advice needed please (smart parking)

gremlins2025

Hello,
I received a letter from Smart Parking with a charge of £60 if paid in the first 14 days, then increasing to £170 as the keeper of the vehicle. This was for parking on private land, it was at a diner car park in which the driver stopped for only a total of 13 minutes whilst passengers visited inside intending to look at the menu and ask if a child could use the toilet however after waiting for staff to be available they were quite abrupt and said no to using the toilet saying just to go around the corner to another businesses/ public toilets in quite a rude manner so they decided against looking at the menu and ordering at this point and left . The driver couldn't see any signs relating to parking in the car park just one sign saying it was the diner's car park, which is located just off a motorway.

After looking at the reviews for the diner online there are dozens of reviews saying the same thing ( no signs about parking, apparently when you are seated inside and ordered then staff bring a tablet to put your reg in to register for the free parking and some customers say they still received a fine after doing this because the tablets hadnt registered it properly, in this case nothing was mentioned about parking or the tablet registration. None of the people in the vehicle saw any signage stipulating anything parking related however there could have been and it been missed but this is doubtful as so many reviews on this diner on google reviews/ trip advisor etc all say there were no signs and people are getting fines for parking wether they were paying customers or not and one case where the owner replied to a review saying they were rightly fined £60 for 8 minutes when someone pulled up for a break from driving and a drink before carrying on because they did not buy anything from his diner and so they chose to break the rules they should pay.

This letter was followed by a debt recovery letter, which claimed 4 letters were sent, and i have chosen to ignore the fine and letters (I have only received the initial letter mentioned, followed by this one, not 4 like they claim i have received) and i have to get in touch to discuss payment plans and options. Upon reading the newbies section, I realise this isn't recommended, but not sure where to go from here?  according to the letter i have missed the window to appeal and according to the debt recovery letter and website i cannot talk to them about the debt apart from to make a payment or payment plan i am too late to appeal etc. the total according to this is now £170 and soon set to increase to over 200 and sounds like i would get nowhere complaining given the owners comment previously and seems unlikely staff will help.

Gr1pr

So I assume that you read post 4 , ignore the powerless debt collectors letters   ?  So do so

You are waiting for the letters in post 2 to arrive,  the LoC,  followed by the N1SDT court claim pack from the CNBC in Northampton using MCOL 

Come back to this thread if or when they arrive,  meanwhile you are at the impasse stage,  neither side budging,  you are not paying,  they are not backing down 

Car1980

No contract if no signage.

Coupon-mad

There were signs. Not prominent but there are always signs so don't go down that rabbit-hole.

Obviously you ignore the £170 threatograms but we expect you know that already from reading the 4th post of the NEWBIES FAQS announcement thread and also the MSE parking tickets Guide linked at the top of every page.

Re this:

according to the debt recovery letter and website i cannot talk to them about the debt apart from to make a payment or payment plan i am too late to appeal etc.

You have the exact same DRPlus letter as everyone gets ... and you ignore it. There are pictures in the NEWBIES thread already.

But show us the webpage screenshot you are talking about, please.