Parking charge notice appeal denied

kilotopy

Hi, I recently got a parking charge notice from company Parkingeye. First and foremost, now I am aware I shouldn’t have interacted with this notice at all but now I have done so and looking for the best way to go ahead about this.

It was in Edinburgh Meadowbank Sports Centre and I have been playing football for years there. They have introduced the new parking system where I needed to put my registration plate inside the building to get the free parking, which I have failed to do as I was unaware.

I have made an appeal with the following arguments:

• ⁠I am the customer of the site and I have been a customer at the time of event; I have provided them with evidence which was a booking of the venue in my name for the specified time (long term booking for the entire year). I have also provided them with payment proof for the person who collects payments for the game

• ⁠the day it happened, it was really heavy rain in Edinburgh and there was significant traffic on the way there, making me arrive quite late to the venue. Due to arriving by late and the adverse weather conditions, I have missed the new signings they put, likely only a few days later. I also had only a few minutes to change and get sorted so I rushed to the changing room without paying attention if there were new signs (having played in the same venue for years you don’t assume that randomly one day they change parking rules)

Anyway, I felt like the arguments were compelling so I decided to make an appeal instead of ignoring it, as I would imagine they would come to their senses. But they rejected the appeal because my reg plate was not in their system (no !!!!!! Sherlock, if it were, I wouldn’t get the pcn in the first place). They seem to disregarded my argumentation completely, but offered a significant discount from 60/100 to 20 pounds. This clearly seems to me like they are just chancing that I won’t be bothered to chase this up with popla, but I totally am ready to do that because I feel like my arguments are totally valid. I was indeed customer of the site, I just simply did not put my reg plate in the machine inside because I was not aware of the new rules and I missed the newly added signage because of adverse weather conditions.

The question is whether it’s worthwhile to actually make appeal to popla, are they likely to have common sense unlike parkingeye or is it just a waste of time?

If the latter, do I pay the 20 quid and just take an L or ignore any further communication? I could have just ignored it from the get go but now that I made the appeal I acknowledged the receipt of the noice. I don’t think they would take to court over this and if they did, I’m sure court would see sense unlike them. What I would like to avoid is this charge having an adverse effect on my credit rating, whilst I already have a mortgage and not planning to take more loans anytime soon, I would prefer not to bust my pretty much perfect score.

What do you reckon? Any help here would be appreciated! Thanks

Ps. Also on the same day at least 4-5 other people from our group got the same charge notice, so it’s not like I was the only one to miss the new signs.

Brie

I know that the rules for Scotland are different than for England (& possibly Wales) so you'll need to wait for the experts to wander back to their pcs for all the details.

But I do know that generally it's said that you shouldn't pay anything.  And that Plan A is to talk to the venue and ask for the PCNs to be pulled for all of you.  Hopefully as a long term regular customer they will be willing to help.

Coupon-mad

As it is in Scotland, just ignore it completely if the landowner won't cancel the PCN.

prowla

The only error is in assuming that the people receiving the appeal give a damn about anything other than getting your money.
Their kind £20 offer sort of hints they know they're on a loser.

James_Poisson

They are supposed to put up extra notices where there is a "material change" which is written in to their ATA's COP, so that regular users know the rules have changed and they have to do this for four months before enforcing their new scheme.

That's why they are trying the con of the £20 admin fee, but they won't go anywhere with it in Scotland any way.