to not pay parking charge notice

[dagmarsablob]

I probably will pay for a quiet life, but I am unreasonably distressed at the thought of handing over £60 for nothing and being made to feel like a car park criminal.

Story is: I took my Mother to a retail outlet so she could buy a tablet. Paid £1.30 for a ticket at the appropriate pay and display machine - the type where you have to put in your reg number. She got her tablet and we left the car through one entrance, then she decided she wanted to go in a different store (her words 'as there was still plenty of time left on the ticket') within the same retail outlet but through a different entrance. We left around half an hour later, still well within the 3 hours allowed.

A week later,I duly received a parking charge notice for £100, reduced to £60 if paid within x number of days. My car had been photographed entering and leaving the 2nd entrance but they have no record of my reg no being entered so insist no ticket was purchased. IT WAS so I appealed unaware that leaving and re-entering when the ticket was still valid was in breach of their rules. Appeal was rejected and I am due to pay by tomorrow or face the inevitable trail of threats to increase the cost blah blah blah.

£60 isn't the end of the world. I can pay, I just don't want to as I don't feel I broke the rules, but I don't think it is worth the hassle of not paying.

Sorry - tried to keep this tedious little problem brief

Oh wise ones....

Thanks to your advice here, I went for the POPLA appeal with help from MoneySavingExpert and have just found out it has been successful. It looks like the parking scammers didn't even challenge the appeal.

You just saved me £100 and I don't have to deal with those letters.

Now.....WIBU to take this further.......

Just go to the pepipoo site and they will help you with it all.

The law has changed, we had one kept ignoring it as advised but they won't give up, they will send you to court now, I advise you pay it otherwise it will go up to 100s I wish I had just paid the bloody thing when we got it.

OP - were you at the Peel Centre, Stockport? You description of where you went and two entrances, plus the parking company makes me think so.

Just google XXX parking, Peel Centre, Stockport. Even BBC's Watchdog are on to them!

emms - thank you for input, but if you read the thread you will see that I have dealt with this. I took good advice from posters here weeks ago and was really just updating to say thank you for persuading me to NOT pay it and to appeal through POPLA.

There is way too much confusion about private parking 'fines' which are basically not enforceable for a variety of reasons. Judging by the vast number of queries and complaints about it on MN and across the net in general, some heavy duty legislation needs to be thrown at these parking companies to stop them causing people distress and/or potential financial hardship.

I will look at the Watchdog stuff when I have time later. Whilst I am pleased with the outcome in my case, I am still feeling that a bit of people power could make a difference.

Dagmar - I'd be really interested to know the outcome for you. I object to paying to go shopping there, plus the charges are steep for the number of shops. I often park in a side street opposite, especially if I am just nipping in for something.

I have wondered whether the parking charges there were something the council wanted Peel to implement to stop people parking there for free and walking the very short distance into the town centre where the council's car parks are all P&D.

Excellent Dagmar, glad you got the right result!

The help from the moneysavingexpert and pepipoo forums is excellent - these parking firms are such scammers it does make you wonder how the hell they manage to get away with it.

Wowfudge that was my first thought too. But then I surmised that the description probably matched many retail parks.... If it is that one, I have been caught there, many moons ago before all this 'Don't pay' happened.

Glad they've backed down. Just to check though - if they didn't have a record of your reg the second time around, presumably they did have a record of your reg the first time round?

Who knows what records they had? They chose not to offer any evidence to POPLA to prove the t & cs were breached. I would really like to know whether or not leaving any car park and re-entering before the ticket expires constitutes 2 transactions and therefore warrants the purchase of 2 separate tickets, but this information is not forthcoming.

What they do have is my personal information. I do not want to antagonise by naming names or being more specific than I have been already.

It turns out that the details of the case (disabled passenger, ticket blown away, even ticket not purchased etc) are not all that relevant. The point is that the penalties they are trying to impose are not representative of their loss and as private companies they have no legal power to enforce. The websites mentioned above are very thorough and make you realise quite how much of a money making business car parking is.

FWIW, the change in the law that happened in 2012 only requires you (as registered keeper) to hand over details of the driver of the car at the time of the incident.

The 'contract' on which these companies attempt to sue is between the driver (not registered keeper) and the owner of the land.

Hence, lots of registered keepers claimed that someone else was driving at the time and got away with it. The onus was on the parking company to prove who was driving, but the registered keeper was under no obligation to provide those details. That changed in 2012.

Sorry forgot to say, well done dag Hats off to you!

Don't bother.

Never paid ANY parking ticket, council, private or otherwise.

Have been pulled over by the police and they have never mentioned them.

If you get a letter throw it away. Don't think they can be asked to chase after people :D