More UHCW woes

elsien

Yet again the system failed to show my entry time so I had to guess, and yet again the sun was shining on the screen so it was hard to read. I remember that I had intended to pay for 3 hours to be on the safe side but checking my parking ticket I only paid for two - I know that's not going to matter to them but I am miffed with myself for not double checking the screen. An overstay of 36 minutes. Letter from CPP

Any grounds to appeal this, or am I now in sitting and waiting territory? PALS used to have a sign up saying "not us squire" - I do need to check that but was visiting as a professional not as a patient so not sure what would apply. Are CPP one of the ones that take it to court?

Thank you.

Car1980

I would pay for an hour on the Evology app and save the evidence. Then email CPP and tell them their payment machines are invisible in the sun. As the letter has highlighted you paid for 2 hours, not the 3 you thought you saw on the screen, you have paid the additional hour via the app as a goodwill gesture.

Hardly your fault if the screen is in the sun, which I've seen before.

CPP / Parking Eye do make claims but discontinue virtually all of them nowadays. But always good to go into a court claim looking like the reasonable one and the other side being out of pocket by £0 and looking like grifters.

Coupon-mad

It'll be a waiting game and all claims are discontinued. No worries.

But paying for the extra hour now - by app - is a great tactic because the signs we see and assume were there don't require drivers to pay whilst on site before leaving. Thus, if ever there was a hearing you can say the terms as drafted on their signs weren't breached.

elsien

The app won’t let me pay an extra hour retrospectively. If I put the September date in as the starting date, then it automatically moves to today as the leaving time, and tries to charge me 180 odd quid. I could pay using today’s date, but that’s potentially quite confusing?

Coupon-mad

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82158385#Comment_82158385

Nobody was asking you to change the date. Just pay using today's date.

elsien

Quick update. As expected PALS have indeed come back with a generic "not us squire" response and have signposted to the PFI provider. I'm not convinced that they got any further than the word "parking" as I'm fairly sure they've not read any of the rest of the email. I had intended to go via the chief exec rather than PALS but I hit send before I added that bit.

Given that I am still waiting for a reply from the PFI provider around an email sent ref an incorrect speculative invoice sent during covid, I have responded to PALS by not accepting that response and requesting an escalation within the trust.

Holding out no hope that this will make any difference but that is not the point.

elsien

Further hospital response, again just for information.

University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust operates under a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract and the car parks at University Hospital are managed by our Private Finance Initiative Service Provider and this is operated on their behalf by the Car Parking Partnership. They are not agents of the Trust and there is no direct operational contact.

However, I have forwarded your email to our service provider and requested that they undertake a review into the issue of the PCN and contact you directly.

GrannyKate

To be fair to PALS their role is really for patients and service users but in this instance their hands are tied by the structure of PFI contracts. Neither the hospital Trust nor the NHS own the car park - one of the many consequences of the experiment with PFI.

NHS Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts are long-term agreements where private consortia finance, design, build, and maintain hospital facilities in exchange for decades of annual "unitary payments" from NHS trusts

The government stopped approving new PFI projects in 2018 due to high costs, inflexibility, and public financial risk, though legacy contracts continue to run into the 2040s.