VCS Bristol - have they updated the contracted roads?

alphablocks

A few weeks ago I was dropped off at the entrance to the Bristol Airport hotel and later received a demand for £60/£100 from VCS. Of course if I'd gone through the barriers, I'd have been perfectly entitled to park there while I was dropped off for free ... 

In other threads I found someone had posted the terms/contract between VCS and Bristol Airport. On it the roads which are monitored are marked:



The airport has undergone development since the top photo was taken (see lower photo), and the hotel and road which the car was stopped on is not marked on the top photo in the contract, and didn't exist at the time. You can see on the lower photo the red 'X' is where the car was photographed, seemingly from CCTV.

Does anyone know if this has been updated, or if this still stands as a reasonable argument against the fine? If I were to use this argument, does it need to go to court or could I expect an appeal to either the company or their "independant" arbitrator to accept this.

Grateful for any thoughts. I'm probably not interested enough in saving £60 to persue it to court, the reduced stress and time back is worth more than that to me. But if there's an easy 'screw you', then I'd like to take it.

Thanks 

DE_612183

I would suggest that your appeal is most likely to fail, whereas you go for the court case then you will win.

LDast

It all depends on whether you are low-hanging fruit on the gullible tree and believe that what you have received is a "fine" or that you are even liable to pay the vexatious scammer that is VCS. If you are here asking for advice, that is the first step to negating the gullible aspect.

What you received is not a "fine" and if you can find that word anywhere on the NtK, I will pay it for you. What the NtK is, is a speculative invoice for allegedly breaching a contract the unknown driver entered into with the scammers. VCS has sent the invoice to the known keeper.

As this occurred on land that is under statutory control because Bristol Airport land is covered by airport bylaws, VCS cannot transfer the liability for the charge from the unknown driver to the known keeper. The only way that VCS can know the unknown driver details is if the known keeper blabs it, inadvertently or otherwise.

Do you see the Catch 22 dilemma that VCS are in here? As long as the known keeper does not identify the unknown driver, there is nothing they can do about it. Not that that will stop the scamming vermin that is VCS from trying to coerce the known keeper into either paying the charge themselves or throwing the unknown driver under the proverbial bus by giving away their identity.

VCS will reject any appeal and their incestuous ATAs (not) independent IAS will not help either. VCS will send a lot of threatening but useless debt collector letters with big scary words like "bailiff" and "CCJ" in the hope that the known keeper is low-hanging fruit and will poop their pants and capitulate and pay into their scam.

In the long run, you either get Bristol Airport to get the PCN cancelled or you let it run its course and let a judge spank them in court. That or pay the scammers and be marked as a "mug" for future reference by these vermin and therefore become a part of the problem.

Coupon-mad

In my view, it is worth EVERYONE's time fighting this sort of scam.  If we didn't do what we do, you wouldn't have the statutory Code of Practice almost ready (as it is) for whichever Government is in power after July.