I have now received the 'final notice' with threats of solicitors, court proceedings etc for non-payment. I must admit it makes me feel physically ill, but having got this far I am gritting my teeth and sticking to the 'ignore it' advice.

Yes I agree, there seems to be 3 options 1-pay the charge and look at it as the price to avoid the stress of the bullying letters 2-send a letter denying there is any debt owed etc 3- ignore all the threats and cross fingers that I am not one of the unlucky small minority that gets taken to court Having read all the comments on here and a couple of other forums, I do feel much better informed about the situation. So thank you everybody. I am not going to go for option 1) as i feel it is so unfair and I can ill afford it at the moment. Whilst I was very drawn to option 2) and found some template letters on one forum, it is still no guarantee that it would prevent the threatening letters and in my mind would possibly draw attention to my particualar case....so...deep breath...option 3) I may well have to come back on here for further advice/support as the letters come in!

Oh, in that case I do not understand what andydd is referring to in comment #63 ....I personally think the best advice is to try and follow the guidelines in the CPR Pre Action Protocol, youve then covered yourself in the unlikely case it should progress to court and you could show the judge youve followed all the suggested guidelines, I dont believe a blanket 'ignore' is always the correct way forward.

Where can I find the guidelines in the CPR Pre Action Protocol that you mention please?

Ha...ha....very amusing, and the answer is of course no! Asking for £12 on a forum is hardly equates to the PCN now does it? It is also not helpful or constructive advice like many of the comments on here are. At the end of the day it is my decision and in some ways comments like yours are also 'bullying' because they are belittling what I have written as a possible option. That option was suggested to me in good faith on a similar forum. I wanted to get a consensus of viewpoints.

Ha..ha....yes I possibly might if you had sent me a letter to my home address informing me I had contravened some regulation which had been posted an i had ignored. Like the majority of people i am taking it seriously. At least i have not just paid it but have joined these forums to get advice and the above suggested letter was one piece of advice on another forum. To my eyes it seems fair because i did not pay the £8 parking charge in the first place (as i was not aware there was one)

Other advice has been to write to them along the lines of: as it is not a penalty I deny any debt is owed. however i enclose a Postal Order for £12 being the cost of postage, DVLA registered keeper details retrieval and £8 (that being the cost of parking for longer than 2 hours) to cover the losses to the landowner, and this represents my full and final settlement. If you believe you are entitled to more you should take your claim to court where I will defend. This would mean their losses are zero and i have been reasonable. Furthermore i have learnt that an overstay at the car park would be trepass and the landowner would need to sue for trespass, not Parking Eye who only manage the car park, and they could in any case only sue for damages caused.

OK dx100uk.....thanks for that.....deep breath.....I am going to sleep on this...(today being a very bad day all round) and ( i hope) wake up tomorrow feeling more angry than scared! Thanks to everyone for all the much needed advice and support. I will keep this forum posted of what happens next since i am sure that many are reading this even if they are not posting comments etc

I feel a bit of a 'wuss'. ..and feel poised on this decision of 'do I, or don't I pay this.. ....I am taking note of all you guys are saying. ..and if i decide that i can 'brave' the threats. ..would like to post on here all the letters that i will no doubt receive as they come in... ...If I decide don't pay. .there is still the decision to make - write and inform them 'I deny any debt incurred and will be prepared to defend in court' or simply ignore all corresondence up until a the potential of a summons to a Count Court

Thank you, that is very reassuring! It is the principal of the whole thing - ie a company set up purely with the aim of making money from scaring people ..it really samcks of a 'protection racket' though i am sure they would argue that point.

I have no idea what he means by this (since he is currently abroad and have not had chance to speak ) I know i once had a county court claim in the small claims division awarded against somebody who didn't pay rent in a house I was letting whilst abroad, it was totally meaningless since that person never paid a penny back to me. Having read all the threads I must say that I almost feel as though 'I would be letting the side down' if I paid the charge because I feel that these private parking companies are preying on vulnerable law abiding citizens and it just isn't right anymore than the numerous [problem]s you hear about. They have in people's eyes a legitimacy to do what they do. However, and i suppose that is the crux of the matter, i am a 'vulnerable' person, i feel that i cannot afford to pay and at the same time know that I will (if i ignore the letter) be very stressed by the subsequent threats and worry that if i don't pay the £60 the amount will ultimately increase.. ..and i can see that is exactly how they make their money...very clever. That is why I joined this forum, to get reassurance that I am doing the right thing to ignore the PCN. I can categorically say that the driver did not notice the signage - it never entered my head that there would be any at this car park, but .. ..ignorance is not bliss in the eyes of the law.. .so the question still remains as to the legality of it all. All the comments and advice are very much appreciated. I did have one of these about a year ago, which i paid without question, and at the time was in a better financial position.

No, i am 100% positive of that.

andydd - would I say that 'I' was unaware of any signage or 'the driver' was unaware of any signage?

That is interesting advice which conflicts with some of the other advice posted on threads - ie that I should not enter into any correspondence with them. I notice that the PCN states that the penalty is payable by the driver of the car, though they have not stated who that is nor asked for that information - which i realise I am not obliged to give them if they do ask. The 2 free hours would have expired at 20.51 and the car was collected at 02.00 and the car park was less than half full when the car was parked and at 2 am there were very few cars parked -does that represent a lack of actual losses ie not the same as for example a busy retail shopping centre car park?

Like many others I have received a Parking Charge Notice(from Parking Eye) and consider the amount to be unfair - £60 if I pay now, or £90 if I don't pay by 2nd July 2012. As the registered keeper of the vehicle which was parked at a motorway service station my name and address was traced via the DVLA when the cameras photgraphed the car entering and leaving the car park. I used this car park on occasion in the past as a convenient meeting point to share travel costs to a further destination and had absolutely no idea that things had changed. Had the signage been noticed and read the £8 parking fee for parking longer than the free 2 hours allowed would have been happily paid. Having read many threads on here and other forums, watched the youtube Watchdog clips etc, i had come to the conclusion that I would grit my teeth and ignore the PCN and the expected deluge of threatening letters etc that would ensue. However, I then got the following advice from a friend: It wasn't Parking Eye but it was another such company and I knew that I had broken their posted rules for the car park I had used; I ignored the ticket which was stuck to my car but when the letters were followed by the County Court summons, I paid up to avoid having a CCJ issued against me Whatever the rights and wrongs of the way that private parking companies operate, I can tell you that if it goes to court and you ignore it: their fees get added to your debt and a CCJ will make it difficult for you to get credit. I'm working on three County Court cases against non-paying customers right now: one summons issued yesterday and two CCJ's issued after the defendants ignored their respective summonses last month. If the latter two haven't paid by the end of next week, I will be asking the court to appoint a bailiff to seize goods to the value of my claim. If you intend to dispute the penalty charge you should make contact with them (registered letters etc.) and demand the cancellation of the ticket using what you've learnt online. But if you do nothing and it goes through due process in the courts, you'll have no defence and no choice if a CCJ gets issued. We encounter these parking tickets with our fleet drivers from time to time and the proof of driver is often solved by photographic evidence provided by the parking company (look out for cameras on the entrance to motorway service areas). With the company as the registered keeper of the vehicles, we always settle promptly to avoid wasting time and money unless we have a stout defence; but parking fines are the driver's responsibility so we take it out of their wages! Now I am at a loss as to what to do for the best. Having been made redundant recently I can ill afford the extortionate amount, but the above advice has realy scared me-can anyone comment on the above please?