ParkingEYE notice received for car park offering £10 per day parking** WON. PE didn't contest**

[keeks]

Dear All - first time poster coming through from the citizens advice website. I will upload a PDF of the images I am referring to later in the eveneing.

 

We were looking to park our car in London and were attracted by cheap parking rates at "Regency Car Park" in Swiss Cottage.

(Image 1) as £10 per date seemed pretty good. At the ticket machine, there were more signs reminding us it's £10 per date (until 23:55, but that's OK, since we'll be back way before then). (image 2 - 5)

 

Weeks later, we get a surprising letter from ParkingEYE about said parking and a charge for £100. Luckily, I kept the ticket, sent a photocopy in as part of our appeal to prove we paid the £10 for whole day parking. I received a a letter declining the appeal and claiming that I did not pay the right amount.

 

Confused, I e-mailed the car park (Parking-Here.com) and got the following response.

 

============

On the 19th Dec 2015 at xx: xx you arrived to our car park in Swiss Cottage.

 

On the 19th Dec 2015 at xx: xx you departed.

 

The amount you paid at the Pay & Display machine was £10.00 = Value of 5 hours.

 

You parked for 6 hours and 10 minutes; therefore you underpaid.

 

Our signs clearly states the cost of parking is £2.00 per hour or part there of.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Now for the good news;

 

We do have a late payment option which enables customers to pay late for the parking and therefore avoid paying the penalty.

 

Please call us and make a late payment option of £35.00. TL;0207 586 6581(payment can be made by Credit/Debit card over the phone).

 

Upon receiving your payment, we will appeal to Parking Eye and request the cancellation of the PCN.

 

A confirmation of the cancellation and the payment will be e-mailed to you.

 

Parking-here.com

===============

 

I argued that that is not the rate that we saw and even looked at google map images. In subsequent e-mails, Parking-Here claimed that it's £10 is a phone service only. I went back to take the photos and with prior knowledge, and looking for that detail, I suddenly saw that in most of the signs.

 

Inline image 6

 

 

In short, I think that:

 

- The signs do not help someone make an informed decision that £10 should not be paid for with the ticket machine, but instead, are designed to be misleading. (e.g. Parking Ticket Machine.... Pay By Phone. Just £10 all day, all the outside signage)

 

- The fact that they have a stock answer ready (late payment option, interesting formatting of the e-mail) also implies that this is a common enough occurrence to not warrant a bespoke response. However, this mistake is profitable for the operator.

 

 

Something feels really wrong here and I'm not sure whether to pay the late fee or take this further. I've not put together a POPLA appeal (I have a number from ParkingEYE) in fear of losing out on the opportunity that £35 may push this problem away.

 

Thanks all

 

-keeks

[armadillo71]

Are ParkingEye's systems reliable?

 

But are ParkingEye's systems reliable? And if not, how many motorists are being charged hundreds of pounds due to ParkingEye's shoddy systems?Here is one example. The motorist parked in Swiss Cottage London, which offers £10 all day parking.

 

 

http://parking-prankster.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/are-parkingeyes-systems-reliable.html?m=1

[keeks]

@armadillo71 Thank you. Wow, same boat and within weeks of eachother. I'll need to look into this article a bit closer. Couldn't quote your message as I'm not over the 10 post count yet.

[armadillo71]

The pictures of the signage will be interesting.

 

Do not pay the £35. You will be appealing to POPLA, but make sure of the time frame you have to follow ;

 

http://www.parkingcowboys.co.uk/popla-code-checker/

[silverfox1961]

Hi and welcome.

 

As you got confused with the signs, it is likely that others would have too. If you have photos of the signs showing this, that would be helpful.

 

Dates. You parked on the 19th December. What date is on the letter they sent you? You say 'weeks later' Was the car a rental?

[ericsbrother]

read the thread in the parking pranksters blog about this very same car park, PE had to admit that they are an utter shower when the push came to the shove. When you ahve read it respond to PE quoting the case and tell them where to stick their demand and point out that the demand is vexatious..

[keeks]

Thanks for the responses. I couldn't figure out how to attach the PDFd photos in my original post, so here it is instead.

 

@ armadillo71 - I'll check the POPLA code checker link against the code I received and report back.

 

@ silverfox1961 - Hmm, it may have felt like weeks, but it may have been dated 30th of December. I'll reconfirm. It just felt like a long time due to the holidays soon after we parked there.

 

@ ericsbrother - I could only find the one post about the motorist who parked there on the 6th of Jan, but no other where the Parking EYE monitoring the same car park lost in court. No doubt, this is vexatious, as I was contemplating the £35 just to be left alone.

RegencyCarParkPhotos.pdf

[armadillo71]

Well it's pretty clear from your photos, that the signage is unclear.

 

In fact it is designed to entrap the motorist into paying ten pounds at the machine , thinking it is for all day parking.

The ticket from the machine doesn't state how long the £10 is for either, so you have no chance of knowing it is not all day.

 

This should be a win at POPLA on signage alone. But you will add other reasons in your appeal.

[armadillo71]

I doubt very much if there is a contract with the landowner for PE either.

 

And who are parking-here?

 

http://www.parking-here.com/

 

A quick search brings up nothing.

 

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/search/companies?q=parking-here

 

The only company number I can see on the website is in the privacy policy, for a dissolved management company.

 

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/07670489

 

More digging needed.....

[silverfox1961]

Good info there.

 

Reading through the annual returns, they have never filed a full return and were a dormant company from 2013 until they were struck off the register.

 

How Park Here can be run by a dormant (and now dissolved) company is the big question. There must be accounts for Park Here somewhere.

 

As for PE enforcing charges for a dissolved company is also (IMO) good grounds for appeal when it gets to POPLA

 

I would love to see that contract

[armadillo71]

Ah, that is the actual name- park here, not as the website/signage states.

