PCN has gone to Court Claim - Advice sought on defence

hommegris

Hi there

A simple case of mis-keying on a parking ticket machine in a car park managed by Parking Eye has been defended (following the advice in the Newbies thread) through all stages, but has got to receiving a court claim raised by DCBL.

I'm now following the 'template' defence suggestion thread and I've got to section 3 where I think the POC is clearly stated, so I'm down to using the keying error as that part of the defence.

I've used ChatGPT to generate the defence - has anyone got any comments or suggestions?

The Defendant denies that any parking charge was properly incurred. The required parking tariff was paid in full at the payment machine, and the Defendant has contemporaneous bank evidence confirming that payment. The Defendant entered the vehicle registration mark correctly; however, unbeknown to the Defendant, the payment machine had retained characters entered by a previous user, with the result that the registration recorded against the payment was incorrect.

This was therefore not a failure to pay for parking, nor an attempt to avoid the parking terms. The Defendant complied with the substantive requirement to purchase parking and reasonably believed that the registration entered had been accepted correctly. Any mismatch between the vehicle registration and the payment record arose from the design and/or operation of the Claimant's payment equipment, over which the Defendant had no control.

The Claimant has therefore suffered no loss of parking revenue and could readily have matched the payment made at the material time with the vehicle recorded by its ANPR system. Pursuing a substantial parking charge in circumstances where the tariff was paid and the apparent registration error was caused by the payment machine is disproportionate and does not establish the alleged contractual breach.

And a second question if I may. Is there any reason why I shouldn't include sections 4 through 10 from the suggested template defence - are they all applicable?

Gr1pr

All 10 paragraphs are applicable

Its definitely NOT DCBL, its DCB LEGAL that issued the claim, not the debt collectors

I presume that there is no actual breach pleaded, so use the Chan and Akande defence template, same as dozens of other cases on here, not an AI defence paragraph

Post the Issue date from the top right of the claim form below

hommegris

Thanks for the reply.
Apologies for confusing DCB Legal and DCBL.
The issue date is 18th September - I have already submitted the Acknowledgement of Service through MCOL - I think that means I have until 21st October to submit the defence.
I hadn't seen the Chan and Akande template - I was going off the Template defence suggestion thread linked from the Newbies thread.
I've added the POC for clarity (the Chan and Akande text references the POC) - sincere apologies if I'm asking dumb questions but are you saying that all I should do is use the Chan and Akande text in section 3 and totally remove all the reference to the keying error?

Gr1pr

Correct, but Parking Eye & DCB LEGAL are mentioned in the defence template thread, to use Chan and Akande as paragraph 3, because no breach has been pleaded in that POC

You may possibly add and extra paragraph after 3 stating that full payment was made by the driver ( if true )

Save the background information for any future WS

hommegris

Thanks so much for your guidance on this. It took a while for the penny to drop that although the POC uses the word 'breach' it's not specific enough to actually be a breach so Chan and Akande is relevant (if I have indeed interpreted the situation correctly) - thanks also for your patience with me.

Coupon-mad

Yes you have got that right now.

Fifth one the same, answered in 24 hours!

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82155055#Comment_82155055

🙂

MrJenkinsEsq

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82155782#Comment_82155782

I can read the VRM and site location.

hommegris

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82155882#Comment_82155882

Thank you. I've edited, is it OK now?

MrJenkinsEsq

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82155886#Comment_82155886

Yep perfect 🙂

Coupon-mad

Yep!

Advice is as per the other four. See link!

Le_Kirk

With an issue date of 18/09/26 and providing you complete(d) the AoS before or on 07/10/26 your defence deadline date is 4.00 p.m. on 21/10/26