Car lease company paid PCN

kensiko

Hello all

I read the following 2 threads before writing an email to my car leasing company and am after some feedback if anyone can offer any:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6506031/parking-notices-paid-by-leasing-company
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6506750/car-lease-company-paid-private-parking-companys-parking-charge-sent-me-the-invoice-to-pay-them

The leasing company is Santander Consumer Finance (SCF) and as far as I am aware they are not associated with BVRLA apart from the wear and tear guide for returning vehicles.  For this reason I have not mentioned BVRLA in my email even though the threads above have mentioned them.

SCF recently sent me confusing email regarding a PCN which had a letter attached that they sent to Smart Parking passing my details over (which is far enough, you would say) but also the email stated no more action was needed as the 'fine' was paid.

I emailed for clarification and they advised the PCN was indeed paid.

After doing some research I have created a first draft which I will be sending SCF, so was after some feedback if anyone has anything to offer to add/edit/delete:

"The word 'parking' appears only once throughout the 20 clauses of the 'terms of hire agreement' which I signed and my copy is attached.

Clause 5.1.9 states:

'You will promptly reimburse us for all parking fines and other fixed penalties or charges that we have paid in relation to the vehicle. You will also pay us such sums as we consider reasonable to cover our administration costs connected with these payments. Our costs will be at least £30.'

Parking fines and fixed penalties/charges are are issued by the police, councils and the DVLA as per government guidance at https://www.gov.uk/parking-tickets

'Other parking tickets' are stated near the bottom of the page and include 'tickets from private companies' which the PCN in question is.

Fines issued by the police or council are a criminal matter. Private tickets are a civil one and are effectively an invoice for breaching the terms and conditions of parking.

Private tickets have no official legal standing by themselves and are not legally enforceable without court action.  They rely on me entering into a contract with the landowner by parking in the space which I have the right to appeal.

The Consumer Rights Act 2015 Part 2 Section 69 (1) states:

'If a term in a consumer contract, or a consumer notice, could have different meanings, the meaning that is most favourable to the consumer is to prevail.'

I would argue the clause in my contract covers only official criminal police or council issued parking fines with unofficial civil 'parking charge notices' not being referenced.

This favourable meaning is what I was led to beleive when signing.

In any case, paying ANY charge on my behalf is an unfair contract term as defined by The Consumer Rights Act 2015 Part 2.

Schedule 2 Paragraph 20 gives a specific example of an unfair term as it denies the opportunity to appeal:

'A term which has the object or effect of excluding or hindering the consumer’s right to take legal action or exercise any other legal remedy'

By you paying this PCN and taking full liability, I have been denied my right to appeal the PCN myself.

In summary, I would therefore ask for the £90 extra charges you have taken from my recent direct debit to be fully reimbursed on my next due direct debit.

The original £60 which you paid was part of:

1. a contract term which is very ambiguous in nature (CRA 2015 Part 2 Section 69 (1)) as it relates to criminal fines and penalties rather than civil parking charge notices and;

2.  an unfair contract term (Consumer Rights Act 2015 Part 2 & Schedule 2 Paragraph 20) by hindering my right to appeal

The £30 admin charge I would ask to be refunded as the contract term 5.1.9 states that the payment is for "costs connected with these payments".

If this is refused I will escalate this to your formal complaints department via https://www.santanderconsumer.co.uk/managing-your-contract-hire-account/make-a-contract-hire-complaint/ and furthermore to the FOS if that will be required."

Fruitcake

By paying the charge, the lease company hasn't hindered your right to appeal, it has removed it completely, which is an unfair contract term.

Half_way

Is this charge business to business or business to consumer ( ie you)?

You should also throw in that Smart parking are an un regulated so called parking company.

If this charge is by direct debit you should be able to reverse it, the lease company will hate this but you should give the hire/lease company notice that unless its re funded you will take this action.

Be prepared for a to and fro/fight as the hire company staff will more than likely not understand what private parking charges are and incorrectly label them as fines

doubledotcom

If you can't get the payment reversed by your bank, as a disputed payment, then you will have to sue SCF for the money.

You may want to remind SCF that under PoFA, all they were required to do in order to remove any liability to themselves is to transfer liability to you, the Hirer, together with a copy of the hire/lease agreement and a copy of the liability statement. Once that was done, they would be off the hook and (not so) Smart would have had to issue a Notice to Hirer (NtH) to you, in your name.

kensiko

Fruitcake said:

By paying the charge, the lease company hasn't hindered your right to appeal, it has removed it completely, which is an unfair contract term.

