Link Parking / BW Legal issue

Dazbiscuits

Hello, I am hoping for some advice here. In short:

On January 18th I had a car engine emergency and I pulled into a parking area. I left the car for four minuutes to make a phone call to my garage. Got back to find a parking ticket for £60 from Link.

I wrote to them the next day to explain what had happened.

I did not hear back until February when they told me that my appeal had been rejected, and they had told me as much in January ( ihad never recieved this)

Now the fine was £100

I wrote back to say that I had not recieved any notice of the appeal. And I told again of the circumstances.

They wrote back to say, we are done here and are sending your case to BW Legal.

So I have have written to BW and told them in great detail what happened and how I thought it was extremely unjust. But also offerd to pay the original £60 just to make it all stop.

They declined this and said I now had to pay £150 which included their costs.

Is there any way to counter this? Or should I just stump up. I dont see how its legal, but they seem to do it all the time.

Thanks.

Here is what I told Link originally:

I was driving towards Radstock southbound and towards the bottom of the hill the car started to badly misfire and just as I reached the roundabout an engine warning light came on to say STOP immediately. This is a busy main road and I knew that all exits off the roundabouts were also main roads with double yellow lines. I therefore took the first available off road turning which turned out to be the parking area in question.

 I was in the parking space for no more than 5 minutes whilst I contacted my garage, who can confirm this. Would you not allow a person a safe refuge for 5 minutes in an emergency like this? Just stopping on the main road would have caused all kind of traffic problems and would have been illegal. I believe I took the only reasonable course of action.

DE_612183

Where was the parking area you pulled into?

What were the signs like?

Can you post a copy of the original PCN with PI redacted?

You will get nowhere with an appeal - don't waste your time.

You could try and contact the landowner and obviously write to your MP.

All the info you need is in the newbee's thread.

Dazbiscuits

Hello, thanks for looking in.

The parking area was a residents parking courtyard in a new building development.

At the time I did not see the signs as I was very concerned that my car engine was in trouble. I later returned to the scene of the crime and saw that the signs were visible. There is no doubt that I was in the wrong place really. But...

I dont have the original ticket.

The landowner is unavailable, but it was presumably him that jumped up and slapped a ticket on the car within a minute of me parking there.

Ill see if I can find the n00b thread.

Cheers

Gr1pr

The newbies sticky thread is in announcements at the top of the forum, above this thread of yours 

Nothing will change until a court claim is issued using MCOL, where B w legal will either cancel eventually or let a judge decide in civil court 

The ONLY options are, pay, or take your chances in court, assuming that the landowner won't cancel the PCN 

So at the moment you are at the impasse stage, a typical interim stage 

B w legal will do whatever their client Link Parking tell them to do, so your lengthy war and peace will have fallen on deaf ears, and Link won't be interested either , all those companies want is your money, nothing else 

Most people here will tell you that its best for a court to decide, in due course, so it's either 

Pay 

Or

Court 

Your decision to make 

DE_612183

did you take a photo of the signs?

you also don't say what happened after you phoned the garage ( did you need a pay phone to do this? )

This will all have a bearing on the case.

Coupon-mad

You just defend it. Really: dead easy v BW Legal claims; no risk, no CCJ.

Of course you do not pay this.  We will save you from what Ministers called an 'outrageous scam' £150.

See my signature below for where to click at the top if the page to read the NEWBIES thread in one second (fourth and second posts are your stage).