What's the issue everyone has with parking tickets?

Legal frameworks exist under which parking companies can collect charges from drivers and also from registered keepers (excluding Scotland).

However, it is costly for PPCs to follow them. They cut corners, break the law, and use scare tactics to extract money from people.

If they don't follow the legal frameworks available to them then they have no right to claim any money is owed to them. Most here are for the rule of law and most PPCs are not.

The question of morality can only be asked after PPCs adhere to the rule of law. e.g. Is the law itself just? Should it be okay for PPCs to have a legal framework that allows them to charge £100 for parking slightly over a line?

Deastons wrote: »

So they're issuing tickets where they shouldn't be? Surely the onus is on the PPC to prove you've done wrong. If they can't prove it, they can't insist you pay the fine. So where's the problem?

Deastons, the two basic problems are these:


The MO of the PPC and the amounts they charge.


The MO:
The MO is to bully and harass until a driver who has a GOOD reason to expect a pcn to be cancelled pays it. They reject virtually every first layer appeal. If they're a BPA member, you then get to appeal to POPLA. POPLA adjudicators are woefully untrained and apply a reverse burden of proof. They are also not regulated or accountable.
So eg. a driver says "the signs were badly positioned, not lit, very small, and I couldn't see them", the PPC says "there were plenty of legible signs" and POPLA believes the PPC because the driver has not proved their point. POPLA has no complaints procedure and doesn't consistently apply the correct principles - you can make 5 identical appeals to 5 adjudicators and 1 might succeed but he other 4 get rejected.
If they aren't a BPA member, but an IPC member, you get to appeal to IAS. IAS is owned by the people who own the IPC. So their interests are firmly in the camp of the PPCs. Virtually all appeals are rejected and it appears that those which succeed are quite literally picked out of a hat so that IAS can say that x% of appeals succeed and give the illusion of giving all appeals proper consideration. They are even less accountable than POPLA.
After appeals are exhausted, the PPC then goes to different debt collectors, who write on a frequent basis, adding on unjustified (and non-contractual) extra charges which the PPC doesn't actually ever have to pay, and making alarming threats about CCJs and bad credit which lead ordinary folk to believe that if they lose they will have a CCJ and never be able to get a mortgage (which is balderdash, great word eh?).
Then they start writing letters from solicitors, but they aren't from the solicitors they are actually still from debt collectors.
Eventually, they instruct solicitors, or take it back in-house, and write a formal Letter Before Claim repeating all the threats, and adding on extra charges for good measure. Then they issue a claim. Then they pursue the claim, even if the driver/RK has a good defence. They run these cases on a shoestring conveyor belt, and don't even seem to read the defences. The court system for small claims is also run on a shoestring and the court doesn't pick up on the fact that the claim is ALWAYS without fail very shoddily drafted. Although people know it's a parking charge, they only really understand the basis of the claim (breach of contract, the contract being offered in the signage) if they find their way here or to a similar self-help forum.
The point is, the PPC does not weed out the strong defences and give in. They just carry on regardless.
Some people give in at the start.
Others ignore and bury their heads
Others find their way here and start their battle planning very early on.
Of those who either deliberately don't give in or bury their heads, a percentage of these give in and pay after a few months of threatening letters.
Of those still in the game, many give up when faced with a court claim, which they find terrifying.
Of those who have a claim and still don't pay, some defend badly, others just don't turn up at court.
The PPCs have 6 years to sue, so often they are writing to an old address and people often discover a CCJ they never knew about, for a parking ticket they didn't know about or assumed had been cancelled following appeal/correspondence.
Even those who prepare for the battle, and battle valiantly all the way to court with a strong defence, the PPCs STILL carry on. Because a percentage of even these folk will give in rather than actually go to court.


The cases they lose they treat as a loss leader.
The cases they win cost them more in legal fees than they actually recover. But again a loss leader.


So that's their MO. Bully, bully, bully.


Next the charge. My local council charges £50 for a parking ticket, £25 if paid within 14 days. Most PPCs offer £100, discounted to £60/70. There is no justification for these levels of charges.


Examples:
The real scourge of PPCs - residential. They get brought in by naïve management companies/committees, who don't realise that all they want to do is make money and that if there is nobody else to ticket then they will ticket residents - eg whose permit has fallen off the windscreen, but which is actually face up on the passenger seat and can quite clearly be seen, or where someone's changed their car and forgotten to register their new one on the white list. They accept no excuses and just carry on indiscriminately.


PPCs operating in car parks of businesses where drivers can "sign in" on a tablet at reception for free parking. Only the tablet often doesn't work. Even when you can show you were using the gym/pub (or whatever) and explain that it wasn't working and how the manager has told you this is a frequent issue, they say "well you didn't enter your reg on the tablet so we're entitled to £100 off you". And then, as per their MO, they sue.


Then there are the PPCs whose operatives deliberately photograph cars at an angle to make it appear that there was no permit or P&D ticket. When there was one. You then say "look at my photo, my permit/ticket was right there!" they'll say "well our photos show it wasn't". There was even one case of a driver ticketed because IT WAS SNOWING AND THE SNOW COVERED UP THEIR PERMIT!!!! IIRC there was also one where it was rainy so the permit couldn't be read even though it was correctly displayed.


Then there are the ANPR tickets, where ANPR, notorious for malfunctioning, misrecords data and the PPC just makes it up or just won't investigate and admit they are wrong. Eg a driver goes to the supermarket on Friday, then goes back on Saturday because they forgot something. ANPR doesn't record them leaving and returning, or the data is there but is not noticed. So they get a ticket telling them their car was there for 30 hours. Even when the driver can show the PPC that they were elsewhere, the PPC still pursues them and sues them.


Then there are those PPCs who deliberately fake evidence and lie in court about it (eg doctoring APNR data, the example about photos taken from an obscure angle etc).


I could go on. But I won't. This is about more than just a wilful "I ignored the signs and the terms, but if I can get out of it on a technicality I will".

LoadsofChildren - as usual - speaks a lot of sense. Deastons please do read and digest!

Having said that there is a kernel of truth in the OP. From a residential point of view most ManCos/MAs/freeholders aren't going to introduce a PPC unless there is an ongoing parking infraction - be that by residents or someone from outside the estate. Certainly, other solutions (parking posts when there are allocated spaces for example) should be tried and I do think that there is, in some cases, too quick a jump to the PPC.

But, also, there is someone out there who thinks it's fine for themselves to "break the rules" as long as their car is parked. I, absolutely, agree that about not being ticketed in your own space but there are other issues. In the last 24 hours on here there are three instances where I've thought "you selfish so and so". Fortunately, some posters (IamEmanresu and UmKomaas spring to mind) do comment strongly on this.

And, that's where I get more than a bit p""""'d off with PPCs and the current system. Because they have more of an eye for the prize than, as others have said, proper car park management. By getting it wrong (be that signage, process or whatever) , as well as persecuting those who should not be, they allow the proper culprits to get away with it.

Fergie76 wrote: »

OP, what PPC do you work for?

Unwarranted and unnecessary. See post #41 where OP explains where they were lacking in the experience others on here have gained.