Private parking charge notice

[Tim Mackey]

Just to add to my woes, I have today received an "invoice" for parking too long whilst at a Mcdonalds recently. I was on my way home from doing jury duty, and as we had been "dismissed" early, I dropped in for a meal and some free internet time. Meal went, then after a while, a coffee, followed by a second coffee. I lost track of time, but didnt think the car park was "controlled".

Ffirst time I ever experienced a time limit in a McD's car park, and this one is remote to say the least...cant see ANY reason at all for anyone to park there if they are not using the place. Anyway, notice arrived with photos and times showing that I exceeded the "allowed time" by 28 minutes.

WWW consensus seems to be ignore it, along with the imminent threatening letters etc, and they will give up rather than pay to make it a court case. Im aware the rules changed recently, and funnily enough a consumer programme on TV tonight also suggested that in most cases it will not get to court ( as its NOT a penalty notice or a fine ) but then again, it might. Hmmm.

TBH I can little afford to pay the £50 they ask for right now ( £100 discounted to 50 for prompt payment apparantley LOL ) but obviously feel a little nervous of taking it all the way, as that would surely end up costing me ( and them ) more.

Waddya reckon folks?

[Steve McIntosh]

This is nothing more than a speculative invoice. If its from a private company then ignore it. A private company/individual cannot fine another person/company. They can only take you to small claims court to recover lost earnings which as its a "free" car park they cannot prove. If its Police/Council then I'm afraid you have to pay up.

They will threaten with all sorts of nasties, bailiffs, bad credit entries etc. But fear not just ignore it. Do not reply to any letters as then you are entering into negotiations.

[iqon]

If they have signs up you may have to pay,..... i`d phone and complain......especially if you had proof that you ate there and didnt just park up to use the internet.

[Fats Flyer]

Seeing as they have pictures of your car in the car park,surely they should have CCTV of you in the restaurant,thus having proof that you was indeed in their premises.....Slam Dunk in you favour  I think

Edited By Fats Flyer on 03/02/2014 20:39:00

[Keith Simmons]

Sorry to hear about that Tom. Look up Google about McDonald's parking and you may be able to get the manager to to phone up to cancel the charge, once you have proved you were inside McDonald's the whole time.

Good luck.

[David Rothwell]

Tim

ignore it, they work on on the theory that most people will pay without a thought, have had the same, the last at xmas in a local supermarket were it took us 2hrs and 10 mins to do shopping and get thru the till, as its a PCN you have no legal obligation to provide the driver details, these PCN are sent as default to the registered keeper of the vehicle, to my mind this is another money making scam by private car parking companies!!!!!!!

"According to the Unfair Consumer Contract Regulations, parking charges on private land must not exceed the cost to the landowner during the period the motorist is parked there. In your case, the £50.00 charge they are asking for far exceeds the cost to the landowner.eg  the fee is £50 but parking costs £1-an-hour you’d need to have been there for 50 hours to justify the charge"

Edited By Davwik on 03/02/2014 20:56:07

[Steve Goodwin]

Tim, I had a very similar event happened to me about a year ago, I park my car in the car park of our local "Range" the wife spent some time deciding what cushions to by etc etc. So we spent well over an hour in the store, and didn't really think about the car park time. A couple of weeks later I got a penalty notice requesting £75, anyway a call to the store next day, they asked me to email my receipt to prove I WAS IN STORE ALL THE TIME and it was simply cancelled at that point. The car parks are monitored by a third party, prove you was in the store. Bingo!

Good luck

[Steve Hargreaves - Moderator]

Yep ignore it Tim....similar thing happened to me at a Motorway services....£100 "fine" arrived a week later.....I wrote & told them I didn't accept that I owed them anything & if they thought I did they should write & tell me on what basis they were claiming the money. They wrote saying my appeal had failed (even though I hadn't appealed) & generously gave me another 14 days to enjoy the 50% reduction......since then...nothing!!

Apparently it all hinges on English Contract Law.....you enter into a "contract" when you park your car....what they are effectively doing is imposing a penalty for breach of contract; however such penalties are not allowed to be punitive & are only allowed for recovery of any losses incurred. Since parking is free at Macca Ds they haven't incurred any losses.

If I was you I'd write & acknowledge receipt...tell 'em you don't accept the charge & ask them to tell you why they think you should pay....you might get a couple of threatening letters after that but ignore 'em..they'll soon crawl back under their rock....

Who sent the note by the way Parking Eye?

