PCN issued for parking in EV bay without charging

lennyb15

At the weekend, whilst staying in a hotel and using the recommended public car park, I was issued a PCN for parking my EV in an EV bay without charging.

The car park had a max stay of 3 days, so no issue there with over staying. I paid the parking charges required to park there over the weekend, there was no max limit on how long I could charge for.

Having travelled nearly 300 miles to the hotel, my car was low on charge so I decided to charge in the car park over night from Sat to Sun morning and get my car to 100% so I could get home again on Sun. Scottish Power who operated the charging offered a reduced charging rate from 8pm to 8am, so I parked up at 8pm in the EV bay, plugged in, started the charging and went to my hotel. As expected to charge from around 15% to 100% was going to take all night, so I left the car there until morning. 

When I came back to the car the following morning, the PCN was on the windscreen as the car was fully charged and was therefore no longer charging, having finished charging a couple of hours before.

Is this unreasonable, given the car was charging for the entire night, but I didn't go back to the car as soon as the charging was completed!!

Castle

Was the car park in Scotland?

lennyb15

No, South West England.

Gr1pr

Reasonable or not,  it is what it is, most private parking charges are unreasonable in one way or another 

Post the name of the parking company 

Study the advice in the newbies sticky thread in announcements near the top of the forum 

Do you have the V5c or is the vehicle leased or hired  ?

Is it registered in Scotland or Northern Ireland   ?  Or is it registered in England and Wales   ?

Try to obtain pictures of the signage on that private property and post pictures below 

Focus on the basics,  no whether it was unreasonable or not 

Coupon-mad

Which parking firm?

Windscreen PCN only? How long ago?

lennyb15

Coupon-mad said:

Which parking firm?

Windscreen PCN only? How long ago?

It's a council run car park, the PCN was on the windscreen yesterday morning.

lennyb15

Gr1pr said:

Reasonable or not,  it is what it is, most private parking charges are unreasonable in one way or another 

Post the name of the parking company 

Study the advice in the newbies sticky thread in announcements near the top of the forum 

Do you have the V5c or is the vehicle leased or hired  ?

Is it registered in Scotland or Northern Ireland   ?  Or is it registered in England and Wales   ?

Try to obtain pictures of the signage on that private property and post pictures below 

Focus on the basics,  no whether it was unreasonable or not 

Council car park, not private. I stupidly didn't get pictures of the signage, but don't recall anything there around how long to charge and specific allowed not charging time. I'll see if a relative who lives near there can get some pictures for me.

The vehicle is through my company car scheme so I'm not on the V5, it's registered in the UK. 

Coupon-mad

Oh dear. Pay it at the discount because if you aren't on the V5 you don't even get an appeal chance without throwing away the discount.

ChirpyChicken

Coupon-mad said:

Oh dear. Pay it at the discount because if you aren't on the V5 you don't even get an appeal chance without throwing away the discount.

Agreed pay up and move on

lennyb15

ok, thanks. Frustrating, tried to save some money using the overnight cheap charging rate, ended up paying the same as I would have with a superfast charger when the PCN is taken into account. Thanks all for the advice

Exodi

lennyb15 said:

ok, thanks. Frustrating, tried to save some money using the overnight cheap charging rate, ended up paying the same as I would have with a superfast charger when the PCN is taken into account. Thanks all for the advice

I presume the requirement that you need to unplug it during the night is exactly the reason it's cheap.

I'm surprised it was expected to take all night to charge, which implies it was a 7.1kWh charger - output you typically see in home EV chargers as opposed to chargeable public commercial ones. It could be possible that it was significantly faster and your EV actually charged in an hour or two from 8pm and then sat there the whole night blocking the charger.

I usually check my EV app to see how fast it's charging then set a alarm for when I expect it to finish. This is because, at least in the hotels I've been to, overstay charges are plastered all over the charger (which I guess I'm happy about as there's nothing more frustrating than a car left in an EV bay that's not charging - especially somewhere as critical as a hotel where you can expect many people would arrive with low battery like you).