Parking Eye Ticket from Durham

Dontpay

Hi, 
I went to Durham this Summer to meet our friends who stayed at Raddison Blu hotel and paid £4 for parking at the hotel which we now realised that it was controlled by Parking Eye. 
We paid £4 for 2 hrs through our phone app as it allowed us only to pay for 2hrs at around 19:40, so we thought the restrictions finish around 9:30 or something. We infact tried the app from couple of phones to make sure we are not making any mistakes.
Also we did come back before time, but we had to spend 20 mins loading and unloading some of the stuff that we brought for our friends and our friends got for us. We did speak to one of the hotel staff and they did say it should be okay to load and unload stuff in the parking lot and its better to do the same there due to Covid restrictions ,lot of things were not allowed inside the hotel.
Now after few months they started sending letters which we ignored thinking it was by mistake  and now they have sent a County Claim letter on Nov 15th. I had acknowledged the claim on 18th Nov and now i need your help and guidance in preparing my defence.

1. While filing the Acknowledgement, I didnt chose the option of "I intend to contest jurisdiction" - Is that okay or have i done something wrong.
2. Also how many days do i have to submit my defence. I read its 14 days but is it from submitting the  Acknowledgement (18th Nov) or is it 28 days from the Claim (15th Nov)
3. Where can i find a template for Parking Eye defence.

Many thanks in advance.

Redx

Date of issue of the claim form from the CCBC ?

Date of AOS ?

We don't want the date they sent it , we want the issue date from the form , they could have posted it 2 days later !!

Your MCOL claim history will have the details , so copy and paste below

1) depends upon your location , not contesting jurisdiction is correct if your location is in England and Wales !! You never said

2) we cannot say until you answer the 2 questions above

3) there isn't one , not if they complied with POFA , so you could adapt the coupon mad template and remove the POFA and remove the double recovery charges too

KeithP

I am going to assume that the Issue Date on your Claim Form is 15th November. 
Correct me if I am wrong as it may affect your Defence filing deadline.

With a Claim Issue Date of 15th November, and having filed an Acknowledgment of Service on 19th November, you have until 4pm on Friday 17th December 2021 to file your Defence.

That's over two weeks away. Plenty of time to produce a Defence, but please don't leave it to the last minute.

To create a Defence, and then file a Defence by email, look at the second post in the NEWBIES thread.

Don't miss the deadline for filing a Defence.

Do not try and file a Defence via the MoneyClaimOnline website. Once an Acknowledgment of Service has been filed, the MCOL website should be treated as 'read only'.

Dontpay

Thanks Redx and KeithP, your comments have been noted.
Yes ,my issue date was the 15th Nov and the AOS was submitted on 18th and received on 19th.

I will file my defence as per your comments before 16th Dec 4pm. I will also go through the above mentioned link to help in the preparation of my defence.
Many thanks,

KeithP

Dontpay said:

Thanks Redx and KeithP, your comments have been noted.
Yes ,my issue date was the 15th Nov and the AOS was submitted on 18th and received on 19th.

I will file my defence as per your comments before 16th Dec 4pm. I will also go through the above mentioned link to help in the preparation of my defence.
Many thanks,

Then you get an extra day. I have adjusted my post above.

Redx

Dontpay said:

Thanks Redx and KeithP, your comments have been noted.
Yes ,my issue date was the 15th Nov and the AOS was submitted on 18th and received on 19th.

I will file my defence as per your comments before 16th Dec 4pm. I will also go through the above mentioned link to help in the preparation of my defence.
Many thanks,

On a side note , if you had left it until say the 20th or anytime after the 20th until tomorrow , so last ten days of November for example , the deadline date would have been a few days later , meaning the 15th plus 33 days , so you shortened the time allowed by say 3 days !  You can trust KeithP on his dates above , so make sure that you have emailed a SAR to the DPO at PE to obtain all your data

Even at his late stage you should be invoking plan A , complaining to the hotel forcibly , because they gave you permission to load , unload and to park , so get them on your side ASAP. Look up promissory estoppel , add it into paragraph 3 of your Defence , then post only your adapted paragraphs below , for critique , do not post the whole defence , only paragraphs that you have altered , your homework is being checked

Check the NTK , see if it complied with POFA ( it probably did ) , but do not assume. However , a driver based defence is a better and more honest option in this case anyway , so not reliant on POFA !

