We need your advice.

In December 2016 my partner and I parked one evening at a Euro Car Park in Manchester,

paid our £7 evening fee, went to the Christmas market, then left 2 hours after we arrived.

At the end of January this year we received a demand for £100 for failing to pay for our parking ticket

(it was £100 as we had failed to pay the original £60 charge within 14 days, despite never receiving an earlier purported letter;

weirdly, this first letter then turned up two days after the day we received the second letter which was also the day we first contacted Euro Car Parks; hmm).

We knew we had paid for our parking,

we disputed this notice with the parking company,

who said they had no record of our cars registration number having been entered on one of their machines.

We also knew we had done this,

asked for records of all vehicle details entered onto their machines at the car park, around the time of our arrival on the night in question.

This duly arrived and when we read their records we realised what I'd done:

I had been driving my partners car that night, and had incorrectly entered my own cars registration number instead of my partners.

Feeling relieved that we had proof we had paid the correct charge to park there,

we went to POPLA (Euro Car Parks would not budge),

explaining how the mistake had occurred,

enclosing photographic and documentary evidence to support

(photo of my car and reg, proof of ownership and address etc).

We're shocked though that POPLA have turned down our appeal on the ground that we breached the terms and conditions of parking in the car park even though we paid to park there,

on the ground that we failed to enter a correct car registration ("a valid parking session had not been purchased"), and they have advised us to pay the charge within 28 days; it seems common sense has completely gone out of the window.

Euro Car Parks have lost nothing, and we have no intention of paying.

Has anybody else had an experience similar to this, and does anyone have any advice on where we stand?

Thanks in advance for anything you're able to offer!

Hello and welcome to CAG. The forum guys should be along later with advice for you.

People here are unlikely to tell you that you need to pay this, but they may have more questions for you. Many people lose at POPLA, it doesn't mean that we suggest paying up.

Please wait for the guys and see what their take is on this.

My best, HB

you paid

end of the matter really.

there are numerous threads here where by reg numbers were entered wrongly.

they'll never goto court with this

so IMHO safe to ignore the forest of DCA's letters you'll get

[a DCA is NOT A BAILIFF and has NO LEGAL POWERS WHATSOEVER]

just down ever ignore a claimform

come straight back here if you do.

dx

Hi and welcome to CAG

As it stands you have done all you can. The ball is in ECP's court now.Literally! The only way they can now enforce this is via the county courts and there are plenty of cases where companies who have claimed have lost as the fee was paid. This is a well known con by the parking companies. Have ANPR cameras but don't link them to the machines. With a properly organised company, the machine would not let you input a wrong reg number. They know this and they deliberately did this to ensure they have a decent cash flow.

You have the proof a fee was paid (although for the wrong car) so let ECP take action and get some costs from them.

The POPLA adjudicator wasn't Marshall Hoare was it?

Cut and paste from another thread. Use this if you receive County Court papers:-

"There was a case several years ago when a lady who owned two cars used the wrong registration number when paying her congestion charge.

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION

ADMINISTRATIVE COURT

Royal Courts of Justice

Strand, London, WC2A 2LL

18/05/2005

B e f o r e :

MR JUSTICE STANLEY BURNTON

____________________

Between:

The Queen on the application of JOAN

MARGARET WALMSLEY Claimant

- and -

JOHN LANE First Defendant

-andTHE

PARKING AND TRAFFIC APPEALS

SERVICE Second

Defendant

The Lady was a Baroness and was fortunately sufficiently wealthy to challenge TFL's greedy decision not to accept that the fee had been paid but that as a typical bean counter in charge, the

car that had been within the congestion area had not been paid for even though she had paid the charge for her car that was not liable for the charge that day.

The case went all the way to the House of Lords where they took the sensible position that the Law was designed to punish those who had not paid rather than those who had paid but had made a mistake in their deliberations.

Below is part of the summing up by the Judge where he cancelled the ticket-

44 This interpretation of regulation 16 has the effect of reconciling the provisions of the Scheme

as a whole with its purpose, which is to ensure that charges are paid for cars that enter the

Zone and that those who fail to pay are penalised. It is not a purpose of the Scheme to penalise

those who make a genuine error as to their vehicle's registration number. As has been seen,

many people do make such errors and are relieved of penalty. It is and must always have been

obvious to Transport for London that there were bound to be many people who would

mis-state the registration numbers of their vehicles. For example, it is obviously easy to

confuse the letter I with the numeral 1, and the letter O with the number zero, quite apart from

the room for mistyping or simple mistake as occurred in this case."

Hopefully this link will work

http://nebula.wsimg.com/bfcdd95c68b82bcc6b68408a75d23021?AccessKeyId=4CB8F2392A09CF228A46&disposition=0&alloworigin=1

Whilst not exactly the same, the principle stands.

Parking was paid for. They are trying to profit from a very minor mistake and POPLA should take notice of this

they didnt make a loss so you dont owe them anything is the short response.

That is why the case quoted above is particularly relevant.

The long response says it is a shame that you appealed before taking advice as the NTK would have been timed out for keeper liability and the parking co would have no reason to contact you further.

That Euro will have made a load of other mistakes in their claim and so they wont win a court claim and generally they are bright enough to avoid getting a sopankin in court so they just make noises ans threats instead.

POLA are not honest brokers so dont worry about the adverse decision,

it doesnt force you to pay,

unlike a court decision.

Wait and see what ECP do next,

it will start with another begging letter.

When you get that,

quote the above case and tell them that you arent paying so they shouldnt waste their time trying to get you to..

Dont write to them until they write first though,

you will look like you are keen to settle rather then fight then.

Hi, thanks to everyone who's replied; sorry it's taken a couple of days as I've barely been home.

Thanks for the encouraging messages, there was no chance of us paying before but now we're even more resolute. Bring them on!

Hi all

The first debt recovery letter arrived today, and obviously we won't be responding. Apparently if they don't hear from us by 5th May they will pass it back to the parking company and recommend they take court action.

If Euro Car Parks do get in touch, we'll use the information you've given us hopefully to make them reconsider their position; if it goes to court, we'll see them there.

Thanks once again.

if it goes to court, we'll see them there.

That's the spirit!

What most people don't realise (clearly you have) is that even if they take you to court, a properly defended case will beat them 99% of the time (the other 1% is when the Judge is having a bad day), and they'll end up owing you money

DR Plus by any chance. They are as toothless as me...OH!

Euro car Parks may just contact you again but it is more likely that either Gladstones or BW Legal will be in touch with the usual threats.

It was indeed Debt Recovery Plus.

so as post 3 then....

the case autobert refers to has been successfully used in claims from parkin co's

as it can be shown that a spurious car reg has gone into their system

they haven't queried it either in their automated recognition equipment tied to the ticket machine

(they cant rob you if that happened) or their supposed manual checks before sending out the begging letters.

Doesnt matter if it was fat finger misnumbering or using an old reg by error,

they still lose because the motorist paid and no-one else parked for free as a result of the error.

Hello Haverchuck

Could you please let me know how you got on as I have just received a parking ticket for exactly the same reason as you.

Thank you

no go start a new thread

this thread is for advising HC

thank you!

dx