[Tim Mackey]

Thanks for all the quick replies chaps

......I had pretty much decided that I would try the "ignore everything stance"

I do recall seeing a poster in the restaurant basically trying to absolve themselves of any dealings regarding the car park control, but TBH didnt think twice about it, as I hadnt intended to stay so long - so if that's to be believed its sounds as though they are quite happy to see their customers scammed like this!

I may try to contact the place by email / telephone as its a fair way away from home and see what response I get.

If that doesnt help, Im still thinking I will call the parking control company's ( UKPC ) bluff, and just keep ignoring everything they send.

[Tim Mackey]

Cross posted Steve

UKPC is the bunch of rogues involved.

[Devcon1]

From personal experience I would ignore every single letter you get from them, it goes like this.

Letter 1 : Telling you yhat you contravened the parking regs but offering to reduce the fee for prompt payment.

Letter 2: Asking again but maybe in a more threatening manner

Letter 3: Warning about an increase in the fee due to non payment

Letter: 4 Warning about possible legal action but offering an olive branch of reduced payment.

They give up at this stage and sell your "debt" to a third party, you'll get maybe another letter from a different company but did deep and you may find the companies are connected. They follow a similar pattern but soon know when to give.

The sad thing is these companies rely on the vulnerable, older law abiding citizen, guess which catergories it doesn't affect, foreign registered cars, unregistered cars, false number plate cars, stolen cars etc.

The last stats I found are as follows.

These stats from 2012

1,800,000 Private parking penalty notices issued.

558,000 went unpaid

Of these only 845 small claims court cases were registered by the BPA

Of which only 49 went to a contested hearing.

I've had about8 from two different companies, they're not interested in trying to recover 60 pounds through a small claims court because they get enough from the 1,242.000 people who paid up just over 74 million pounds.

The whole thing is "criminal" and these people are given access to your DVLA details.

Please remember it is an invoice and not a fine or penalty, if you feel the letters are threatening or intimidating you can take them to court, but the best advice is to ignore them, they will go away.

Regards

John

[Steve Hargreaves - Moderator]

Good point John.....if they do get threatening then you can report the matter to the Police under the charge of harassment.....ignore 'em.....they'll go away.

I've just sent you a copy of the letter I sent to them in case it helps.....plus a couple of websites I read....

[Pete B]

As everyone else has suggested, I'd ignore it and have no communication with them whatsoever They attach a close facsimile of a Penalty Charge Notice, containing a string of half-truths and misinformation, to the car and rely on scaring you into paying it.

They have no legal right to demand information of you, anyway ....... since clamping on private land was banned in 2012, these vermin have got to try and keep up their income somehow.....

Absolutely scandalous that the Government are quite happy to sell your personal details, provided to them as you had no choice, to any one of 1200+ organisations such as this........utterly outrageous....

Pete

[John Privett]

Posted by Davwik on 03/02/2014 20:42:49:

"According to the Unfair Consumer Contract Regulations, parking charges on private land must not exceed the cost to the landowner during the period the motorist is parked there.

That's the identical wording I used when writing to Meteor after I inadvertently failed to display my (very expensive) annual car park season ticket at the station in December.

I didn't "appeal" against their charge notice, but merely emailed them informing them that I wasn't going to pay. I did add that I already had an annual ticket and attached a scan of it. I got a very patronising reply telling that they'd carefully considered the case and my "appeal" had been successful, but not to do it again.

[fly boy3]

I think a well known budget store is doing a similar stunt. Apparently they photograph the car coming in and going out,and it is timed. If the time exceeds the allowed time shown on notice boards they will issue a fine. As long as the fine collecting firm is registered the DVLA can give them the home address of the car owner . Scandalous I think. Can you recall any information boards Tim. ?   Ps registered with ATA, info obtained with Google.

Edited By fly boy3 on 03/02/2014 22:05:06

[IanN]

I noticed this in a McD for the first time two or three months back. When I came out I saw a sign (which i hadn't noticed on the way in) advising penalties applied if 90 mins exceeded

I had indeed been in there for about 1hr 45, working on their wifi

I went back in, explained to the spotty burger flipper that I hadn't overstayed deliberately, and pointed out that I had also btw been spending money with them while doing so and got in response "sorry, nothing I can do, its a separate company"

Like Tim's, this McD was a bit out of the way and nobody but nobody would park there unless actually using McD so absolutely no sensible reason for this car park control apart from a revenue generator

No ticket yet. Perhaps I've been lucky

[stu knowles]

Guys!! you should know that the advice to ignore these tickets is no longer correct and was changed by the ill named 'Protection of Freedoms Act 2012' Prior to this Parking Companies could only invoice the driver but only find out information from DVLA about the car owner. Provided the owner did not cough to being the driver, they were up the creek.

