Hi,

3 friends and I visited Manchester over the weekend (Saturday and Sunday, 5thand 6th October). We parked on the SiP (Simple Intelligent Parking)car park in the centre of Manchester. When we arrived we went to the ticketmachine and it was, at the time, out of use as maintenance was being carriedout on it (the machine was open and it looked like the battery was beingreplaced). There were two SiP employees on hand. One was working on the ticketmachine, the other was manually issuing tickets to customers by taking theirmoney and writing out tickets.

We wanted the 24 hour parking option which was shown on their signs as beingan £8 charge. We arrived at 12:50pm on Saturday 5th October and paidthe guy £8. He wrote at the top of our ticket “6.10.” and underneath that hewrote “12.50”. He told us this stood for 6th October, 12:50pm. Wewere happy enough as this is the 24 hour period we had paid for so we clearly displayedit on the dashboard and left.

We returned the following day at around 10:45am, giving us just over 2 hoursremaining of the 24 hour parking period we had paid for. It was at this pointwe noticed we had a parking fine on the windscreen. We had a look at the fineissued and obviously weren’t very happy, to say the least! At this point therewere no SiP employees on the Car Park so we were unable to talk to anybody andchallenge it. We did speak to a couple of staff on neighbouring car parks andthey weren’t able to help us. The guy on the next car park up told us to “ringup and challenge it. They’re normally really helpful”. We returned to our carand rang the number on the sign. We were informed by voicemail that we couldn’tdo anything by phone and that we would have to write to them if we wanted tocomplain. At this point we also saw another customer on the car park who hadpaid their money into the machine but no ticket was issued to them. It wasdawning on us that this company might not be the most reliable in the world…..

Upon examining our parking ticket closer we noticed that the guy who issuedthe ticket had written “£4” in the fee section. We hadn’t noticed this at thetime, and we definitely did pay the £8 fee for 24 hour parking. This is backedup by the fact the guy wrote “6.10.” and “12.50” at the top of the ticket.

We have written a letter and sent it to SiP today informing them the fine hasbeen issued in error and that we are not paying it.

Is this likely to be the end of it? Any advice given is appreciated.

Many thanks

You should have come here before contacting them! A windscreen invoice should be ignored, to wait for the notice to keeper, which may never come.

I have no experience of sip but you will not have to pay this. Come back here with their reply, which should have a code for POPLA.

There are some other threads involving sip to read up on and by the way it is not a fine...

look at the other postings regarding private car park and punitive charges via invoices designed to look like official PCN's. Now, your letter of complaint should address two issues- the payment of the prescribed sum and the issuing of a demand foe an excess amount contrary to the contract you entered.

The first part will give the parking company a headache as presumably the cash they received from the attendant will differ from the amount that you say you have paid. This can lead to a criminal investigation so make sure that when you complain you provide some detail of how you paid and who witnessed the payment as well as details of the attendant who took the money- height, weight, age, distinguishing features, clothing etc as you would for giving a description as a witness to the police. Also write what was said to and by whom. Describe the person mending the machine and any interaction between them and yourselves/the attendant in question.

Now for the other matter. You paid the prescribed fee for parking and you received a "ticket". The charge is supposedly for a breach of contract so deny that the contract was breached and say that applying a ticket on your car under these circumstances is a trespass and a breach of contract itself and could be viewed as misrepresentation and attempted fraud if done deliberately.

Tell the company that you are sure that it is all a communication error and you are happy to let the matter rest there but if you receive any more demands for payment you will seek remedy by whatever methods are most suitable.

Thanks for the responses chaps.

I will let you know if I get any further correspondence from SiP (Simple Idiots Parking).

I've done a bit of reading up and it sounds very much like a Cowboy operation.

The knuckle draggers infuriate me!!

Thanks again,

WD

I've had a letter back from SiP today.

In light of my letter they have decided to drop the charge. No further action will be taken.

That was a lot easier than I expected!

Thanks for the help chaps,

WD