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Just finished mediation...
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ThisJustIn
Posts: 5 Forumite
Had Mediation with Excel.
Went as this forum advised to expect. They dropped from £180 odd to £100.Nothing great.
My questions is should I take it - I have 24 hours to decide.
Outline of case is as follows:
Vehicle belongs to a charity and we have various drivers that visit about 180 parking bays a year. The company pays for tickets so there is no reason for anyone to ever not get one. We still get at least 4 spurious PCNs a year. This year two have already been thrown out and another is in process.
In this case no one saw a ticket on our windscreen, we did not receive letters until MCOL stage, albeit the mediator suggested that this is an unlikely scenario and the judge would not buy it.
I offered to pay £5 as a courtesy in MCOL - this looks to have been a mistake! However, with the date of alleged contravention being many months ago, the parking bay being more than 200 miles away and no one having any recollection of the details nor proof of payment available (the charity reimburses small sums of petty cash without need for receipts and the parking fee was something like £3) it is going to be difficult, if not impossible, to argue the case with physical evidence.
My indignant gut says we should not pay because there was no contravention but my head says perhaps we ought to pay because proving there was no contravention may not be possible for the reasons outlined
So simple question to my fellow forumers. To pay or not to pay?
Many thanks
Justin.
Went as this forum advised to expect. They dropped from £180 odd to £100.Nothing great.
My questions is should I take it - I have 24 hours to decide.
Outline of case is as follows:
Vehicle belongs to a charity and we have various drivers that visit about 180 parking bays a year. The company pays for tickets so there is no reason for anyone to ever not get one. We still get at least 4 spurious PCNs a year. This year two have already been thrown out and another is in process.
In this case no one saw a ticket on our windscreen, we did not receive letters until MCOL stage, albeit the mediator suggested that this is an unlikely scenario and the judge would not buy it.
I offered to pay £5 as a courtesy in MCOL - this looks to have been a mistake! However, with the date of alleged contravention being many months ago, the parking bay being more than 200 miles away and no one having any recollection of the details nor proof of payment available (the charity reimburses small sums of petty cash without need for receipts and the parking fee was something like £3) it is going to be difficult, if not impossible, to argue the case with physical evidence.
My indignant gut says we should not pay because there was no contravention but my head says perhaps we ought to pay because proving there was no contravention may not be possible for the reasons outlined
So simple question to my fellow forumers. To pay or not to pay?
Many thanks
Justin.
0
Comments
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Did they comply with POFA to hold YOU, the charity, liable?
The charity is presumably the registered keeper, but is presumably NOT the keeper of the vehicle?
Who is? WHere is your log of who was driving, as you need one to satisfy your S172 obligations...0 -
Only you can decide if it's worth it. Defending will take time and effort but a victory will see you £100 up on the deal.
It also costs them a fair amount to go to court. That's if they even bother. A few ppcs have a habit of dropping it at the last minute.0 -
I have a golden rule when I see questions like
To pay or not to pay
Do not ask us or dump the decision on us
This is a consumer rights forum, not a legal advice forum
I rarely tell anyone to pay, but we do not have enough details to make an informed decision anyway, we have not seen the signs, or the landowner contract, or the PCN or ntk, or the V5C either
You expect a definitive answer based on little detail, which is why your question won't be answered
Martin would tell you to consult a lawyer, and he would be right, especially as you have various legal obligations as mentioned above
If you need help to defend this you will get good advice here, which we dish out daily
So if you or your charity wish to fight this PCN, we will help
I definitely won't participate in a shall we pay or not topic0 -
To my mind, mediation can work if it's a family matter but NOT in parking scam tickets.
All Excel have done is dropped it to the first charge of £100. The other £80, the scam amount, is no skin off their nose is it.
Put simply, mediators are clueless in these cases. Any mediator worth their salt would have asked about that extra add-on
Just because the mediator said "a judge would not buy it" is piffle.
