My daughter has just had one of these through the post. she was in a retail car park for 3h 20 mins (3hrs max limit) at 2am in the morning?? I've tried reading the websites, but they are doing my head in. Anyone here had one of these? Is this a company you can ignore? or should she just pay it £54 by 18th or £90 after!

cheers

The only experience I've had is a colleague who was done for being in a motorway services car park having a snooze at a similar hour. I think he asked them to confirm the material loss they had experienced by him being there (loss of trade etc etc) which of course they couldn't because it was empty at that time. They dropped the "fine". Your daughter could try a similar approach.

Ok basic advice is:
1. Appeal it with the company (internal appeals), they will almost certainly reject the appeal.
2. Ask Parking Eye for a POPLA number, then make the appeal to POPLA, they may find in your favour, if they do the result is binding on the Parking company but not on you.
3. If POPLA reject your appeal, ignore the letters, there is a small chance they may take you to small claims court if you do receive a summons get onto the Pepipoo forum and they will help you with the defence


Pepipoo

I got fined by one of these (I think, basically a camera operated system which clocks you in and out, right?) in a Pizza Hut car park a few years ago.

It was a company car and the company just paid the fine from my wages.

Apparently you're supposed to give them your reg. number when you go in and they log you in (otherwise it's a 10 minute time limit).
There was no one around to greet us when we went in so I never realised about the logging in.

I wrote to them afterwards with a copy my bank statement showing that we had eaten in te restaurant and just forgot to log in but I never heard from them (presumably because they'd already been paid).

It was only £30 so I didn't bother following it up.

thanks for the swift replies (love this site )

Just found a youtube clip of a solicitor on BBC Watchdog turning one of these letters into a paper plane, and suggested anyone else do the same thing!!

Link for potential future use please?

Similar thread on Scoobynet.

Same advice as on here, ignore it.

The days of just ignoring these PPC's have come to an end really as more and more of them are taking people to court. You should appeal to the company first and let them know you are intending on fighting this all the way. They need to know you will appeal to POPLA if they reject your initial appeal, as this will cost them £27 regardless. In the majority of cases, they will drop the 'fine' if they see you know your rights.

If they still reject your appeal, and you have appealed to POPLA, you can ignore everything afterwards if POPLA have rejected your appeal too. If they still decide to take you to court after this, you can get a solid defense ready with the help of pepipoo.

If the 'fine' is from a company who has never taken anyone to court, it's probably safe to just ignore it. But they can still take action against you years down the line, so keep all the correspondence.

Parking Eye however are known for taking people to court.

on a couple of the webistes. They have said Parking Eye were fined £5000 on a case they took to court, but I guess you never know how legit this is. I will go play the father defending his student daughter

i'm on a works laptop at the mo. I cant put a link to the youtube clip. I will try later

I received one of these "fines" last year having exceed a two hour stay in a B&Q car park near London. My "notice had a picture of my vehicle entering and leaving the car park.

In my case, the land was private property and therefore not a local council or government agency parking ticket.

ParkEye purchase access to your vehicle data via DVLA.
However they have no way of knowing how accurate it is and if you do not acknowledge them at all, they cannot verify your address or indeed that you are the owner of the vehicle.
I received follow up escalating fine notices, but continued to ignore them and subsequently have heard no more.
Initially I was about to write out a cheque but the use of Police type insignia meant I smelt a rat!
Also if they did try to issue small claims court proceedings, they would need to do so in a court local to you.
Hopefully you have not contacted them? I read up on them and the advice was to completely ignore them as their business model is based on 80% people paying the "fines" straight away. Best of luck!

SPOT ON Parking Eye are quite Litigious and doing nothing may lead you to a small claims court, take a few minutes to read the threads here

there was something about this on the bbc a week or 2 ago..

There was, in a programme called Your money, their tricks (BBC 1, Wednesday evenings).

It was OK, but a bit lightweight, and unfortunately it's not on iPlayer.

Worth bearing in mind that any contract can only be between the person who drove into the car park and the company. If the driver happens to be the registered owner of the car, fair enough. If he/she isn't, you can always inform the car parking company of that fact. You are under no obligation to inform them who the driver was. If it goes to court, the registered owner will just confirm that they were not the driver. As they were not the driver there can be no photographic proof they were - case closed. NB if the driver was the registered owner, perjuring themselves by saying they weren't is not advisable.

Sorry, Mark, but I think you're wrong.

Section Schedule 4 of the (rather Orwellian named) Protection of freedoms act (2012) allows private parking companies to request that the registered keeper provides them with details of who was driving the car at the time and, if they refuse to do so, pursue the registered keeper for the penalty incurred.

I've also read and been told what Mark's posted.

However, parking eye works on a camera recognising your number plate. There's a good chance it'll have snapped the driver's face too.

No, I think it used to be the case, but the law changed last year.

Have a lookee here

Yep, you're right. I was just reading Moneysavingexpert, which is where I thought I'd read it before.



You can still lie about who was driving keep quiet in Scotland and Northern Ireland though.

Yeah, but it's a 30 mile walk to my office from Scotland

Cheers Mr R, that change passed me by.

I have sent a message on their appeal page. Stating that my the car was driving by 3 people that evening and one's now away on a years gap leave. and she doesn't know their address anyway. There is a photo on the notice, but it was at night. not sure if a better quality one will show their face.

Also I stated that my understanding is they need to prove the loss of business or the extra cost for the over stayed parking, because this is all they can claim for. So being 2am in the morning when the shops were shut, I don't think they can prove this.

I actually had a good chat the the legal guys that come with my house insurance. He was more than helpful, and said he's quite happy to help me all he can should they pursue this further.

I think that's probably your best bet from all the advice on here/other sites.

Protest, protest, protest and then consider paying if they don't back down/look like they might really take it further.

Update... with some help from here and that legal helpline you get with your home insurance. I went to POPLA to appeal this. just had this reply

"The Appellant appealed against liability for the parking charge.
The Assessor has considered the evidence of both parties and has
determined that the appeal be allowed
The Assessor’s reasons are as set out.
The Operator should now cancel the parking charge notice forthwith.
6062413505 2 30 October 2013
Reasons for the Assessor’s Determination
It is the Operator’s case that a parking charge notice was correctly issued,
given that the Appellant parked on site in a clear contravention of the terms
and conditions for parking.
It is the Appellant’s case that, amongst other things, she does not see how
there could be any financial loss to the Operator and if there is, she has asked
them to provide proof of this, so they can charge her accordingly.
The parking charge appears to be a sum sought for liquidated damages, in
other words, compensation agreed in advance. Accordingly, the charge
must represent a genuine pre-estimate of the loss any breach may cause. The
Appellant has requested that the Operator show a loss of income. The
estimate must be based upon loss flowing from a breach of the parking
terms. This might be, for example, loss of parking revenue or even loss of retail
revenue at a shopping centre.
The Operator has failed to address this issue.
I must allow the appeal on this ground".


I sent a one paragraph email. Parking Eye sent a 30 page document !!

Thank you fellow F.C.C.UK'ers

I will now ignore anything else that comes from Parking (japs) Eye !!!

Good result. Well done.

Excellent.

it was Mr M-R-S approach that worked thank you ..

Well done, good to learn of another parking company's money making tactics being rejected.

Just a word of caution for others (as I've not read the whole thread) but I have seen over on PH that ignoring any correspondence from companies like this will likely end up in court. Normally you could choose to ignore it, but it seems that these companies have caught wind of these and are now actually taking people to court.

Wise words Begbie..it's more fun taking them on than ignoring anyway