So cross… parking fine

[CrochetMadRosie]

Does anyone have any ideas of where to go next please?

Back in the summer I was in hospital for 2 weeks. My family came to visit me every day paying the horrendous car park charges.

One day the cameras weren’t working and said that my husband had been parked for 24 hours. A security officer/ parking attendant was there and told him to just pay for the hours that he had been there.

Roll on a few weeks and he had a parking fine with photos showing that he entered one day and left the next.
We looked on the Money Saving Expert website and appealed with evidence showing that he paid on the first day and paid on the second day and hadn’t been there for 24 hours and they rejected it.

It went on to the next part of the appeal process and we provided further evidence of a time and date stamped video of my husband at home onto the evening of the first day from our blink camera (unfortunately the videos of him arriving home in the car were already erased from our other blink camera), but we’ve just heard that they have rejected it again!

I had two stays totalling almost a month in hospital over the last few months and we’ve paid almost £200 in parking fees and it is making me SO cross that they want even more of our money when we didn’t do anything wrong!
DH wants to pay the fine (now £170) and not go to court.

I’m looking for people we can contact now to at least feel like we’re not just accepting it!
I’ve so far got…
Our MP, PALS, the security team at the hospital, Rip Off Britain.

Any other ideas please? Thank you!

The hospital that I last visited didn't

Ah ok, I've only seen them used with barriers. It's a good way of getting extra money through fines I guess!

@EvangelicalAboutButteredToast I think the parking firm would have factored that in. Why would you think to keep dashcam footage if you know their parking systems failed?

I was at the hospital recently and we went to pay before we left and the machine stopped working. We flagged a parking warden and they said it wasn't a problem and to leave as planned. So we got free parking, but I never thought to keep the footage, because why would I have needed to?

Another person saying just pay it?

No. These parking companies try to intimate people into paying (which is why they try to make people think they are fines when in reality they are just invoices).

However the onus is on the parking company to prove the driver has breached the terms of the car park, rather than the driver proving they haven’t.

On the face of it the OPs case seems to be one where the parking company doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Once they realise they’ve not intimidated her into paying they’ll probably give up.

@YorkshireGoldDrinker and why do you say state violence? This is just a private company chancing their arm and nothing to do with the state. You seem to have fallen into the trap of thinking it’s a ‘fine’.

The company might be private, but they're using state apparatus to enforce the fine. They're using the strong arm of the state to make sure the OP coughs up.

Your continued use of the word fine shows your lack of understanding. Yes they can use the strong arm of the state to make people
cough up, but only if the invoice is valid in the first place. It’s very easy to prove that many of these parking charge invoices aren’t valid.
The parking companies use their scare tactics, but once that doesn’t work they will often give up because they know they don’t stand a chance in court.

Have you spoken to PALs at the hospital? We’ve had this at my hospital when people drop off and come back to collect but the camera thinks you’ve been there the whole time. They’ve fixed it now but the hospital wasn’t able to intervene if you really kicked off. Do not pay, go to court and take evidence.

Yes

the husband has fed the op a load of twaddle.

no wonder he’s keen to just pay up!

@TeachingRainbow No unfortunately no tracking apps that save data…

@berightorbehappy @DestinyIsAll Thank you both for all that information. We have appealed through POPLA but they rejected our appeal unfortunately. That will all be useful to anyone else who happens upon this thread though, so thank you.

@IamnotSethRogan I’m glad that you managed to get yours cancelled and thank you for the good luck wishes.

@Soontobe60 @Extragreen He definitely paid. I’ve seen the credit card statements!

@MotherofPufflings No barriers to exit on this carpark. It scans you in and out and if there’s a problem then it asks you to input how long you were there which is what he did.

@YorkshireGoldDrinker We’ve now started taking photos of us arriving and leaving the car parks with the time on the dashboard clearly displayed! At one point I was having to go back at least every week and we were determined that we’d have evidence if it happened again!

Apologies to all who found my OP confusing! I thought I’d explained it, but obviously not well enough…

Thank you to everyone who has replied. I’m passing all the info over to DH and leaving it with him. Just venting on here has made me feel better but I’m concentrating on getting better now and leaving this annoyance with him. He’s a very thorough person normally and I think me being so ill for so long meant that he wasn’t following up on things that he would have done otherwise, but at least he has options now of what to do.

I see this often in my line of work, private parking companies taking advantage of innocent people. Makes my blood boil.

Do not pay! If they take you to court (though they may not), defend the claim. In the worse case scenario, if you were in the wrong and get a CCj this won’t be recorded in the register of fines and won’t affect your credit rating if you pay it within 30 days. Court fees won’t be big as the ‘debt’ would be small.

(that’s assuming this is a private parking fine and not a local authority PCN, sorry, no time to read all posts)

Another excellent place to post is https://www.ftla.uk/private-parking-tickets/ Lots of VERY experienced volunteers there, and there may be previous posts about the same issue.

I also did a v quick site search on 'double dip' and got quite a lot of hits it might be worth reading.

Like what? He walked home? Don’t be silly.

Having been sold a dud washer dryer no one cared, I went yo financial ombudsman they deal with all complaints and you certainly have a case. They usually wait 8 weeks after contacting the company but that's a rip off. Good luck

No they don’t. Most car parks with barriers just have a ticket or token machine on entry then you pay on exit.

I wouldn't pay and would keep going back and forth with them with your evidence. We had similar of a parking fine, turns out someone has cloned our reg plates. We went back and forth with evidence it wasn't us - photos, maps all sorts and eventually it just went quiet and we never heard a thing again.

Does your OH have any apps that track his position? Google Maps and the like?
Also any neighbourhood CCTV....possibly asking neighbours? Also check any photos he might have taken, any shopping receipts/shop cameras, etc.

Of course they've rejected the appeal, it's not in their interest to waive it. Let it go to court. It'll be thrown out.

I would say let’s have my day in court. The onus is on them to prove you were there using photos etc and if camera weren’t working etc

plus the fact that you want them to take you court shows they are on shaky ground with your evidence of payment and husband being home even if not the car.

Update for anyone in the same situation.

DH contacted our local MP and someone on their staff got in contact to ask for more information. They said that our MP would raise it with the hospital.

This week he’s had a full refund.

I’m so pleased that they finally saw sense and definitely recommend anyone in this situation in the future to contact their MP. They/ their staff did a fantastic job of sorting it out for us.