Hi Mossy, we are not going to fall out over this, I know you wear a white hat but you must have got out of bed with a strange emphatuation for excel this morning. I hope it wears off and you can soon make a full recovery. I take issue with one of your comments. Contrary to what you say, most contracts DO NOT contain penalty clauses. Lawyers and other professionals take a lot of time and effort in avoiding penalty clauses precisely because they are unenforceable. What you do have are stated remedies for breech of contract, loss of profit, the parties costs and so on, all accountable after the breach. There are also liquidated damages provisions in some contracts. These have to be based upon genuine pre estimates of loss agreed by the parties to the contract. There is no way that the OP agreed to a £10 admin charge simply for miskeying his reg nr. Also consider Excel's actions 1. they try to charge OP £100 2. OP produces ticket [miskeyed reg] 3. Excel manage at that stage to do their cross referencing [could have done it before to save everyone the trouble] and accept that OP bought a ticket. 4. Excel change demand from £100 to £10 but state if £10 not paid then they would go for full £100. 5, How the **** would that work then. They did not write on the letter "without prejudice" so the letter would be available as evidence if push came to shove. Having accepted that "true" entitlement was only £10 m'lud judge would be less than impressed with a £100 claim. 6. Their only chance would be to go on MCOL for the £10. Do not expect this to happen anytime soon. I wouldn't seeing them winning even this because all of their incurred costs are self inflicted. Punch errors are a fact of life and excel's systems should be able to cope.

I wouldn't pay them anything either, The only way that excel could recover their £10 is by spending a further £35 on an MCOL claim. There is no way on earth that anyone at Excel would be silly enough to do that. As for it being the OP's fault, I don't accept that either. Excel's system should be sophisticated enough to cope with the odd punch error on data entry. A filter should have been applied at the processing centre prior to the DLVA RK information being obtained. The fact that excel could quicky resolve the issue after the OP complained speaks volumes. What should the car park signs say? Parking £1 / hr [extra charge of £60 applies for old people, dyslexics and technophobes] The identical same issue came up at an excel car park in sheffield. After receiving advice from the forum, the OP there elected to write to excel saying put up or shut up or FOAD as Pin1onu so elequently puts it. Guess what.........nothing happened.

Could do with other posters opinion on this one. It is a council car park although the details as G & M's link states NO RESTRICTION for this car park. You have not received a council excess charge notice but rather a BS private invoice. On the proviso that you have not received any council paperwork I'd certainly continue to ignore.

No! but there is enough time for a masked and cloaked stranger, having no connection to the OP, to liberate any clamp.

Tirnanog, Sounds like Excel to me - am I right?

From the previously submitted link: Legion’s Notice Processing Department handles all the administrative procedures involved in recovering fines and dealing with appeals. Well, that sounds fair enough - no worries then!

they just advised me not to ignore their letter This is very bad unsolicited advice, had you taken it you would have lost 5 minutes of your valuable time, time you can never get back. and told me that it was in my interest to make full payment Again, terrible advice, how could it be in anybody's interest to throw away good money on blatant scams. Good to see more people sticking up to these bullies.

You can get into hifaluting discussions about what constitutes a marked bay. Not complying has different results whether it is a council car park or not. Council Car Park - do not park other than within marked bays or the registered keeper will be fined. Private Car Park - Just so much white paint. You get a few annoying letters demanding money - these you can ignore. UKPC are persistant letter writers, you will get demands from them. After a couple of letters you will get the one from the "Debt Collection Agency". Don't worry, this is all very normal. Just ignore from now on. UKPC DON'T DO ANYTHING!

Nah - Sheba still looking for their true queen [lamma's claim disallowed] This does look like a PPC / Council hybrid although reading the attached link I'm of the opinion that the car parks concerned are not the subject of a TRO and hence Legion's demands can and should be ignored. Would welcome other posters opinions http://www.legiongroup.co.uk/documents/KnowsleyMBC_000.pdf

Windsor-Smythe & Partners is actually part of OPC, you have received nothing that others have not cheerfully ignored in the past. This thread makes clear - apologies for the length: http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/parking-traffic-offences/71953-opc-private-parking-tickets.html?highlight=OPC http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/parking-traffic-offences/145073-opc-famous-windsor-smythe.html?highlight=OPC

Probably does not help but: The police position is completely untenable, there is no logic to it. Yes, the issue may have started as a civil matter but harrassment is a criminal offence, the police SHOULD take action. An analogy: Two neighbours have a dispute about the correct location of a property boundary - this is a civil dispute. They decide to resolve the matter with a fist fight - is this still a civil dispute? The one who lost goes into his house and comes out with a shotgun - is this still a civil dispute? The above example exaggerates to prove a point: What people disagree about is one thing, but how they behave is another. If the behaviour is illegal, and many postings point to breaches of many statutes by PPCs / DCAs, then the Police should act. How do you make the police act. Quite frankly, I'm not sure but as with any large organisation, the best thing to do is be polite but persistant. Rehearse your arguements, be sure of which legislation is being broken. Have evidence to hand, correspondence, times of phone calls, recordings if possible. If you feel you are fobbed off say "I am not happy with your response and I will be taking this further in writing, please may I have your name and contact details for my follow up letter." I suspect that getting the police to act will be more a test of your endurance than anything else.

