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?

*Car keys

She's obviously mismanagement her finances and is under financial strain. But isn't addressing it properly (on holiday, trying to push you into paying for things, hiding her car). I get that a lot of people under financial worry can act badly but she's absolutely out of order. There's no logical reason why you should have checked the expiry date, you went out of your way to help her and I agree tbh she's not acting like a friend at all.

I wouldn't pay and I'd signpost her to the likes of Christians against poverty for debt and money management advice. And I wouldn't help her out again. She's making choices that are creating these issues (not paying her fines, not parking properly, not throwing out the expired disabled badge, prioritising a holiday etc) and that's all her choices to make, but when she's then making it your problem its time to take a big step back.

I also agree it's a possibility that she didn't have an expired badge and is trying to rinse you.

I'm assuming your husband didn't take insurance out to move the car

Definitely not on you.

absolutely not your fault

Why did it get a ticket when your husband first parked it across the road? Did he park it on double yellows or in a restricted parking zone?

It doesn’t make any sense. I know people with blue badges can park on double yellows, but surely if you were planning to park it for an extended time, your husband would have chosen a safe parking spot with no restrictions that wouldn’t be in any one’s way?

It’s absolutely not your fault that it got towed if she didn’t explain that he had to check which blue badge to use. She shouldn’t be keeping her expired badge in her car. But I am confused as to why it got a ticket when he first parked it.

I'd also be concerned at how far along this is, as in have bailiffs served the enforcement notice and listed already, as in making a list of goods to take.

If so surely you've got yourself involved in hiding goods due to be seized, which is a different set of AIBU.

No good deed…. I also don’t get why she got the first parking ticket, if you hadn’t parked in the disabled bay what difference would it make that the badge had expired?
She obviously has loads of tickets she hasn’t paid anyway and was very bold to ask you to move her car in the first place!

@bakingmama76

Am I really in the wrong here, and should I be paying for this?

Hard do. It's HER fault she had a load of unpaid parking tickets. It's HER fault she had an expired disabled badge in her car. It's HER fault she didn't warn you about there being two disabled badges. She's not your friend. It's time she took some sodding responsibility for her recklessness and carelessly.

If she can afford a holiday, she can afford to pay the outstanding parking tickets and bailiff costs and the costs of recovering her car.

There's clearly a history of illegal parking and ignoring the ticket and repeated subsequent warnings as you don't get the bailiffs coming to impound your car for the odd unpaid parking fine.

Maybe she’ll pay her parking fines in future!

She’s a CF with knobs on - I’d un-friend her PDQ.

“If she can afford a holiday, she can afford to pay the outstanding parking tickets and bailiff costs and the costs of recovering her car”

To be fair we know nothing about the circumstances of this holiday.

However at its simplest she’s already paid for the holiday so that money has gone. It’s not like someone who spends £3k on a holiday must by default have a second £3k hanging about to pay for parking debt.

and yes I know know she should’ve spent the money on the parking tickets but not the holiday but that’s not what’s happened.

I just assumed it was some kind of residents/permit only parking, i.e. a residential street close to a city centre where it's permit only to stop shoppers/working parking there and walking into the town centre. That's the only logical conclusion unless there was a time restriction or double yellows and husband displayed the blue badge to claim exemption for one of those reasons.

She can evidently go afford to go on holiday - how does that = no money?

I would be a bit suspicious about the blue badge and whether it is legitimate? Have you seen both badges because surely she could appeal if the expired one had been mistakenly displayed but she did in fact have a current one.

Is it odd that it was towed so quickly?

No do not pay, she’s a CF, not a friend.

Ignore and block her.

The parking warden may have seen on the system that there were a number of unpaid parking tickets and it may have triggered impounding. I've seen similar when a parking warden has put a ticket on a car (for just over-staying a one hour restriction) and then about an hour later, a truck has come to lift it on the back and take it away.

I know this isnt helpful now - but this is why you need to step back from chaotic people’s lives if you want to stay friends.

I would have politely said no when she contacted me about the unpaid parking tickets. Yes, she might have ranted and raved and blamed you if her car got taken. But you’d have saved yourself your wasted leisure time.

You have your own life and responsibilities. She’s an adult and needs to pay her own bills. People like this always find someone to blame for their failures. Just start saying “No”. Dont waste any more time on this situation.

I have seen people written up for parking in contravention of the badge regulations. It may be rare, but losing a blue badge isn't a fun.

😭 I’ve already responded to this. OPs DH doesn’t have a blue badge to lose

@bakingmama76 oh, don’t be a wet lettuce - she’s playing you! Say ‘not on your Nelly! Her not paying her parking fines is not going to cost you nearly £400. She’ll have to sort it all out when she gets home’.

Oh! And don’t offer to loan it, you’ll never see the repayments.

But she still has to pay for her own mess, not OP.

This is enough to simply to say no to paying and block her. OP and her DH shouldn’t have been put in this situation in the first place and they went in blindly to help out a friend. OP should learn from this - stay away from this friend going forward.

Is it clear whether it was towed away because of the outstanding parking tickets or because it was displaying an out of date disabled badge. I suspect it's the former and the reg has just been picked up on the system for outstanding parking debts. Which means it's nothing to do with you displaying the 'wrong' disabled badge. But even if it was, like hell would l pay, cheeky mare.

You went above and beyond getting involved in HER mistake and moving the car in the first place. She should never have put you in that position of worrying and overthinking. I honestly would tell her to piss right off.

No good deed goes unpunished
Not your responsibility to pay it