Parking ticket fine

[Girlinblue]

So me and my partner went for a meal on Saturday 28th September. We bought a pay and display ticket for 2 hours and were there for 1 and a half hours. We received a letter yesterday which is a £60 fine, I appealed it this morning and sent a picture of the pay and display ticket plus a screen shot of the transaction on my bank statement.

The appeal has been rejected because it is computer generated and there is no payment against my reg plate. The rejection email states there may have been a “keying error” which I am assuming that means maybe I entered my reg plate incorrectly. I can’t find any number to call them to explain. The fact of the matter is that I paid for that parking. I am now being charged £80. I want to explain to someone that if they check their system they will see a reg plate the same as mine but maybe off by 1 letter or number because I must have hit the wrong key or something.

What’s should I do in this situation? Do I just admit defeat and pay £80 for a ticket that I actually already paid for, or would I get anywhere if I kept pushing back and didn’t pay it? I just don’t think it’s fair for me to be charged this when my car had a ticket in it for the duration of my stay and I haven’t done anything wrong apart from human error, but still paid! Does anyone have any advice and know how on earth I contact euro car parks? My fine was £60 but because I appealed it they’ve added another £20 as an admin charge 😢 I don’t have the money and feel like this is very unfair

this will have made clear in the terms and condition?

At MSE, I was advised to complain that Group Nexus had either erroneously or cynically harvested my data, thus breaching the Data Protection Act.

and? successful?

God knows. The only info in large letters was that you could park free of charge for 2 hrs. I wasn't even there for 45 minutes the first day and less than 5 minutes the second.

The store emailed GN to say that a mistake had been made, I pointed out that I had no need to park there overnight when I live less than a mile from the store and have my own driveway and I was able to forward an email from my dental surgery confirming that - while I was supposedly parked in front of the store - I was actually in another town getting a check-up.

As I've said in other posts, they only withdrew the charge when I threatened to countersue. My understanding is that they could have lost their licence to extract money from people because - by failing to have a human check the footage - they'd breached industry guidelines and had no legal right to obtain my data from the DVLA.

so it was over two days?

they should have been reported anyway surely?

This happened to me recently. I wasn't fully concentrating when using the machine (I had a small child nagging me) and I accidentally pressed the button to issue a ticket before I had entered my full registration number. I also only entered one letter. But the machine spat out the ticket and I couldn't go back and correct the mistake.

I appealed it, initially with the parking company, and then appealed again with POPLA when the parking company denied my appeal.

I am awaiting the outcome at the moment. I am really hoping POPLA will rule I made a major keying error and ask me to pay a reduced fee. Fair enough I made an error but I did also pay the parking fee.

We will see!

On the letter they should offer you the chance to appeal to an independent body, quite often POPLA.
The letter will also tell you which accredited trade association they belong to, possibly BPA (British parking association) or IPC. Look up te terms and conditions they have agreed to, there are several paragraphs on keying errors.

Appeal to the independent body, quoting these paragraphs and include your ticket.

I'm pretty sure that you'll find that by asking you for an admin fee, they've broken their agreement.

I'm 7 months into dealing with these companies, they are all crap, all fail to follow their own rules and processes and just try to get money out of people. I am part of a group who are pushing our MP for action.

They have to freeze the fee while you go through the appeal process.

I have the same problem ongoing with group nexus. Currently half way through the poplar appeal.

They stupidly sent me all their entry and exit data as "evidence" I actually stayed.

But the data were so bad it was just proof the cameras do t work (I paired the entry and exit numberplates and found it the data were correct the car park would have been full at midnight)

Not sure if popla will agree.

Yes. Took me a month, but yes.

I told them that I wanted them to cancel the charge, apologise and delete my date.

They cancelled the charge and apologised for the "inconvenience". I wrote back and told them I wanted confirmation that they'd deleted my data. I got another email confirming that the next day.

No...I visited on two consecutive days. I was not parked there for two days.

I visited one afternoon, bought some things and went home. I was there for maybe 45 minutes.

