VCS 15 PCN's - Floats Rd Car Park next to Wythenshawe Hosp Manc's. Student at Placement with staff permit used the wrong carpark

[Auto]

charge of £1600!

 

The driver is a student and on placement at a hospital...in November driver started, went to parking office, girl told driver pay £6PCM for a permit, driver has paid since November. asked where they use this permit, she answered... around the back at floats road ever since the driver has been parking there and had no indication they were in the wrong.

 

Three days ago driver got 16 letters all with £100 fines each totally £1600 of fines! driver realised the car park woman they spoke to meant the NHS back car park at the end of floats road rather than the actual Floats road car park

 

driver went into the nhs office to speak to them about it, the woman found it rather comical, the driver is really stressed about this because they are a student and literally have little to no income as they go to placement everyday as part of their degree and is struggling with this large fee of £1600.

 

The driver in no way had any intention to break the law and did not know they were in the wrong. It is a huge shock to the driver and if the drive knew their permit was not valid for this particular site they would have not parked there but no warning or indication was left. 

 

The driver has sent a letter back using a template issued by a Facebook admin in a car park forum but the company sent a letter back saying they are unable to accept the appeal on the grounds of large lettering and they still assume the driver is the keeper.

 

Please help.

[dx100uk]

please complete this for ONE of the NTK's

it is NOT A FINE!!

 

 

[lookinforinfo]

The PCNs should have arrived within 14 days of each incident.

That they didn't suggests the address of the keeper was different from the one held by the DVLA.

 

Even though the car was parked in the wrong place is not in itself fatal since the parking company still has to have a system that legally forms a contract between them and the student. Most of them fail at that so no money is due even when parked in the wrong place.

 

However until we know a bit more we cannot advise and help to save an innocent party from being under pressure to pay an unaffordable sum unneccessarily. That would be a tragedy. We do our best to help those who come here and if you look at our successes [and lack of failures ] you will see we are pretty good with our advice.

 

Yes we appear to have got off on the wrong foot but as already said on a previous post, £1600 is too much money for them to give up without a fight. And I am sure it is not a fight that you want to lose either. Together we can beat the crooks and all it need as a start is to fill out the few questions on post 2. 

 

Incidentally, if you could include the last PCN's  information on the questions, with luck if it was fairly recent it might show whether it arrived within the correct time to qualify for POFA 2012. If it doesn't, it could call into question all the others too-which would be a start on not being liable for any of the payments..

[BankFodder]

I've suppressed some of the posts in this thread – I hope you and the others won't mind. The thread has very quickly descended into something rather aggressive and it seems to me that's because you seem to be very suspicious of us when we are trying to give you help.

We have a lot of experience – we don't always get it right – but mainly we do.
 

You have told us that your friend is a student nurse who mistook advice about where to park on or near Floats Road which apparently is at the back of a hospital. I hope you won't think that we are spying or anything but the information you provided is enough already to understand that the problem is at Wythenshawe Hospital which presumably has a car park which is managed by a private parking company.

The identity of the hospital is publicly available when one searches on "Floats Road".

 

The student nurse is over 18 and therefore there is a potential for a binding contract here.

Although it is generally speaking reasonably easy to deal with these private parking companies, it seems that your friend now has 16 tickets potentially at £100 each and although private parking companies often back off, here you are dealing with a potential harvest of £1600 and that means that the private parking company is far more likely to attempt to go the distance. It is for this reason that you help us by providing the information that you have been asked for by my colleague @dx100uk and this will allow us possibly to give you some advice which may help.

However, there are some additional questions which need to be asked. My colleague @dx100uk as already remarked that you would not have received all 16 parking tickets at the same time. This would just be too extraordinary because it would mean that they had been saving them up to hit you with all at one go. Of course that would be wonderful if that had happened because this would be very helpful to your case – but it's most unlikely.
So in addition to the questions which have been asked above, I think that we need to know the history of this.

Presumably they have been trying to communicate with you and either as has been suggested, the tickets have been sent to an address which is not presently used by your friend – or else they have been sent to your friend and they have been ignored – maybe because your friend has taken advice elsewhere – possibly on Facebook.

If your friend was aware of the tickets as they arrived from the very beginning then one does wonder why they continued mistakenly to park in the wrong place when they had purchased a very cheap parking permit to park in a designated place. I think this leads us to believe that your friend, the nursing student, has their car registered at a different address – maybe the address of their parents – whilst they themselves are in a student residence somewhere else near the hospital and that the correspondence which has been received has not been passed on.

Whatever the situation – there needs to be an explanation – and it will help if you can provide the answers here.

I think it would also be helpful if you could put up the template letter which was sent to the parking company, their reply – and also photographs of the parking signs which apparently controlled the area in which your friend part.