I am assuming that Excel have added fake charges. If so, what happening recently in Southampton by DJ Taylor. This judge "did buy it" and dismissed the case as ABUSE OF PROCESS
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=6014081
I would proceed to this being heard by a real judge and if the charges exceed what is allowed, there is a very good chance it will be thrown out regardless of what happened.
The point now, will Excel subject themselves to Abuse of Process0 -
@RedX
Of course, "to pay or not to pay" is trite.
Underlying it though is the larger question of defensibility.
They have been canny in leaving it so long that no one could reasonably be expected to have the evidence any longer. We don't.
They say that a PCN was left on the windscreen and that we had multiple opportunities to respond. We have not seen these and all we could say is that in other similar cases where we have seen PCNs or had letters we have responded accordingly.
Sadly, my suspicion is that this is not a strong and proper defence which is why, reluctantly, I am considering paying up unless someone can shed light on an alternative option - I've read the forum widely and understand exploring legality of signs etc. However driving up to look at the signs and so on would cost more than the fine.
All feels a bit unfair but perhaps I'll have to live with that on this occasion and so they win by default.
Thanks again for your comment.
x0 -
Personally, I would not pay, but I am an OAP with lots of spare time, and
the hearing would be at a a court a free bus ride away.You never know how far you can go until you go too far.0 -
Where did the heinous crime occur? Without knowing details it's difficult to say defence points but a few are: forbidding signs. Do the signs say "No stopping" or the suchlike? Typically found at airports.
Lack of POFA compliance. Excel used to use appalling paperwork. I don't know if it's got any better.
Lack of grace period. How long were you parked?
Inflated costs. Have they added on spurious "debt collectors" fees?
Unclear signage.
There are more but details would help.0 -
ThisJustIn wrote: »@RedX
Of course, "to pay or not to pay" is trite.
Underlying it though is the larger question of defensibility.
They have been canny in leaving it so long that no one could reasonably be expected to have the evidence any longer. We don't.
They say that a PCN was left on the windscreen and that we had multiple opportunities to respond. We have not seen these and all we could say is that in other similar cases where we have seen PCNs or had letters we have responded accordingly.
Sadly, my suspicion is that this is not a strong and proper defence which is why, reluctantly, I am considering paying up unless someone can shed light on an alternative option - I've read the forum widely and understand exploring legality of signs etc. However driving up to look at the signs and so on would cost more than the fine.
All feels a bit unfair but perhaps I'll have to live with that on this occasion and so they win by default.
Thanks again for your comment.
x
I have been coming here 6 years and we have seen the Excel and VCS business models discussed to death in that time
You could do more research on this instead of expecting a yes or no answer
You seem to think this case is unique, well it's not
You could give us the facts so that an informed decision could be made
The lack of details keeps coming up by several posters including me
You have not shown us the defence that was submitted
Try doing this daily like we do before expecting a yes or no answer to a so called simple question that has a complicated background and history
Of course they play the current flawed system
Why do you think the MP,s have enacted a new law to enable regulation ?
They did so because of the flawed system of course, plus pressure from people like me and many others who complained about it
Do some research and get involved, same as your charity tells people on a daily basis, knowledge is power, but paying con men isnt and you should have come here months or years ago before you became out of your depth0 -
SHow us your defence, otherwise how can we know if you have a case?0
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I'm afraid that was our defence. We just stuck to the truth. We said that we had paid to park as we always do, we didn't receive notice of a problem until very late. We offered to pay again for the avoidance of doubt plus a sum for inconvenience - the fiver.
I thought we were being pretty honourable about the whole thing.
Apologies to Red X, I know it must be infuriating. However, I have spent several days looking over the excellent, but truth be told overwhelming quantity of information here: Gladstone, BW solicitors, Beavis case, CEL - I could answer a quiz on it and I can see that had I come here earlier things would have been easier but I didn't get that chance sadly.
Thanks for all your help in any case.0
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