SABA late-pay, accidentally paid for the day before

lfhfl250

Hi, 

I have looked through the thread but am yet to find someone who had a similar situation to mine. I know there is the likelihood that it will still undoubtedly be the same advice from everyone but forgive me, I'm new to this (first parking charge and its my first job, commuting to London on the train so I'm as newbie as it gets). 

I paid for my parking at Tring Station using the 'late-pay' option on the SABA app. Done this at least 10 times before, with no bother. This time the app glitched? and I mistakenly paid for the day before at 11am. Considering SABA doesn't allow you to pay any later than midnight the day you parked without getting charged, I have no idea how it allowed me to do this. 

I received a letter (see below). Stupidly I appealed the decision because I thought they would be nice and see that the money had been paid, and that my car had not been there the day before. Of course, the appeal was denied. (also see below). I definitely used the words 'I' and 'my car' in the process, so they know I was the driver and not just the registered keeper. They also use an ANPR system at Tring, but this only had pictures of my reg plate. 

I just need to confirm with someone, do I ignore it all now? Do I appeal again to the next level? I'm not sure if I shot myself in the foot appealing it the first time around, and whether all this hassle with court dates and threatening letters is worth it for the mental stress.
I welcome any advice at all! Thank you in advance 

LDast

Just report SABA to the police. This is not a real Penalty Notice. SABA is a private company with no legal authority to issue or enforce penalties under Railway Byelaws. Only a Train Operating Company or other 'authority' can issue a genuine Penalty Notice, and any money must be paid to the public purse—not to a private company.

This also cannot be a Parking Charge Notice (PCN), because a PCN is a civil matter based on a contract. It must be clearly presented as a civil contractual charge, not disguised as a criminal penalty. If a private company issues a notice that looks like a fine or uses legal-sounding language to suggest criminal consequences, that is deliberately misleading.

What laws are being broken?

Under Section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006, this is:

Fraud by false representation – when someone dishonestly makes a false statement to gain money or cause someone a loss.

SABA is pretending the notice is a real criminal penalty, when it isn’t, and demanding payment by threatening prosecution they cannot carry out. That is a false representation made for financial gain, and it should be reported to the police.

If you choose to ignore it, nothing will actually happen apart from a load of powerless debt recovery threats. Either report them or ignore it.

Coupon-mad

No - don't report SABA to the Police. There's literally no point.

You could try POPLA, to waste a month or two.

But no paying this PCN.

Just ignore the PCN and letters from ZZPS and Moorside Legal (please don't show us those). It is a byelaws 'Penalty Notice' (so they say) and legally, that cannot go to the county court and will time out after just 6 months.

skuther

Am i right in the thinking that in the (unlikely) event of a successful byelaw prosecution (via magistrates court), the money from fines and penalties goes to the local authority or the relevant government department responsible for the byelaw, not to the private prosecutor - so neither their client nor the private company would get a penny... which provides no motivation for them to take that route unless you had done something terrible (which paying for parking but getting the day wrong is not) and they needed it to be a genuine penalty and deterent for future offenses.

ChirpyChicken

Money would go to the train operating company