Thank you

[Auto]

Thank you I will post all the details today Sorry for coming off as aggressive in any way that is not my intention I just don’t deal with this stress very well.

is there an easier way to upload photos on here for you all to access? 
 

[BankFodder]

Follow the upload link

[FTMDave]

A big problems for the PPCs is that they know who the owner of the vehicle is ("the keeper" in legalese) but they don't know who the driver was.  There is a law (POFA 2012) that they can use to transfer liability to the keeper, but they are often too lazy, arrogant & stupid to bother to follow the provisions of the law.  That's why dx posted the sticky in post 2 to get this information.

 

Also some of the PPCs never do court while some are very litigious, some are reasonably competent while others are total thickos, so again it is important to know which company your friend is dealing with.

[lookinforinfo]

The photos can be uploaded later so I have reposted the questions from an earlier post that will help your friend/child to avoid paying. You just click on the url and post your answers on it. No need to upload anything-it's all done for you. 

 

 

Edited March 10, 2020 by lookinforinfo

[dx100uk]

you copy and paste the relevant Q&A back here from the link

then answer each Q at the end before hitting submit reply

 

we will need a PDF scan of ONE of the 10 PCN/NTK letters...bothsides please

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ericsbrother]

first thing to do is speak to estates manager and get thewm to cancel the lot.

No law has been broken and no loss has been caused by the incorrect parking when a permit was given for the purpose of parking.

 

If the driver still goes there some pictures of the signage  there would be helpful, every different sign and any paint jobs that indicate the parking areas. Name the parking co as well.

Chances are it is the usual omnishambles that we see at hospitals with confusing parking zones and signs that dont correlate or show the difference between pubic parking areas and staff areas (which shuldnt be of interest to a aprking co but they still chisel peopel and lose spectacularly at court)

 

name the hospital as well, some have already ahd their backsides bitten

[dx100uk]

The pcn's are not for parking in a carpark that is part of those on the hospital land.

She parked in the wrong car park which is outside  further down the road so hosp will have no say as they are not the owners..surely??

[ericsbrother]

It depends who manages the car parks.

We asked for you to name and shame the parking co but also identify the car parks/land in question.

we cant mind read so at least tell us where this all is and we can look at google noseyneighbour to see what we can see from the public highway. that in itself kills parking co claims.

Give us a clue where we are supposed to look at least

[honeybee13]

I fear we may have lost the OP. They haven't been here since Tuesday late morning.

 

HB

[dx100uk]

getting fleeced out of more money by that facebook group no doubt...

[brassnecked]

they were on the defensive from get go and obstructive regarding vital info needed. Can't pleas 'em all.

[Auto]

Hi there sorry for the late reply I appreciate all your guys help.

It is Floats Road Car Park just next to Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester.

 

The company that sent me the NTK’s is called ‘Vehicle Control Services Limited’  I believe and they have rejected all of my 9 NTK objections.

 

They should have cancelled these as they were all given out 14 days after contravention date.

I have 15 NTKs in total and it looks like I will be charged £1500 at the moment. 

 

please let me know how you can help in this terrible situation 

[FTMDave]

I've had a look on Google Maps and see this car park is in the middle of several hospital car parks, so it would have been easy to get confused.

 

It's no surprise that VCS rejected your objections.  If you read other VCS threads you will see they really are a bunch of spivs who hold complete contempt for the law.

 

However, you need to act because their greedy boss will be slavering over the chance of getting £1500.

 

For a start, can you please post up what you wrote in your "objections"?  All nine please.  VCS will have written to you as the keeper of the vehicle, we need to know if you outed yourself as the driver.

 

Have a read of this thread -

- and contact the DVLA.  VCS should have obtained your details all 15 times, but if they've been lazy and haven't bothered then that is a chance to bat off at least some of the tickets.  After all, you could have sold the car in that time.

 

Please can you tell us how it got to 15 tickets?  Once VCS had sent out their first begging letter, why did you keep using the car park?

 

VCS have been seen off countless times by users of this forum, but we need to know what's been going on.

 

I presume you're in the area regularly - next time you are, get photos of all the signs in the offending car park.

[ericsbrother]

By appealing you have made the fact they were issued late totally irrelevant UNLESS you made it clear you were the keeper and were not driving at the time.

 

still not enough info about the site as there is no separate car park so it must be associated with someone else's business.

can you please post up EXACTLY what location is given on the demands and then tell us where it is as any difference between what they say and the actual address is critical.

 

so to reiterate, WHERE exactly was the car park (and what business is associated with it)

WHEN where the events and the dates you got the NTK's, 

WHAT was the supposed breach of terms and

What did you say in the appeals and how many of those did you submit and how (letter, email, )

 

we need the exact info, not a summary or an approximation, beating these demands is all in the detail because they currently stand to make a lot of money when they probably arent owed a bean but they will lie and cheat to get their hands on it

 

[BankFodder]

I hope you won't mind me butting in here – this is not an area which I'm familiar with but I'm intrigued to know what rule you are referring to that prevents them from issuing multiple tickets within a certain amount of time.