 

Copyright

 

All contents and information on this site including with out limitation text, graphic and images, is the property of*Park Here*or the property of their respective owners and is protected by United Kingdom copyright laws.

 

 

http://www.parking-here.com/terms-and-conditions/

 

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/03740524/officers

 

Now we are getting somewhere...

[armadillo71]

Well Barry Tucker has his hand in many similar pies...

 

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/officers/9iC4tn6fllGZSyVBa9AsJOtrTmY/appointments

 

And park here is dormant?

 

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/03740524/filing-history

[keeks]

I'm learning a lot from the way you approach your background check. I'm going through the website now to get a better understanding of them and confirm a link between the parking site and the limited company. It's confusing, because the notice says "Regency London P&D", the purchased parking ticket says "Regency Car Park" (also visible from the parking prankster blog post picture).

 

According to the POPLA code checker, I have 14 days to respond, so in parallel I'm reading up on how to put together an appeal. Thank you so far for putting all this time in.

[keeks]

Hmm, made a bit of misstep. I wish I read the "Newbies! Need help with a private parking ticket? Read this before posting!!" post on moneysavingsexpert before appealing to ParkingEYE.

 

Basically, I did say 'Here is my receipt' etc etc. I've not caught up with why that's an issue, but it seems to be. Trying to read up whether this is going to screw me up at POPLA stage, but if someone can offer a shortcut understanding, that would help. Thanks!

 

So far I have

- misleading signage

- no time stamps on the ticket, so it's not clear from the ticket, what I paid for (counter example - NCP shows when ticket expires).

- potentially PE under no contract to enforce parking charges at dissolved company, but that may come out when PE needs to provide evidence of the contract.

[ericsbrother]

the point about readingt the pranksters blog is that PW got done over by a judge for making demands when they knew they were utter rubbish. As PE know there is a problem with their system they cannot show a clean pair of hands. Do not read things in isolation, you have to look at what has gone on before so you have 2 cases on that blog next to each other, 1 about your site, the other about PE's stupidity in being unable to run their computer properly. Combine the 2 and quote then to POPLA

[keeks]

EDIT: I found this as a point of an example appeal:

 

6. The Registered Keeper is not liable

I am the registered keeper and Parking Eye do not have the identity of the driver.

As ParkingEye has failed to satisfy the requirements of Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act I cannot be liable for the charge .

 

So, it seems I can't use this point in my appeal.

 

Then, so Far I have

- misleading signage (No Breach of Contract)

- no time stamps on the ticket, so it's not clear from the ticket, what I paid for (counter example - NCP shows when ticket expires).

- No Authority - potentially PE under no contract to enforce parking charges at dissolved company, but that may come out when PE needs to provide evidence of the contract.

- Not a genuine pre estimate of loss - (For a 6 hour 10 minute stay, I should've paid an extra £2.17)

[keeks]

ericsbrother - Seems I missed your post and your point. Thanks for clarifying. I'll put some words together to point out the unreliability of their system.

[ericsbrother]

and quote the sources.

[silverfox1961]

Can we be certain that Parking-here and park here ltd are the same company.

 

UNIFIELD MANAGEMENT SERVICES LTD are the dissolved company which has the address of 97 Avenue Road, London, United Kingdom, NW3 5EJ which is the same as the car park in question but has a registered address of

Enigma House, 24-26 Arcadia Avenue, London, N3 2JU which is in the same area

 

However, Park Here Ltd have a correspondence address of 29 Byrom Street, Manchester, M3 4PFalthough they do have a registered address in London

30 Dorset Square, London, NW1 6QJ

This address, coincidentally is also the registered address of Euro Car Parks and 20 other companies.

Park Here is a dormant company and unified management are dissolved.

 

We need to be careful that we don't get confused

[armadillo71]

I don't think ' parking-here' is a company at all, just the name of the website...

 

The whole set up of this car park seems dodgy ( obviously this is PPC world ), but it does not make any difference to this POLA appeal.

PE don't provide a contract with landowner normally anyway, so they certainly won't be able to here imo...

[keeks]

Dear All

 

I have successfully appealed against this parking charge at POPLA stage. Parking Eye didn't even contest the appeal. Thanks everybody for guiding me through the initial stages. I never established a connection between Park-Here, Parking-Here, Regency Car Park, so only referred to them as another agent, and pointed out the confusion in my last appeal point. Everything else is pretty standard.

 

1. No Keeper Liability

2. Ambiguous, inadequate and non-compliant signage Signage

3. No standing or authority to pursue charges, nor form contracts with drivers!

4. The Charge is not a genuine pre-estimate of loss.

5. Inadequate accuracy of ANPR camera!

6. Existence of two agents, two contradicting contracts, two different tariff rates and two different 'penalties' on one site.

 

If you have any questions, I can go into more detail, but unfortunately, I don't know on which point Parking Eye thought it wasn't worth pursuing. I hope to help someone else out in a similar situation, especially against this Swiss Cottage Car park!

Edited February 24, 2016 by keeks

[silverfox1961]

Excellent news.

 

PE knew they had little chance of getting this past the appeals process so didn't even bother resulting in a default win for you. It would have been nice to see them try and justify it but such is life.

 

I will mark this thread with something to reflect the win

[ericsbrother]

PE lost a court case for the same thing there so they knew they were onto a hiding to nothing. Offering no contest is the cheapest option and it gains no publicity so the unaware will blindly pay up.

Good for you though for your efforts. Hopefully you will now tell all your friends that the parking companies dont have the rights they claim to.

[wizar]

There is a convoluted web of active and dissolved companies associated with 97 Avenue Road but I believe the company which currently operates the businesses located within the Regency Car Park to be Target Financial Limited, company number 06402335.