To ignore this parking charge?

[VulvaVoom]

Overstayed last week in a retail park car park, think you can stay 3.5 hours, looks like I was there almost 4.5.

Received a letter this morning from Parking Eye, with a fine (£50 now but £85 in 14 days) Am gutted as I really can't afford it lots of weddings, birthdays etc and am on no pay now.

I Googled it and ended up on the Martin Lewis website where people are saying they can't make anyone pay but will send scary letters blah, blah, blah.

Now, I'd love to ignore it but, should I pay, WIBU to not?

Help!

Nope dont pay. And keep looking at that website, they will advise if anything changes.

Just ignore.

As far as I'm aware they cannot legally make you pay. The only charges which can are from the police or the council- at least that's what I've read in the past.

Yep ignore it, its only the council that can enforce parking fines, not private companies.

Ime they will send you 1 or 2 more reminders and then give up.

I'd bin it and forget about it.

Don't pay - just ignore.
If the parking charge is £1.00 and hour and you overstay by 1 hour then you have paid £1.00 and they have only lost £1 as that is all they would have had if there was another vehicle parked in the space.
They are trying it on - only the police and the local authority are legit, they are just sending you an invoice and inviting you to pay it.

Ignore, it's not legally enforcable. You'll probably get a few more letters which will get increasingly threatening. Ignore them all, they're bluffing. I've stopped paying for parking at hospital, sick of having to pay every time I go, which is a lot at the moment. No tickets so far, won't be paying them if I get any.

there was a piece about this on BBC1 last night at 8pm - have a watch on iplayer.

I've also had two fines from parking eye like this, both overstays due to breast feeding my newborn DS. I appealed them both online (so I was 'going through the proper channels'). Both times the appeals were rejected, I appealed again and haves heard a sucky bird since. This was about three months or more ago.

Nothing to worry about.

Sucky bird!?! WTF! Haven't heard a dicky bird since. Sodding predictive text...

Parking Eye are a bloody menace! But the MoneySavingExpert site should show you examples of the three standard letters they'll send you - a first one, an escalating one and then a 'now you're in trouble it's been passed to our debt collection team' type one. Then it'll stop and they'll cross you off their list of people they try to extort money from.

They have never taken anyone to court, they would lose so they've never dared! Parking Eye and their ilk are not like council parking wardens who have legal powers to impose fines, they are just chancers. They only carry on because a fair proportion of people panic and pay them without exploring and finding out that they can't enforce their nasty little letters. Ignore, ignore ignore.

I would ignore it, they will continue to write 'your final chance' type letters alluding to all sorts of dire legal consequences before giving up, the last thing they want to do is actually spend money to recover what in the grand scheme of things is small amount. Most people dont know their legal rights or indeed the powers of private parking companies, which leaves them vulnerable to these type of scare tactics.

I suggest the responding with the following:

"Dear Sirs

Thank you for your letter dated xxxxx, demanding payment of £85 for my alleged parking offence at the xxxxx retail park.

After receiving legal advice from my cat I have elected not to be intimidated by your escalating threats of enforced debt collection. Please do not write to me again as I now consider this case closed.

You have noticed that I have enclosed your letter and you will notice that I have taken the liberty of rolling it up very tightly which should make it easier for you to stick up your arse."

I had one of these recently and wrote a very polite letter back explaining why I was there for so long and said that I didn't think I should have to pay. They wrote back and basically said that they were in the right but as a "goodwill gesture" they would cancel the fine.

I got a "charge" whilst at Silverstone for the GP a couple of weekends ago. I parked on a field, but they think I should pay £100 for the privilege! I think not! Especially when I asked the attendants what to do about paying for parking and was told to just park up.

I will be ignoring the "charge" and it's lovely yellow envelope. If the company fancy taking me to court, I'll quite happily deal with them then. I wait patiently for the court papers.......

A recent thing I found on the 'net said the company took exactly 2 people to court in 2011 - I think I'm quite safe...

Oh thank you all, been out enjoying the sun but worrying about this.

Coffee at 'sucky bird'. I may start using it, perhaps it will become part of the MN dictionary?

And loving the suggested letter Cu. Funnily enough I do have a Cat and his exact words were 'tell them to shove it up their arse'.

I'm still nervous about ignoring it (being a normal, law abiding person an' all) but seems like these people have no legal rights whatsoever.

Scumbags. Bet they rub their hands with glee when they see someone has overstayed and I imagine lots of older or more vulnerable people just pay up.

Write to he store itself stating why you were there so long...i.e. there were so many wonderful items in their store that you were enjoying browsing that you didn't notice how time had passed....your DS/DD needed the toilet in the middle and took ages...you were considering buying X and Y (expensive items) from their store but obviously you will buy from elsewhere if the parking charge isn't cancelled with immediate effect...

We did it a couple of months ago when we combined a trip to a sofa store with a shopping trip to Sainsburys across the road and lazily not bothered to move the car and so exceeded the 3 hour limit. The sofa store immediately cancelled the parking charge within 24 hours of getting the letter.

Ignore ignore ignore!
I'm still waiting for them to take me to court for not ticketing my car in a hospital car park when we'd had the "we really think you should come NOW" phonecall wh my MIL was dying in 2010