To pay or not to pay a PCN- the scary advice I got

[dontwannaberippedoff]

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

[Jamberson]

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,

 

Yes! Exactly correct if you are owed money for goods/services. Like Michael Brown said in his post, your friend must work for a legit company who provides goods/services, and is talking about that. He is confused over your parking charge as he thinks it is a real penalty which you have to pay, which it is not.

 

Court proceedings are fine for real debts, and should be taken seriously - but your parking charge in not, never has been, and never will be a debt. Therefore the people begging for your money are in no position whatsoever to sue you for it.

 

There is no debt - just a request for you to donate to their coffers. DON'T.

 

Expect a chain of scary letters. Like your friend, they will use words like bailiffs, court, CCJ - all a ruse to frighten you. Do not waver - ignore them completely and they will give up - and post back here if you are wavering. Remember, if they did try and sue you for their completely made up charge, you can always pay them at that stage. (It's won't happen of course.)

[dontwannaberippedoff]

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.

[Tony P]

In my opinion you are taking this and their rip-off sсam far too seriously.

 

People like you are what makes them rich.

 

Any chance of sending me some money too?

 

If you do, I promise not to take you to Court either. Thats fair, is it not?

[Jamberson]

Sure, if you want to donate £20 to the cause go ahead. You don't owe them anything, you don't have to pay their DVLA fee or postage costs, and they can't make you pay. But if you're feeling kindly towards them and are in a generous mood, then give your wages away.

 

While you're in the process of freely donating to these bullying parasites, perhaps you could spare a thought for the sick, hungry and homeless too...

[dontwannaberippedoff]

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)

[Michael Browne]

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.

.

I agree with Tony P that you are taking this far too seriously, and personally I would happily ignore them completely.

 

However, equally I recognise that you are going to feel more comfortable taking the action you propose. It won't harm your position (just your wallet) and at the end of the day it has to be your decision

[Jamberson]

The advice to give them £20 is no doubt well-meant, but it's also pointless. If they were serious they would sue you for the balance anyway, so you're just giving £20 away for no reason.

[Michael Browne]

The advice to give them £20 is no doubt well-meant, . .

OP is proposing £12: £8 parking charge + £4 DVLA fee

[Somebody Told Me]

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.

 

I appreciate that you want to do what you feel is law abiding and my relative had just these sort of doubts.

To convince them to ignore it I offered to pay whatever a court awarded in the highly unlikely event it went that far. And in the end it didn't.

 

Like the others have said you're taking this far much to heart and at the moment they're succeeding with their attempts to pressure you.

File the letters away and forget about it. Trust us, they'll go away soon enough and you'll look back and wonder what you were so worried about.

[freakyleaky]

Can you send me £12 please?

[instrumentsofjoy]

Can you send me £12 please?

 

And me! AND I am going to send you some really scary letters. AND I shall use Red Ink! And I may send a few of them. Each one getting more threatening. So best send me the £12.00 now!

[dontwannaberippedoff]

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.

[DBC]

But it's not a proper "PCN" is it? It's just a piece of paper which you can ignore. You still seem to be taking this matter mush too seriously.

[freakyleaky]

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.

 

No offence was meant and I am certainly not a bully.

You are right. The decision is yours.

You must do whatever you think is best.

 

My advice would be to ignore them. But that's all it is. Advice.

[Jamberson]

The fact is, you weren't given a PCN, just a request for a donation. So it IS the same as being asked for £12 on a forum.

 

They have no more power to make you pay some demand they made up than anyone does. This isn't just clever talk - it is a truth, and hopefully sheds some light on the nature of this "charge". You must get your head around the fact that there is not, and never has been, any debt or obligation to pay or deal with these people whatsoever.

 

And if you think Freaky's jokey request for £12 was bullying, wait until you get the letters from this parking company and see how they talk to you! They will be the ones genuinely bullying you - and you want to give them some of your money out of some sense of obligation? Come on!!!

[andydd]

I must disagree with some of the posts, unfortunately there are numerous cases where parking companies have taken people to court and won, the high court ruling Arthur v Anker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_%26_Another_v_Anker_%26_Another) would seem to imply that within reasons, parking charges can be recoverable. Although this was a clamping case, the sanme principals apply.

 

Although in Vine v Watlham Forest, a high court overturned the decision of a county court saying that the charge in that case was not recoverable, the main reason being as the judge did state the person did not see the sign therefore could not have enteted into a contract, so any fine/charge was not recoverable. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_v_London_Borough_of_Waltham_Forest)

 

Of course the law in this area is very grey, (and clamping will be outlawed soon anyway), and there are many reasons why a charge may not be recoverable, of course it is quite likelye that any company will not pursue people throuigh court anyway.

 

Andy

[DBC]

I should disagree with the statement "numerous". This from a posting on another forum:-

 

 

"In the lead up to the Protection of Freedoms Act (2012), the Government carried out an impact assessment. During this, the BPA claimed that, of the 1.8 million private parking tickets issued annually, some 36,000 ended up as County Court Claims. They therefore persuaded the honourable members that the introduction of Schedule 4, Clause 56, would have the impact of reducing the number of court cases.

 

I've now had an answer back from the Ministry of Justice, following an FoI request, and these are their figures for 01/01/2011 - 31/12/2011:

 

Number of Money Claims issued by AOS scheme members = 845

 

Number of those which proceeded to a hearing in front of a Judge = 49

 

Number of above resulting in award to Claimant = 24

 

(These figures may be a slight undercount due to issues with typographical errors by individual Court staff, but are broadly correct, allowing for the fact that some may not relate to parking issues)

 

So: We can accurately calculate percentages as follows:-

 

Chances of a PPC ticket resulting in a Court Claim = 845/1.8m = 0.047%

 

Chances of actually going to Court = 49/1.8m = 0.0027%

 

Chances of losing in Court = 0.0013%"

[andydd]

I dont believe that there have only been 49 cases before a judge, its not clear what does the 36,000 figure refers to ?

 

But it does through up another statistic that nearly half of claims bought by parking companies are succesful, this figure appear about right to me.

 

Andy

[DBC]

The 36,000 figure was an estimate by the BPA in their submission to Parliament, but when somebody actually made some proper research ( via the FOI request) then that figure turns out just to be 845.

[DBC]

I dont believe that there have only been 49 cases before a judge, its not clear what does the 36,000 figure refers to ?

 

But it does through up another statistic that nearly half of claims bought by parking companies are succesful, this figure appear about right to me.

 

Andy

 

 

But look at the very tiny percentage of cases that actually get to court and the even small percentage that are successful.

[freakyleaky]

We've been here so many times before and when successful cases are found they turn out to be cases won because the defendant didn't turn up or other such scenario's.

 

My advice would still be to ignore in this instance. (Or send me the money LOL)

[andydd]

Im certainly not defending parking companies juts pointing out that if/when they do pursue action in court they have been resonably succesful. Im not going to comment on the statistics further as they dont realy make sense to me and I doubt their accuracy.

 

The CAG forum is full of similar threads where contributors tell posters advice normally along the lines of just ignore which usually works out well but sometimes does result in court action where the poster loses and is some what annoyed by the advice given.

 

By advice would be not to ignore correspondence but answer witha firm denial but be prepared for any possible court action (however unlikely).

 

Andy

[Jamberson]

The CAG forum is full of similar threads where contributors tell posters advice normally along the lines of just ignore which usually works out well but sometimes does result in court action where the poster loses and is some what annoyed by the advice given.

 

I can't recall a single one.

[DBC]

I can't recall a single one.

Yes, lets have a few examples.