Good point, I have edited 'hindered' to 'removed' in my summary.

Half_way said:

Is this charge business to business or business to consumer ( ie you)?

You should also throw in that Smart parking are an un regulated so called parking company.

If this charge is by direct debit you should be able to reverse it, the lease company will hate this but you should give the hire/lease company notice that unless its re funded you will take this action.

Be prepared for a to and fro/fight as the hire company staff will more than likely not understand what private parking charges are and incorrectly label them as fines

This is B2C.

I will add on that I will reverse the DD should the refund be denied.

doubledotcom said:

If you can't get the payment reversed by your bank, as a disputed payment, then you will have to sue SCF for the money.

You may want to remind SCF that under PoFA, all they were required to do in order to remove any liability to themselves is to transfer liability to you, the Hirer, together with a copy of the hire/lease agreement and a copy of the liability statement. Once that was done, they would be off the hook and (not so) Smart would have had to issue a Notice to Hirer (NtH) to you, in your name.

Smart(ish) Parking don't bother with PoFA as can be seen on the attached PCN from Santander.
It is interesting they give them the option of paying OR passing my details on to them.  It seems they've done both as I had a copy of the letter attached that SCF allegedly sent Smart Parking passing on my details.  Even if the letter was sent, I would be VERY surprised if Smart Parking ever got in touch with me now the PCN has been paid.

Fruitcake

I would also suggest that by paying the charge, SCF accepted liability.

kensiko

I have made amendments to my first draft following helpful comments.  In the meantime I have received the following from SCF:

"Thank you for your email. As per our initial email we can confirm that  PCN XXXXX has been paid. 

Just to confirm the third party permissions letter was only provided to yourself and can be attached when contacting Smart Parking LTD."

So it seems they have just paid Smart Parking and the letter with my details on is for me to send to Smart Parking to appeal.  In what world do they think Smart Parking are ever going to contact me now?  I have however, started an appeal with SM just to see what they say.

Half_way

Just for the sake of "reasonableness"  Contact Smart parking regarding the parking charge notice, state that you are the hirer/lessee of the vehicle on that day, and you would like to appeal the parking charge notice from which you are seeking a full refund from Smart parking of the initial parking charge notice, plus any other fees.

If they have not complied with the protection of freedoms act you need to keep the following separate - all of them can be separate people/entities

The Owner

The Registered keeper ( ie lease/hire company)

The Hirer/lessee 

The Driver on the day 

Also, who's car park was this/where was it?

 You could try the car park owner with something similar to the message to smart - ie you are seeking a full recovery of costs form the car park owner as a result of them allowing an un regulated parking company onto their land, and as principal they are severally and jointly liable for the actions of their agents, in this case the un regulated so-called parking company, smart parking.

doubledotcom

(not so) Smart have their money. They're not going to give a toss about anything you may try to appeal to their better nature about giving the money back to the utter morons at SCF and issuing you an NtH.

Let's be reaslistic, the only way you are going to get your money back is by disrupting the payment with your bank and let SCF try and sue you for it. Or, you sue SCF for breach of your rights.

1505grandad

" Or, you sue SCF for breach of your rights."

I wonder if a house or car legal cover policy would cover this?

kensiko

An update from this thread as a few things have now happened.

A letter from Smart Parking following an appeal was received. 
As suspected, basically they said 'it's paid, thanks.'



Following this I officially complained to Santander and fairly quickly received the following:
TL;DR
We pay the reduced rate and it shouldn't stop you appealing (it did).
If the company won't consider the appeal send us a copy (this was sent).
We didn't used to do this but customers are a bit useless and didn't action the PCNs (so bow down to customers who are ignorant?)
There is is an internal process for appeals and credits can be applied if they agree (which it seems they didn't agree with mine).
We will not uphold your complaint but will refund the £30 admin fee.

________________________________________________________________

Our understanding of your complaint:

You are unhappy with our fines process and have requested a refund of the £60.00 fine recharge along with our £30.00 administration fee. Your reasoning for this is because:  

·         You feel that there is an unfair contract term (CRA 2015 Part 2 Section 69 (1)) removing your right to appeal the fine.

·         You feel that the contract term is very ambiguous in nature (CRA 2015 Schedule 2 Paragraph 20) as it relates to criminal fines and penalties rather than civil parking charge notices.

