected. Firstly, VCS appeared 10 minutes late and then only by phone, not Teams as the court was expecting. I don’t think it set a professional look for them.

A good chunk of time was spent talking about whether VCS had issued an NTK to me or not and establishing on what grounds I was being pursued. They admitted that they were not compliant with POFA and were pursuing on the basis of agency, arguing that if I wasn’t the driver then I assumed responsibility for whoever drove the vehicle ( I raised the point that if VCS do not follow POFA as clearly defined in their operator code, and had broken several of the conditions, that they were not actually able to be a car park operator but this didn’t seem to hold much sway with the judge). I raised the fact that they had not transferred liability from the lease co. and therefore the NTH was not legal, but the judge viewed this as a red herring as VCS were no citing POFA.

VCS stated that raising many of the areas of non-compliance as "technicalities" and just pushed that the law of probability was that I was the driver or held liability as keeper for whoever parked the car. When it was established that I was in fact on a course, I was challenged that it was an online course and that I could have in fact driven to the car park and attended from there (yes really!).

In the end the judgement was that because the law of agency was not in the claim form and that I had not ask someone to use the car on my behalf, that it did not apply. In any event the Judge pushed on the fact that it was a "matrimonial asset”, and agency was not applicable.

Secondly, he ruled that they needed to make it very clear on the signage that the time had changed from 3 hours to 2. In fact, all that had been done was to place a 2 over the 3 on all the signs, but retain a clock that showed 3 hours. On balance he said that it was more likely to be read as 3 hours, however (and well worth knowing), where doubt exists such as this, under section 69 of the consumer rights act the consumer prevails. So even if they proved I was the driver, they would have lost on signage.

The amusing part of the day was that the judge said that if they were going to fine people £100 for using their car park, they should do much better with their signs that just puting sticky lables on it to make changes!

So many thanks again to all who have posted here. It would be very difficult to defend yourself in court against a lawyer without all the background provided on this site.

D_P_Dance

What about costs?  They have wasted yout time, now waste theirs, read this.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/legal-system/small-claims/making-a-small-claim/

Redx

Well done , VCS lose again !!  😁😁👍👍

Another one bites the dust !!

outwestuk

D_P_Dance said:

What about costs?  They have wasted yout time, now waste theirs, read this.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/legal-system/small-claims/making-a-small-claim/

Absolutely!

outwestuk

So in December I have a virtually identical case. I asked the judge if this judgement could be applied and he laughed but said of course I can use this judgement as evidence. I was curious as it has been raised here that bringing multiple cases could be deemed an abuse of process, but that was not something the judge was open to consider (we didnt have much time at that point as we had run over)