Am I at fault for having my friends car impounded ?!

[bakingmama76]

So I got a call from my friend while she was on holiday saying that bailiffs were coming to her house because of unpaid parking tickets, and they might take her car. She panicked and asked if my husband could go to her house, collect the keys, and move the car to our area. I don’t even drive, but we agreed to help her.

She has a disabled badge, and when my husband first collected the car, she told him to make sure he displayed the badge in the car. She also told him not to park in the disabled bay outside my house. I’ve seen her park there many times before, but she didn’t explain why she just said not to park there. Later on, she said it was because the space belonged to someone else, but she never made that clear to us at the time.

So my husband followed her instructions, displayed the badge, and parked the car on the opposite side of the road.
A few days later, the car got a parking ticket. When we saw that, we thought maybe the issue was that the car should actually be parked in a disabled bay since she has a badge, so my husband moved the car to the disabled parking space.

A few days after that, she received another ticket while the car was parked in the disabled bay. I was going to call her straight away to let her know, but because of the time difference where she is, she would’ve been asleep. My husband was at work, so we couldn’t move the car, and I can’t drive. I said I would call her in a few hours, but when I looked out the window later, the car was gone.

I called her straight away to explain what happened, but she started shouting and blaming us. That’s when she asked if we had checked the expiry date on the disabled badge. I said no why would we check that? It’s not something we use, and we don’t know how it works. We were simply told to put the badge on display in the car, so we assumed it was valid.
She then said she had two badges in the car and one of them was expired. If she knew that, she should have made that clear to us from the beginning so we could check properly. We only saw one badge and assumed it was the correct one.

Now she’s saying that me and my husband need to come up with £380 to get her car back before the charges increase.
Am I really in the wrong here, and should I be paying for this?

@bakingmama76 I reckon she is lying about the other badge - for a start if there are two I bet they’d let her off if she said “oh silly me mixed my badges up”. If there really are two she should have said when instructing you.

Her car would have been impounded anyway if your husband didn’t drive it to yours, what a CF! That’s not a friend. I’d tell her No and stop all communication tbh

This is a friend worth losing.

I have a disabled badge and our LA asks for an expired badge to be returned when the new one is issued. Even if you have a valid disabled badge you can still be fined for parking outside the terms of it’s use, but it’s illegal to clamp or impound the car of a disabled person displaying a valid blue badge. I’m calling bullshit on her having two badges - I think the problem here is that she’s been parking with an out of date badge.

This post can’t be real. In the UK, anyone with a disabled badge can park in any disabled spot. In fact, that’s one of the risks of having a disabled space put on the street outside your house—you cannot guarantee your exclusive use of it. Any disabled badge holder can park in it.

She should have paid the parking tickets rather go on holiday then.

No you don’t owe her 380 pounds, as frustrated she she might be—it’s not your responsibility. She knew she had the debts when she left on holiday, no?

Strip away everything else, and the main issue is that you were told not to park it somewhere, did so regardless of reason, and it got removed.

So it depends why it got removed. If it was because of the parking tickets or enforcement agents, then clearly not your fault. If it is entirely for parking in the disabled bay, then you do have at least some responsibility in what happened -- regardless of what she says about the badges, or what is true about them, there was no ambiguity when you were told to not do that.

She's not your friend, she's a user and a rude one at that.

You owe this woman nothing. Completely block on all channels.

Is the reason she has parking fines because she wasn’t entitled to the blue badge hence why it is expired?
Post her keys back through her door and block her.

The bailiffs were after her car anyway, I doubt it made a difference that it was parked across the road or not. She got you involved in her mess and you were just trying to do the right thing the whole time.

Yes but in some areas the bays are for disabled resident permit holders only.

If, for instance, the bay is within a residents parking zone a bay can be confusingly marked as"disabled permit holder only" which can easily be mistakenly interpreted as "disabled badge holders only" when you also require a disabled residents permit.

I got asked to do something I knew to be wrong (nothing criminal!) by a friend when at university. Ashamed to say I did it and still feel guilty all these years later.

On street disabled parking bays are not reserved for the use of any one specific disabled badge holder unless they are ‘permit parking’ spaces specifically marked out for a severely disabled individual, or within a residents parking zone where permits are required in addition to displaying a blue badge. These spaces are clearly marked as such, so assuming the car wasn’t occupying one of them it’s irrelevant where it was parked. If the disabled badge displayed was out of date it would be ticketed wherever it was parked.

Did you tell her about the first ticket? Could you not have sent her a text about the second ticket?

otherwise YANBU but if you didn’t tell her about the first ticket it’s out of order

Clearly her fault.

@bakingmama76 There was never two badges ! Nice try though .
Remember she asked you to hide this Car as it was going to be lifted , seems they caught up with her and now she is trying to get you to pay her fines .
She is NOT your friend .

Well she's all kinds of cunt isn't she!

Tell her to GTF.

"No good deed goes unpunished"

this person is a chaotic nightmare

stay away, she’s not sane

Block and delete

Your “friend” is being unreasonable in about six different ways here!

*would you like to buy a bridge? Your friend is an idiot, and now she's treating you as if you are one - do not pay any money! She has brought this all on herself.

You shouldn't have put a car that you knew wasn't going to be used for days in a disabled bay, you sound as bad as her

I can’t see in any scenario that this is your fault or responsibility.
I hope she was just anxious and worried and she apologises. Even if she did I would be keeping a very wide berth from this ‘friend’.
i feel sorry for you and your husband after trying to help her.