Parking charge notice- now received county court claim form

clare7 · 17 October 2016 at 4:55PM

Hi all,

There is a SIP car park near my office and I park on there when I go to the office, they offer pay by phone parking which is how I always pay.

One day in May I parked in the car park and tried to pay via the pay by phone app and it was not working- I kept getting an error message that said 'parking not available at this time please refer to current signage' of which there was none. I didn't have any change on me for the meter so parked and kept trying. I finally managed to get the app to work a few hours later and paid the normal day rate of £2.20. Then I returned to my car to find a parking charge notice. I read that you should not give your address to companies (scammers) so instead of emailing or calling I wrote a letter, explaining that i'd paid the day rate, they hadn't technically lost any money, problem with their provider for the app, the fact i'd parked there over 60 times etc etc etc. I thought that would be the end of it and the on 20th September I received a Letter before claim from a solicitors. Again not wanting to disclose any of my details I ignored this and hoped that would be the last i'd hear. Then today i've received a county court business centre claim form, claiming:

Amount claimed £153.39
Court fee £25
Legal costs £50.00
Total £228.39

I've read through various threads but there's so much information i'm struggling to determine what is the best option.

Do I pay the £228.39 and learn a lesson that I should have communicated better with SIP- maybe sent the letter recorded delivery?

Do I try and appeal to the court business centre as previously tried with SIP?

I don't know if it's worth noting that I have had an issue with the Pay by Phone app before resulting in a penalty charge notice from a local authority that was reversed upon appeal. I also have a screen shot of the error message from the app that day.

Any information anyone could provide would be much appreciated.

Many thanks
Clare

bargepole · 17 October 2016 at 5:16PM

clare7 wrote: »

Do I pay the £228.39 and learn a lesson that I should have communicated better with SIP- maybe sent the letter recorded delivery?

Do I try and appeal to the court business centre as previously tried with SIP?

You do neither of those. You have no need to pay the scammers, and the time for appealing is long gone.

You first need to Acknowledge Service of the claim, saying that you will defend in full. Don't put anything in the Defence text box at this stage.

That will give you 28 days from the date on the Claim Form to file a defence. For that, you need to burn some midnight oil and research suitable defences on these forums - only look at recent threads, ie 2016.

Half_way · 17 October 2016 at 5:32PM

Never ever send anything to parking scum bags via recorded delivery, if communicating by post keep a copy of the letter and send it 1st class from inside the post office and ask for a free certificate of postage, if E-mailing look for an option called Bcc and add your own email address ( that will email a copy to yourself)

The_Deep · 17 October 2016 at 7:30PM

They cannot claim the court fee until a judge has found in their favour and awards costs. The cannot claim their legal costs until ditto. I am not sure what the £53.39 is for but it is almost certainly ultra vires.

If a solicitor, (Miah, Wright Hassel? BWL), is asking for this, they are almost certainly attempting to obtain monies to which they have no entitlement - fraud?

All three firms are being investigated for this and a complaint should be lodged with Duncan Allen

http://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.page

Hopefully these low rent firms will be put out of business soon as they are bringing their profession into disrepute. Your complaint may be the final straw.

Coupon-mad · 18 October 2016 at 12:26AM

Sounds like you gave away who was driving in the first appeal which wasn't a good plan, but no point crying over spilt milk.

Do not pay this, not least because even if you lost at a hearing (and it is not inevitable that this will proceed all the way) you would likely be told to pay LESS than £200. So you can see why not to pay more now! May as well have the experience & try to beat it. They can't add a random £50 in legal costs in the small claims track, for starters.

Pay-by-phone is a distance contract which requires certain information to be supplied to you in advance. Can you show us the PCN and the signs? Do the signs stipulate a certain time by which pay-by-phone must be concluded during the parking event? I doubt it.

And tell us, did you definitely appeal as driver?

Tell us as well once the claim is acknowledged as bargepole explained to do first. You will have then extended the time to defend this, to 28 days from service of those court papers. Plenty of time to show us the signs & PCN and to work on a decent defence to try to see these aggressors off.

This cannot affect your credit rating as long as you don't miss a deadline. So fight back!

clare7 · 18 October 2016 at 10:44AM

bargepole wrote: »

You first need to Acknowledge Service of the claim, saying that you will defend in full. Don't put anything in the Defence text box at this stage.

That will give you 28 days from the date on the Claim Form to file a defence. For that, you need to burn some midnight oil and research suitable defences on these forums - only look at recent threads, ie 2016.