·         You feel that Smart Parking have not complied with PoFA 2012 meaning that we did not have keeper liability and should have passed liability onto you, as the hirer.

Our findings from the investigation:

I am sorry to hear of your dissatisfaction with the way we handle any fine notices. I have provided an explanation below, which justifies why we handle fines in the way we do. I hope this helps to provide you with some clarification.

Upon receipt of a fine or a penalty charge notice from an issuing authority, we will pay the fine at the discounted rate and this will be recharged to you with an administration fee of £30.00. We do advise within the terms of the lease hire agreement that an administration fee would be applied.

We will pay the fine from the issuing authority to prevent the costs from escalating further. Please be advised that this should not affect your ability to be able to dispute the fine with the issuing authority. You will receive an email containing a link to the fine letter and a Third-Party Permission letter. This will allow you to raise a dispute with the issuing authority directly should you not agree with it.

If the issuing authority won’t consider your appeal due to the fine being paid, please provide us with a copy of the appeal you submitted, and we will review the details of the appeal and provide a response to you regarding the charge that has been passed to you.

We have tried in the past to notify our customers of the fines incurred, which would allow them to appeal directly. However, we found that our email requests were not being actioned and as a result, the cost of the fine incurred was escalated. As you can imagine, customers were unhappy with the increased costs for the fines, and we have been left with little choice but to adjust our process to what we are now doing. 

This prevents escalated costs being incurred from the issuing authorities on the fines, in addition to our administration fee. Furthermore, we have an internal process for fines to be appealed and would credit any charges applied if we agree with the information submitted. Should we disagree with the reasons on an appeal, we would provide these to you, and should you remain unhappy, a complaint will be raised and a final response with your rights to refer to Financial Ombudsman would be provided.

There are instances where we will transfer liability to you, such as speeding fines or notifications from the Police, and an administration fee of £15.00 will apply in these circumstances. The Police will then write to you directly regarding the fine or penalty charge notice.

The information relating to fines is referenced on the Key Information page and can be found on Clauses 5.1.5 and 5.1.9. Furthermore, Clause 18 lists the charges applicable on the lease hire agreement. I would urge you to review these so that you are aware what you may be charged for in the future. 

By signing the lease hire agreement, you have agreed to be bound by the terms and have confirmed that you have read and understood the terms and conditions.

I understand you have contacted Smart Parking Ltd to appeal the parking charge (reference: xxxxxx). Within your email dated 18/11/2025 you kindly attached the correspondence you received from Smart Parking Ltd, in response to your appeal. I note that Smart Parking Ltd confirmed the following.

‘We cannot rescind the Parking Charge on this basis. We would like to advise that the site in question has a process in place whereby authorised individuals can report vehicle registration marks (VRMs) that they wish to be made exempt from the advertised terms, conditions and parking restrictions. Having thoroughly reviewed our records we can confirm that we have not received any correspondence from the site/an authorised individual regarding your vehicle, on or before the date of contravention. Therefore your vehicle was not authorised to remain on site as stated on the advertised Terms and Conditions.

We can confirm that the contravention of unauthorised parking occurred as your vehicle remained on site for 51 minutes. We can confirm that this PC has been issued correctly and we have made the decision to uphold the parking charge. The Terms and Conditions of the car park are clearly advertised around the site and must be adhered to by all drivers.’

Our decision:

After a full review and investigation into the points you have raised, I am unable to uphold your complaint on this occasion, as we have managed the fine notification in accordance with our process.

Whilst Smart Parking Ltd have confirmed that the parking charge has been issued correctly, as a gesture of goodwill, as this is the first fine you have received, I have applied a £30.00 credit to your account to cover our administration fee. The £30.00 credit will be applied to your December rental invoice, which will reduce the amount payable from £xxx to £xxx.

Please note, should we receive any future fine notifications, we will continue to handle them in line with our process, which is outlined above.

I appreciate this may not have been the outcome you were hoping for, but this letter represents our final decision. However, if you have any additional information that has not previously been presented and therefore has not been considered when we investigated your complaint, please contact us using the details provided. 

If you remain dissatisfied with our response and there is no additional information to be submitted, you have the right to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, free of charge – but you must do so within six months of the date of this letter. Further details can be obtained from their website http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/consumer-leaflet.htm.

If you do not refer your complaint in time, the Ombudsman may not have our permission to consider your complaint and so will only be able to do so in limited circumstances. 

________________________________________________________________