Ps , I just read this thread.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6310373/small-claim-advice-needed/p2 

and if you made the necessary changes but base your Defence around theirs , then remove POFA and the double recovery aspect elsewhere in the template , it should be a reasonable effort for a Parking Eye case !

I am assuming that parking eye are claiming around £175 or £185 ?  Not more than £200 , so no extra spurious charges ? ( I am also assuming that PE complied with POFA too )

Coupon-mad

Just to caution you not to use the template defence that other person used insofar as false added 'costs' are concerned, because Parking Eye claims are different.

They don't add false debt recovery costs but are no doubt crossing their fingers that the DLUHC will make the monumental mistake of letting them, as was appallingly indicated in the August Technical public consultation.

D_P_Dance

PE's signs are pants, please read this.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5972164/parking-eye-signs-oxford-road-reading/p1

Dontpay

Thanks everyone.  Based on your inputs and other thread comments, I have built a draft defence. Posting a few of the adapted pointers below for your thoughts and feedback. Many thanks.

1. It is admitted that Defendant is the registered keeper of the vehicle in question

2. The defendant paid for the ticket for 2 hrs and we returned before the time finished.

3. The defendant paid only for 2 hrs because the app (on smart phones) allowed only to pay for 2 hrs that day.

4. The defendant tried with multiple phones to make sure they were not making a mistake and paid only what was allowed which was £4 for 2 hours.

5. When the defendant returned to the parking lot they wanted to load/unload some stuff from their car for their friends who were staying at Raddison Blu. So they checked with the Hotel staff if it was okay to continue parking their car until the things were loaded.

6. The driver was allowed the right to load/unload by the leasehold business, relying on an express verbal agreement with the on duty security/reception staff.

7. Loading or unloading with the permission of the landholder is not 'parking' and signs cannot override existing rights enjoyed by landowners and their visitors, as was found in the Appeal case decided by His Honour Judge Harris QC in June 2016 at Oxford County Court, in a similar case number B9GF0A9E: 'JOPSON V HOME GUARD SERVICES’.

8. The right of the on site businesses to allow authorised vehicles to load/unload pre-dates the arrival of this Claimant and the Jopson Appeal case found that signs added later by a third party parking firm are of no consequence to authorised visitors to premises where other rights prevail and supersede any alleged new 'parking contract’.

9. In any event, the signs make no offer to authorised visitors engaged in permitted loading/unloading for which no 'parking permit' was ever required (neither before the arrival of this Claimant onsite, nor after).

10. There is no clear mentioning of loading/unloading rules on the sign board.

11. Further and alternatively, the provision requiring payment of £185 is unenforceable as an unfair term contrary to Regulation 5 of The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999.

12. The penalty bears no relation to the circumstances because a permission was obtained from the security/ staff for temporary loading/unloading and no loss or damage for the Claimant because of this

Coupon-mad

Remove 8 and 11 and you are nearly there, but if you read the ParkingEye examples in the NEWBIES thread they usually have an ending about lack of landowner authority and about you wanting to claim costs. 

Le_Kirk

Are you defending as keeper but not driver or keeper and driver?  Suggest you should decide which and say so in paragraph 1 (which should be paragraph 2 because the standard defence template has different wording for paragraph 1).

2. The defendant paid for the ticket for 2 hrs and we the defendant returned before the time finished.

Defences are written in the third person so not "we" but "the defendant".

parking lot car park.