Since then, they can, subject to certain condition, seek redress from the vehicle owner and some companies are persuing claims into the Courts

These 'fines / invoices' car still be defeated but these is a procedure to follow and the right buttons have to be pressed.

First port of call is the retailer especially if you have any proof of spending there. they can get the invoice quashed with the least effort. Failing that a soft appeal to the Parking Company on the understanding that they will always reject the appeal but requiring a POPLA code to go tpo the independant appeals tribunal. The written appeal to POPLA mustr say the right things and a win is guaranteed. muck it up and you may find yourself in Court. Still a very winnable situation but much more hassle and time wasted.

The source of all info are the parking forums, Peppipoo, The Parking thread on Money Saving Expert and 'The Parking Prankster' plus many others. Don't stick your head in the sand hoping that it will go away.

These Parking Companies are springing up everywhere, retailer who bring them in do not deserve our custom, all the shysters who used to clamp cars are now in this game. After much grief, the well informed are getting them on the back foot but there is a massive majority who are not well informed who are collectively paying over vast sums.

Be warned, Do not ignore and hope for the best

cheers

stu k

[Devcon1]

Hi Stu,

I know the barely disguised highway robbery parking operators had lobbied and been succesfull in changing what you mentioned but assumed the the fine was still in effect an unpaid invoice with very liitle in law to help them try and reclaim such a paltry amount.

I had my last one about 6 weeks ago from a private operator, I'll post an update on the progress, I haven't had my first request for money yet.

Perhaps I was lucky but I had one last year from East Devon District council whilst parking at Seaton seafront. I had bought a valid ticket as I always do at council enforced parking but got back to the car about 15 minutes late. I'd walked to Beer with some friends but had to detour because of a landslip so took longer than planned.

Perhaps I did the wrong thing but I ignored every letter I got, I wondered if the council simply do not have the resources to chase fines as they rake enough in from parking fees anyway.

John

[Area 51]

I have read something similar to this above, re the law changing to assist pursuing legal owner etc (another law against us by stealth.. but lets stay off that one!)

I had a PNC from a private company for using a local store car park, I thought I did not have proof I shopped as I did not keep the receipt (binned) etc. I then found it on a bank statement confirming my presence at this store/day etc.. However in the meantime I researched the web, the main site being consumer action group, CAG.. On here several solicitors offer guidance and advice for free providing the topic is flagged on the forum for all to learn from..

A coffee and 30mins and it makes really interesting reading; the law has changed.. they can pursue the registered owner; however, the chances of this being done are few and far between.. at best effort if a case goes to court and it does not often at all.. then court is usually only minded to award losses based on the "actual loss" of the land owner.. i.e. the cost of parking on his land for the period they say you were there.. so if its a quid an hour and you stay over two.. recompence in the order of £3.00 is about right, plus some costs.. nothing like the money they try to extort..

Looking at the maths above, they are far better off just issuing a sheet of A4 to people in the post and waiting for the 1.2 million or so that appear to pay up the £50/£100!

Thats easy money isnt it.. ? and the landowner gets a kick back..

Another interesting angle one of the solicitors presented is this, a defence was offered and suceeded in court on a PNC, the defence sighted the planning permission of the landowner (in this case McD's on the south coast) to build his outlet and car park also included the statement the car park was for his patrons and free of charge..

Without a change to his planning consent, the landowner was not able to charge and the case was thrown out.. This has created a precedent now.. So forewarned etc..

I ignored the 1st letter I received, its over 6mths ago now, I got one more about 30days after the first (probably generated by a computer etc) stating they can do allsorts and quoting the law change so they can pursue the legal owner.. (I am the legal owner/user on the day) To date I have heard nothing more..

The CAG website is littered with similar stories and letters to download to dispute such issues; forewarned is forearmed as they say.. but this site is handy if only to confirm advice from others here.. as I say above; approved solicitors frequent the CAG website.. from their input and guidance I get the impression they enjoy explaining to all how to deal with this cretins..

I checked the compnay who issued the PCN I received, its owned by one bloke and is run from a bungalow.... enough said.. !