The small claims court is a bit of a "quick and dirty" form of justice. It is quite possible for a PPC to win against a poor defence or a no show. We've yet to hear of a win against a "proper" defence. No worries with Parking Eye, they have already shot their bolt in their "notice to owner" which states that the registered keeper is liable!!! Simply NO CHANCE of Parking Eye wishing to have their paperwork scrutinised by a court.

This is hypothetical but yes - it would stand as a CCJ. However, for this to affect your credit rating it would have to become an "outstanding CCJ" - that is that you don't settle payment within the stipulated period. Credit agencies have access to these lists of outstanding CCJs. Normal judgements, settled within the time period do not get on to these lists in the first place.

This crowd really are beyond the pale! Their in-house "debt collection agency" used to be called Inland Recovery but now that the Inland Revenue has been incorporated into HM Revenue and Customs, AS Securi-T have changed the name, presumably to avoid confusion .

angela-27 If you are adamant about contacting CEL, then use the templates. They give nothing away and do save time in reinventing the wheel. http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/parking-traffic-offences/119802-private-parking-tickets-template.html

How legal is it - not very. Standard advice is to ignore completely. Apart from one infamous company [not Athena], none of these companies pursue all the way to county court. You will get 5 or 6 letters, threatening the sky falling down around your head then ........nothing. Read these: http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/parking-traffic-offences/65341-private-parking-companies-charges.html http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/parking-traffic-offences/119802-private-parking-tickets-template.html

I'm aware that others may disagree with this approach but, given that you have been in contact with them, I'd write along the following lines [from Bernie's template letters] Dear Sirs, Re: Your letter dated [dd/mmmm/yyyy] Reference[#] Thank you for your captioned letter. Since I wrote to you I have been doing some research. I now understand that your “parking ticket” purported to have been issued with the force of law behind it. I now believe this not to be the case. Would you please advise me what statute(s) and/or judicial precedent enable you to enforce this penalty against me. In the meantime I absolutely deny your claim that the amount claimed, or any amount at all, is due to you from me. Yours Faithfully It is just that you are on record as having agreed to their "fine" so there should also be a record of your subsequent rebuttal.

I've never seen the "pukkah" defence shown on one of these forums either. Let the PPCs continue to learn the hard way. Like some others, I spend too much time on these forums. I'm sure I'd have heard about a case bubbling under in Portsmouth if it were Pepipoo / CAG driven. As the troll has inferred, let us wait for the transcript.

Jane Well done - a good outcome. It is true that many of us on here advocate a particular course of action - cut the PPCs dead, do not give them the time of day, certainly do not "appeal", they are simply not worthy of our valuable time. However, you can get too hung up on tactics. The main thing is that you did not fall for the [problem] and you refused to give in. Although you went down a different route, you arrived at the same destination. NO PAYMENT FOR THE PPC!!

I concur, No point in "appealling" to these people. The most efficient thing to do is ignore completely. The phone call as you admit, not the best of ideas, the idea is to get them to spend their money. No matter, just ignore from now on, it will go away. Rossendales are just debt collectors. THEY AREN'T GOING TO DO ANYTHING. They can't, they have no powers whatsoever. Eventually, when they tire of you ignoring them, they will refer the matter back to the PPC [which company is it?]. There is a vanishingly small chance that the PPC will issue court papers [about 1 in 10,000 chance or less]. If they do, rejoice, laugh out loud, you will get a cast iron defence courtesy of the legal eagles who fly over this and other forums. Honestly, this is absolutely nothing to be concerned about. Most of us have been there, initial feelings of being intimidated soon turns to indignation. I now find any PPCs threats to be completely pathetic, you will get there too.

I'm up for it - as long as its ok to bring sandwiches

ArealEngineer - I may have been hasty with you. It appeared to me that you were advocating a procedure [paying the [problematic]] rather than sharing your experience and asking for advice. It has got to said that 1st time posters, coming on to this forum, stating that tickets "must be paid" turn out to be PPC Trolls 99.999% of the time. You may be the honourable exception. I would never advise anybody to pay over hard earned cash to confidence tricksters, hence my robust response. If I have read you wrong, you are just another punter who's been a victim of MET's misrepresentations, then I apologise unreservedly.

I'm sorry, but I really do smell troll on this one. 1st. If AreaEngineer was in the McDs at the time surely he / she would have avoided a ticket - if he wasn't in how did he / she know the "warden" came in to the restaurant. 2nd. "I always pay them" = more money than sense, if you thought they were payable, you'd alter your behaviour accordingly. There are two possible explanations, either this is PPC spin or alternatively, AreaEngineer is a congenital moron. The outcome is the same, opinions expressed have no validity and must be discounted.

Leedsman, you have a choice. Either fall for Peternet's intimidation or blank UKCPS completely. In the most miniscule of chances that court papers are issued then I'm quite sure that the experts on here will rally round and you will get the best of defences. UKCPS paperwork is not the best, their £3 / day "liquidated damages" is just so much nonsense. I really can not see any hope of UKCPS winning against a proper defence.

Courtesy of adenuffs posting as below: Your credit rating would only be affected if you had a CCJ which you didn't pay Your credit rating is assessed by combining information about you available in the public domain (such as unsatisfied CCJs, Bankruptcies and things like whether or not you are on the Electoral Roll) and information about you which is shared by the major lenders and which you have given them permission to share because it forms part of the credit agreement terms which you have to sign when you take out a loan or get a new credit card. It does not include information provided by filthy [problematic] or other assorted scumbags