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?

This ime is why people with blue badges often get in so much trouble with parking fines- the rules vary everywhere.

Tell her to fuck off.

“Don’t blame us. This is your fault for having unpaid parking fines. We were doing you a favour. Sort your own car out. If you hadn’t parked like a dick in the first place and paid the fines instead of spunking your money on a holiday, you wouldn’t be in this predicament”.

I also think it is important to point out to OP how foolish her and her husband have been and how he could also get in serious trouble for doing things like this. Hopefully in future they’ll engage a bit more critical thinking rather than just blindly and gullibly helping people out.

Id tell her to fuck off. She should also know the badge is for her not the car. As she wasn’t in it she shouldn’t have told your dh to use it.

This.

How could he get in serious trouble?

Wtf. Block her and move on

youre not at fault
awful awful person

Seems I am weird then. Sorry. You all jump in and out of cars without checking you are insured. The police will understand, I am sure.

Misuse of a blue badge is a crime - seems like he’s aiding and abetting the CF ‘friend’.

I used to think driving without insurance was a serious offence. But thanks to this thread I learn it's not even a thing

This. Put the car back outside her house and tell her you're having nothing more to do with it, not your problem.

Nope! This is 100% your friends fault. For accruing parking fines in the first place and then for not paying them in time! You’ve gone out of your way to try and help her but she should never have asked you to put yourselves in this position. She can pay her own parking fines.

if the car was parked legally in the road why did they issue a ticket?

The blue badge shouldn’t have been used at all.

Regardless if your friend can afford a holiday they can afford their parking tickets.

aiding and abetting misuse of blue badges isn’t a crime 😭

OPs DH used it once or twice to park her friends car. You know full well there are no implications of that. Blimey they barely manage to prosecute those using one fraudulently day in day out.

but you have no idea whether the car is insured or not so how has that become a topic?!

I have seen the wardens in a local high street wait for the driver to return and check the badge is being used correctly. One of the perks of people watching from a Costa.

Yes, but that isn’t the same as “serious trouble” or a criminal prosecution is it?

Because it would have been my second question in the whole story.

And as I said, someone who racks up enormous parking fines is exactly the sort of person to not insure their car (it's rare for a cunt to be singular in their behaviour).

And if he car is uninsured. the DH would also have been uninsured. Luckily nothing happened. The OP and their DH should light a candle 😀

Depends if you lose your blue badge.

That sounds very plausible.
She's decided to spread the blame and get you to bear some of her burden.
Whilst yelling at you to pay the fines she's responsible for.

And I think as other pps have said, you should now be very very careful about interacting at all in case she starts using your involvement as an excuse for part of her actions.

Presumably, if the car is already impounded, there's no guarantee that paying her £300+ would be used towards fines or that it would be enough to release car as she now has all the bailiff charges and fees.

Wow, awful woman, never have anything to do with her again.

My DM and FIL both have a blue badge and have to return those that are out of date back to the council.

I'm a bit confused about how she received a notification about the bailiffs whilst she was in holiday but wasn't given an option to pay the fines on line. I think you have been set up to pay her fines. I would ignore her and would treat this as a lesson in not helping people who are trying to dodge responsibility.

Return her car to her house and block her what a selfish twat