Parking Control Management UK uses unfair contracting methods to bully 17 year old driver

Coupon-mad

Good point, I changed my post!

Adrian442

I have ripped up the letter I drafted.  I will let PCM make the next move.

Coupon-mad

Eh? Are you not being offered free IAS?

Adrian442

Coupon-mad said:

If you can try standard (free) IAS the new thinking this year is try it (no template but all the evidence, lease, signed WS from your friend saying the parking was permitted, etc).

I used the free non binding "service".  Leases and statements from resident would make no difference:

"Any advice or permission given by another, not a party to the contract, is irrelevant. If the Appellant received erroneous advice from another, they have my sympathy, but this is an issue between the Appellant and their advisor." 

IAS completely ignored the issue that if you have been invited and told to use the allocated space because it will be empty, then you don't question that and you don't look for signs, which was the point made repeatedly.

The only slightly bright spot was:

"I agree that if the notice was insufficient there can be no contract. The image shows the position of the vehicle and of one sign. This does not demonstrate the notice is insufficient."

PCM provided lots of close up daylight photos which clearly show the masses of detailed text, which would not be particularly clear from more than 10 feet away but looks great when the sign fills the whole frame, mine showed where the sign was in relation to the sight line (distance is pretty irrelevant in these conditions - it would need to be right in front of you in your headlights) from the car in the dark, which were the conditions at the time and that was made clear - IAS completely ignored that fact too.

IAS is not independent it is run by IPC who make their money from operators, operators already have all the lovely photos prepared.  The way it works is each party has 5 days to respond to the other. PCM always responded in a day.  As soon as one party feels they have provided enough evidence they end it after the other has responded.  I kept pushing for PCM to justify why in the circumstances the onus was on my son to look for signs he could not see because it was dark and he had no reason to doubt what he had been told by the friend that invited him and told him where to park.  All the IAS really does is do a beauty contest on your photos and you are always going to lose.  The bottom line is it does not matter why you are parked without a permit "The Operator has provided photographic evidence of the Appellant's vehicle parked on the land they manage, and without a valid permit displayed. The appeal is dismissed."

There is a fundamental flaw in the scheme that for a contract to exist you have to be aware of it and understand it, even then with other remote marketing (it does not get any more remote than having to see a sign)  there is a 14 day cooling off period. 

If the scheme were just applied for its stated purpose, ie to deter unsolicited parking on private land for the mutual benefit of the residents and landowner, then there would not be all that much wrong with it as it is reasonable for the average person to know they cannot just park on private land for their own convenience and if they are going to do that then they really should look to make sure there isn't a scheme in place to catch them out for their extremely rude and inconsiderate behaviour.

Fruitcake

Lies and cobblers. Do not believe anything the PPC or IAS/IPC has said.

The contract is between the person who owns or leases the demised parking space and the landowner or landholder of the parking space, or whoever the tenant has a contract with.
This has primacy of contract over anything an unregulated private parking company says or puts on their graffiti on poles.

You must, absolutely must find out what the lease/AST of the person/family being visited says. 

Adrian442

I really don't see it as being a primacy of contract issue but a primacy of statutory rights, which are defined by the Consumer Rights Act, over an over zealous company using a trade association's code of practice outside its stated purpose and bouncing innocent people totally unawares into a "contract" which, without any provision of goods or services from the operator to the driver, enables them to "invoice" the driver for £100, reduced to £60 if you cough up straight away without going through the totally rigged appeals process, which is the only way to have any sort of dialogue with the operator. 

If you bought a TV online with full knowledge of what it was you were buying and then when it arrived in perfect working order you changed your mind and decided you wanted a different one, you could send it back within 14 days and get a full refund as that is your statutory right.

If we do end up going to court then I will inconvenience the friend further, there is also a privacy issue which I won't go into.

D_P_Dance

Read these

http://parking-prankster.blogspot.com/2016/11/residential-parking.html


https://forums.landlordzone.co.uk/forum/residential-letting-questions/1053920-private-parking-companies

Read abourT "primacy of contract" and complain to your son's MP.