[Dave Miller]

If the site owner’s rules for parking are clearly displayed and unambiguous I suggest that you have entered into a contract when you accepted the conditions by parking on the site. Most retail parks impose a 2 hour time limit on free parking which is monitored by a CCTV system, even our local Tesco does. If you exceed that time then you are asked to pay the discounted excess parking charge by credit card by telephone. I can’t imagine any retailer wanting to alienate their customers so must assume that the system is in place to discourage long term parking and is legal. I can visualise the debt being discounted to a collection agency at some point.

[Mowerman]

Last year my daughter was driving from Halifax to Reading on the M1, feeling tired she followed the motorway warning signs and stopped for a rest. Unfortunately she fell asleep in the car then when she woke went for a coffee before commencing her journey.

A couple of weeks later a letter arrived demanding a ( £50 if paid within 2 weeks or £100 if later) charge for exceeding the allowed 2 hours allowed parking time.

I advised her to write and explain that she was only obeying the signs but she unfortunately left it a bit late paid up the £50.

[Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator]

I have been reading this thread with interest. Unlike many I have no personal tale to tell - it hasn't happened to me or a close relative - yet! But it is clearly very wide spread. I also think the overwhelming majority would view this as undesirable development in society.

We've heard a good deal of advice about how individuals can fight this - and that's very laudable. But aren't we missing a fundamental trick here?

You see this can only work if the DVLA pass on the information about the legal owner of a vehicle with a given registration. I cannot see why that isn't a breech of the Data Protection Act (DPA) 1998.

The DPA places a number of duties on data holders. Among those duties are to safe guard and not disclose except for the purpose originally intended or with the data subject's permission. I certainly have never been asked for any permission to disclose this information.

Now there are exemptions to the DPA, for example: in matters of national security, taxation, crime, enabling regulatory bodies to function, and certain provisions under the Protect of Children Act. This clearly does not fall under any such category. There has been no crime, if any offence does exist its purely a civil matter.

So, unless I'm missing something here, it seems to me that the best way of dealing with this particular pest is to cut off its information source. I would suggest that anyone served with such a notice went immediately "onto the front foot" and put the issuer of the notice under the cosh. Firstly letter requiring to know within 14 days the source of the personal data on you that they apparently now hold. No response? See "ICO" below.

If they own up and say "the DVLA", then a similar letter to the DVLA demanding their immediate assurance that such sharing of your personal data cease immediately and a letter to the parking people pointing out that as they have been complicit in a breech of the DPA you will assume that they will drop this nonsense.

If that doesn't stop it, or if these bodies fail to respond satisfactorily, you have a case to take to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO). he has the power to require the information holder to cease disclosure if there is a breech of the act, and if the disclosure is not stopped he has the power to prosecute.

The DVLA, and the government, are not above the law. I would suggest that, assuming I am right and this is a breech of the DPA, we would be better tackling it at source. A couple of thousand complaints to the ICO should soon see this stopped.

BEB

[Mowerman]

BEB has a point there I have often wondered how the DPA applies in these cases. When answering unsolicited phone calls I often ask where they got my number as i am ex-directory, they then mostly hang up.

[avtur]

Posted by Area 51 on 03/02/2014 23:17:23:

... ... ... Another interesting angle one of the solicitors presented is this, a defence was offered and suceeded in court on a PNC, the defence sighted the planning permission of the landowner (in this case McD's on the south coast) to build his outlet and car park also included the statement the car park was for his patrons and free of charge..

Without a change to his planning consent, the landowner was not able to charge and the case was thrown out.. This has created a precedent now.. So forewarned etc.. ... ... ...

This looks like the main issue for a good defence, there's obviously no way of knowing this without some research but if there is any consistency in planning applications then maybe its something where a trend could be seen, perhaps relating to retailers or maybe geography (local authority).

While there's no doubt there are unscrupulous operators in the parking enforcement industry I'd suggest that the route cause is the retailers who seem happy to employ these rogues. Given the effort that most retailers go to to lure us into their stores (and spend) then if they thought that their parking policy was putting people off perhaps they would change. Even if the retailer gets a percentage of the charge surely it can't add up to huge income on a store by store basis.

I can imagine there is a problem if car parks are abused by people using them for all day parking while they work/commute and that limits space for genuine retail customers, but that wont apply in many/most cases.

[Pete B]

This page explains how it works - whether politicians intended it to provide a licence to print money, who knows?

It needs one of those 100000-signature E-petitons started to get a hearing in Parliament....

Pete