Brittania Parking + hotel + rental car + tourists, yea...

CatInJapan

I hope this is okay to post. I've looked through the Newbies but honestly it is confusing and this situation might be a bit complicated.

We, a group of tourists, rented a car for travel in the UK. The problem at hand occurred in England at a car park near an hotel. We arrived at the car park around 11pm and prepared to check in, but due to some issues the reservation ended up being cancelled after about 15 minutes of back and forth with the hotel reception. Meanwhile, the car was parked in the car park behind the hotel, which is "free for guests". 

It was confirmed by the staff at the reception that the car can remain in the car park while we looked for another accommodation. The car registration number was given to the reception to put in their system so they know which car is ours.

The driver and passengers didn't notice any signs or anything as they came there with the knowledge that the hotel provides free parking for guests. On the way out, no signs were noticed again. It was late and really, believing that a car park is free for you pretty much makes you blind to any signs that may indicate you need to pay for it. 

Two weeks later, the rental agency sent an invoice saying a fine was received by them from Britannia Parking for that car park. They charged a £35 admin fee for that. The "fine" itself was not included, but they wrote they gave the details of the rental agreement to Brittania Parking (including the name and address of the person in the lease contract, "the hirer") and the "fine" will be reissued. This tells me liability was transferred to the hirer. However, we received no message or notice from Britannia Parking to this day such as Notice to Hirer.

I checked the PCN using the information from the rental agency and Google. On their platform the amount to pay was already £100, not £60, so it spooked me. We appealed explaining what happened but of course Brittania Parking don't care. The appeal was rejected and POPLA code was given. Britannia Parking claim they have no contract with the hotel or any other business around to begin with (how??).

The hotel feigned innocence and said there's nothing they can do as we weren't their guests in the end. They can't cancel the ticket anyway as they're not the owners of the car park. It seems to be a shared car park with some other businesses. 

Something to note is we are not in the UK anymore with no plans to return for now. Google maps has some images from a year ago which show the signs here and there around the car park, and that the restrictions are only between 5am to 9pm but there's no way for us to confirm if that has changed since then.

What do we do from here? We don't believe we should pay for being misled like that.

Thanks for any help.

UncleThomasCobley

You should get your credit card company to put a hold on the £35 admin fee. If you read your hire agreement carefully, unless it specifies "speculative invoices from unregulated private parking companies", then they have no right to charge you. They usually only specify "fines" issued by the police or an "authority". You have not received an "fine" and you may want to re-read all the paperwork and count the number of times the word "fine" appears.

It's pity you didn't wait for the Notice to Hirer and use the golden win when they fail PoFA. However, if you do not reside in England or Wales, you can safely ignore the PCN as they have no way of doing anything about it except try to scare you by sending useless debt collector letters. They are just hoping you are low hanging fruit on the gullible tree, which if you're now on this forum, usually means that you are not.

Coupon-mad

You can just give your Japanese address and it will go nowhere and will never affect you, even if/when you return to visit the UK.  This is not a real fine. It has no effect on anything!

But:

Is the POPLA CODE still within 32 days of the date of rejection letter?

In order to try to get it cancelled, which MIGHT get your car hire/lease company to agree to refund the admin fee, you could do a POPLA Appeal based on any NTH POPLA appeal.

Search the forum for those keywords.

CatInJapan

Thank you both.

There might be a case to get the admin cost back by the rental agreement but it does mention "charges", just not private parking charges, so they might use that wording. I have read around that this company usually does not budge despite the wording being vague though.

For POPLA, it is still possible to appeal but I'm just not sure how I would go about it as we've never even received the NtH so can't appeal based on what is on it or not.

That said I forgot to mention we appealed about 10 days after receiving the message from the rental company, so Britannia Parking would have had plenty of time to send the letter by then, even to another country. Whether we would have received it in time is another question but it definitely shouldn't take 2 months. Is it possible they haven't sent a NtH at all? 

Coupon-mad

Yes it's possible. But it doesn't matter.

POPLA is not a risk and I think Britannia won't waste the POPLA fee on contesting your appeal,  if you copy a decent POPLA NTH Appeal and state that your permanent address is (JAPANESE ADDRESS).

I predict they will then give up/cancel.

Then you can forward your POPLA result email to the Lease company and ask for the admin fee to be refunded.

Many do refund it, if a PCN is cancelled.

Half_way

Exact wording of the agreement will help

but it does mention "charges"

UncleThomasCobley

Quite often, hire agreements will mention "charges" but in relation to "fines". Check that the reference to "charges" refers to speculative invoices from private parking companies. Or, just "charges" from a private company.

A hire/lease company could wreak havoc by just by getting a third party to send speculative invoices to themselves. They could then be trickle-fed £35 admin fees from their hirer/lessee each time.

CatInJapan

So an update. We appealed to POPLA a few days before December, and now all of a sudden, about 2 weeks later, get an email saying our appeal was withdrawn today either due to us or the parking company saying we paid. We didn't withdraw, nor pay. So no idea what's going on! 

patient_dream

CatInJapan said:

So an update. We appealed to POPLA a few days before December, and now all of a sudden, about 2 weeks later, get an email saying our appeal was withdrawn today either due to us or the parking company saying we paid. We didn't withdraw, nor pay. So no idea what's going on! 

So you understand, you are involved in a scam.
Clearly Britannia thought they had a case hence they gave you a POPLA code. 

Your correspondence with Britannia showed them they did not have a case.   When POPLA contacted them, they had to prove their claim was correct. Clearly Britannia realised this was a rubbish case and instead of letting POPLA tell them, the your appeal was a success, they opted to lie and say you had paid 

WHY ? because if POPLA declined your appeal, Britannia would not owe them money .... If your appeal was successful, Britannia would pay POPLA a fee ?

If Britannia lied to POPLA and as you say, you did not pay , that is very serious and they should be asked for prove that you paid

If you lived in the UK then this could be taken further but as you live in Japan alll I can suggest that you warn people of the great UK scam regarding parking companies and if scammed, visit this forum .... For you, it's over

Coupon-mad

CatInJapan said:

So an update. We appealed to POPLA a few days before December, and now all of a sudden, about 2 weeks later, get an email saying our appeal was withdrawn today either due to us or the parking company saying we paid. We didn't withdraw, nor pay. So no idea what's going on! 

As the POPLA email says (vaguely but it is there), it means they gave up, so you won!

CatInJapan

Good morning guys.

It may be so, but I logged into the POPLA tracking page just in case and found it says "you've withdrawn your appeal blah blah blah here's where you can make payment for your PCN" and it takes to Brittania Parking's page. I put in our details and no surprise everything is the same with £100 outstanding PCN.

To make it clear only I can log into the appeal, so there's no way anyone involved could've accidentally withdrawn, and I didn't even log in the day it was withdrawn!

So I don't know what's going on, but I am not going to pursue this further. The whole thing feels like a tiresome scam already.

Thank you for all of your advice. You've helped me out a lot with this regardless of the outcome.