Thanks Bargepole- I will do just that and work on a draft containing suitable defences, which I will post back on here for review and for reference to other people in future.

clare7 · 18 October 2016 at 10:53AM

Coupon-mad wrote: »

Sounds like you gave away who was driving in the first appeal which wasn't a good plan, but no point crying over spilt milk.

Pay-by-phone is a distance contract which requires certain information to be supplied to you in advance. Can you show us the PCN and the signs? Do the signs stipulate a certain time by which pay-by-phone must be concluded during the parking event? I doubt it.

And tell us, did you definitely appeal as driver?

Tell us as well once the claim is acknowledged as bargepole explained to do first. You will have then extended the time to defend this, to 28 days from service of those court papers. Plenty of time to show us the signs & PCN and to work on a decent defence to try to see these aggressors off.

This cannot affect your credit rating as long as you don't miss a deadline. So fight back!

Coupon-mad thank you for your reply. Looking back at the letter I sent to them I did not admit at any point that I was the driver, I read something at the time that advised not to disclose this information so I was very careful never to write I or me, instead writing 'a ticket was purchased, rather than I purchased a ticket' etc.

I will acknowledge service of the claim online this morning and start preparing my defence. I do not have pictures of the signage in the car park but I can get a picture of it later this week, although last time I drove past the car park is now a permit holders car park only so I wonder if the signs that would have been relevant to this case are still there- anyway I'll get as much information as I can and get researching. the PCN states nothing about Pay by Phone parking terms. Reason: No ticket displayed, the driver is therefore required to pay a PCN of £100. The PCN is a bit tatty now (being almost 5 months old) but when I've got some pictures of the signage I will scan all in and post back here.

Again thanks for your time replying- much appreciated.

Coupon-mad · 18 October 2016 at 1:25PM

So glad to hear you didn't say who was driving. Seeing the PCN would be useful then as we can help you spot the omissions in wording that can help you argue 'no keeper liability under the POFA' as one of several points of defence.

A keeper defendant is in the best position - and even if the case ends up lost (rare with a small PPC), you'll get no repercussions nor CCJ nor solicitor's costs if you then paid when a Judge told you to...not even any time sitting on the naughty step, ZILCH!

Oh, and on this forum and/or on pepipoo do not reply to any private message from a poster with less than 1000 posts to their name here. We deal with these issues openly on the forum and any pm could be from anyone at all (even the parking firm) and any private message about this is not recommended to be replied to/read.

You can do this with our help. Also complain to your MP and Mrs May and that guy Corbyn as well:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5524754&page=6

Please do take time to make those complaints once you've read a few threads and can see the wood for the trees. Is the solicitor Gladstones? If so, then take heart from the fact that we've never seen a case v Gladstone proceed to a hearing, after a defence from this forum was submitted! Gladstones DO take some cases to hearings but often muck them up (but on here, we've seen them off so far, it all goes quiet).

So I have every confidence as long as you follow the process and do not miss any deadlines.

Your priorities are these:

I will acknowledge service of the claim online this morning and start preparing my defence.

Carthesis · 18 October 2016 at 1:32PM

Do you have any proof of the £2.20 paid for the day rate? Does the app you used on your phone show the payment on that date?

If so, this would seem to be a slam-dunk as no loss has been incurred right? It's simply an issue of timing?

Why on EARTH would you consider forking out 10,000% of the original parking cost that you've ALREADY PAID ANYWAY?

clare7 · 19 October 2016 at 10:52PM

Hi all,

I've been and taken some pictures of the signage. I'm not sure if I will be able to use this in my defence as the car park has recently changed to a permit holder only car park- so the signs when I parked would have been different and unfortunately I didn't take pictures at the time.

I've also taken some pictures of the PCN- it is a bit blurry due to it being a few months old now, if there are any parts you can't make out please let me know and I will type up as it's more visible to the eye than on computer screen.

There is a copy of my pay by phone receipt for that day too.

hxxp://s86.photobucket.com/user/clare710/library/

Thanks in advance for any advice

leeda84 · 19 October 2016 at 11:52PM

Street view on Google Maps is your friend - Jersey St car park, Manchester taken in June 2015.

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.4855527,-2.2238352,3a,57.5y,330.15h,79.84t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sRE0oaYR-QrK81d0MRlvgJA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Does that look a little more familiar?

Parking charge notice- now received county court claim form

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free