The next day, I visited my dentist, had lunch and popped back to the store. They didn't have what I wanted, so I was there for less than 5 minutes. GN claimed that I'd parked up for more than 23 hours!

As I pointed out in my initial correspondence, they couldn't provide evidence that I'd parked for that length of time because it simply hadn't happened. Their "evidence" was a pic of my vehicle entering the access road one day and leaving the next. They'd conveniently omitted the pics of my leaving on day one and entering on day two.

it usually takes about 20years of practising to become a criminal barrister

sorry wrong thread

Go look at MSE.

I was advised to include this in my email: "As I told you previously, I have become aware that the ANPR technology that you use is known to be faulty. I have taken advice and have been told that the BPA expects that, in order to avoid the problems caused by a double-dip scenario, you are supposed to have all footage checked by a human operative in order to account for orphan images.

It appears that you have failed to do so. This means that when you contacted the DVLA to ask for the keeper details of my vehicle you either negligently or cynically harvested an innocent keeper’s DVLA data."

This is important. By failing to have footage checked by a human operative, GN are breaking BPA guidelines and could lose their licence to operate.

I strongly advise you to look at the MSE forum parking charge section. Look for the thread written by Exasperated Eel. There's a lot of very useful info there.

Just to add, @VaguelyIneffectual , I spoke to the store manager when I first got the letter from GN and she told me that the cameras are known to be faulty and to miss people exiting at times.

ETA As advised by MSE, I also contacted my MP.

.

Thanks. It's all submitted to popla now so I don't think I can change it. But really good advice if it ever happens again.

This is the pathetic little email I got:

"Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for your correspondence relating to your Parking Charge.

Further to your representations, we have investigated your claims and can confirm that your Charge has subsequently been cancelled in full and no further action will be taken.

Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused in relation to this matter.

Please disregard any letters received that predate this email.

Yours faithfully,

CP Plus Limited"

(It was headed "Nexus Appeal".)

The following day, I got this one (after complaining that they'd not confirmed deleting my data:

"Thank you for your correspondence relating to your Parking Charge.

We apologise sincerely for any inconvenience and can confirm this Charge has been cancelled in full and no further action will take place.

Please be advised that your details have now been removed from our records.

Please disregard any letters received, that relate to this Parking Charge, that predate this correspondence.

Yours faithfully,

CP Plus Ltd."

You have to complain to the firm first, to give them the chance to delete. That's what I did. However, also passed all the details to my MP.

did MP ever get back to you?

Id have thought this was for the ombudsman services

Yes, the MP did - offered to intervene on my behalf, but the charge had been cancelled by then. However, apparently these parking charges have been raised in the House of Commons previously.

This isn't one for the ombudsman, because GN eventually caved.

it the wider issue
nothing to do with your ticket
fact they are breaking the law

I get that, but apparently it's merely deemed to be a "mistake" if they cancelled the charge. According to the MSE forum, however, they're notorious for this - which is why people are asked to notify their MP, in order to help build evidence.

I'll add that POPLA won't allow you to contact them unless you've first complained to the parking firm.

i didn’t think mistake was a sufficient defence in personal data breach?

If it's a private parking company they won't listen to reason. However, you can just ignore them.

Honestly, I used to get so stressed about this sort of thing and wasted loads of time and energy appealing. It's all a scam. They never back down and they just sell your details to a "debt collection company". They try to hassle you for a bit and then give up and sell you on to the next company and so on. Some of the companies (BW Legal in particular) are very persistent and send you all sorts of scary stuff about CCJs. It's a load of rubbish. If I get emails or texts now I just delete them without giving it any thought at all.

pay it! we had an occasion a few years ago where we parked at hull docks, and the ticket must have blown over, so it was showing blank side up on the dash. we got a parking ticket, we immediately rang to explain and was told to make a formal dispute. it took 2 years and the judge in court said that they didn't dispute the fact we had paid for a ticket (we could provide the actual ticket, bank statements to show the payment on the card, we even had a photo showing the ticket and you actually read the details through it).. but we still got fined £320 because legally we did not display a valid ticket!!