Thanks

 

I've also asked you to post up some photographs of the car park signage – but you haven't addressed this.

I think it will be helpful to the people you want to assist you to do so

[ericsbrother]

the multiple ticket bit would apply if the vehicle was parked i=overnight for example and they issued 2 tickets, one for each day. That would be wrong because it was a single event

[Auto]

 I am the second driver but the private company do not know this

I did not admit to who the driver was they have took reasonable assumption to make the keeper the driver but this was not the case. 

 

I have sent off 9 NTK objection letters to the company informing them they have sent me letters outside of the 14 day period however they sent the rejection (the second image in my last email) it seems as if they do not want to abide by the law. 

 

The NTK's state the contravention dates below, and they are all out of the 14 day period.

 

the company should have cancelled these but they have not (they were delivered on the 17/02/2020 also they left no parking sticker on my car so I had no indication/warning I was in the wrong. 

 

CONTRAVENTION DATES:

1) 16/01/2020

2) 20/01/2020

3) 22/01/2020

4) 23/01/2020

5) 27/01/2020

6) 28/01/2020

7) 29/01/2020

30/01/2020 at 11: 36 (two £100 charges on the same day, different times)

9) 30/01/2020 at 14: 40

 

These above dates are all out of the 14 day period as they were delivered on the 17/02/2020. 

From the 17/02/2020 I stopped parking there as I had realised my permit was not valid here.

 

I started parking in the correct staff car park hoping that would be the last of charges and hassle.

 

However one week later I had more incoming charges on the following dates:

 

CONTRAVENTION DATES:

10) 03/02/2020 12: 39 (two £100 charges on the same day, different times) delivered on 18/02/2020 

11) 03/02/2020 16: 30

12) 11/02/2020

13) 12/02/2020

14) 13/02/2020

15) 17/02/2020 (these were plus 8 and 9) were all delivered within the 14 day period).

 

I am extremely anxious about the this whole situation as a student with no job/ steady income I am struggling to understand how I can pay up to £1500 to a private car park company. 

 

I have been paying £6 a month to Wythenshawe hospital car park office and I have proof of this.

It is clear I have been misdirected and lied to about where I can park and a communication error has happened clearly. 

 

It simply does not make sense for me to park at Floats Road Car Park when the staff car park is closer to the hospital and more convenient but the office lady clearly provided me false information as to where my permit is valid. The office sent a rude email back to me not acknowledging the mistake the staff member has made so it is incredibly infuriating as I had no wrong intentions to misuse the car park. 

 

The strange thing is I have been parking at Floats Road Car Park since i started placement on the November 22nd 2019 yet I have no charges from this date. It seems as if the private car park only started registering cars from the 16/01/2020.

 

If I had received any indication from the company on the 16/01/2020, such as a parking charge yellow sticker on my windscreen I would have known never to park there again, however they have fundamentally bombarded me with many charges all at once and this is very unfair.

[honeybee13]

Hi.

 

I understand that you're anxious and we want to help. What we need is the information requested in post #2 for one of the tickets please.

 

HB

[BankFodder]

And the photos of the signage.

 

[dx100uk]

you have not been lied to by anyone

the driver stupidly parked in the wrong carpark for her staff permit she pays for.

 

VCS (simple simon) WILL take this all the way to court.

and as it stands he will win handsdown if you don't start providing us with the information needed.

 

so get ONE of the NTK's and use it to fill out our link Q&A please in post 2

we need you to also scan up thre NTK both sides to One multipage PDF

pretty sure I know which carpark this is

but if you could also post a google earth/maps street view pic of the entrance this would be useful.

 

also a copy of one of your appeal letters in full

and their reply to it.

 

thank you

 

dx

 

[lookinforinfo]

Thank you for taking over and clearing up the situation a bit.

However the fact that the PCNs may not have been delivered within the statutory 14 days does not mean that each PCN is negated.

 

What it means is that VCS can no longer legally hold the keeper liable for the debt.

They can only pursue the driver and take the driver to Court so it is important that VCS do not find out your name.

 

Just because they have lost the chance to pursue the keeper does not mean that they will stop harassing the keeper.

When as much money is at stake, they will go on to the bitter end, threatening Court for example, hoping that the keeper will finally crack and pay up.

 

Indeed Auto may well get a "Letter before Claim" which is the precursor to being taken to Court.

I have no doubt that a response from EB should dissuade them from trying to actually going ahead with a Court case.

 

That being said you would probably need more then one string to your bow to be closer to 100% sure of not losing any Court case. This is because of the Judge lottery.

 

Many Judges would accept rgw lack of keeper liability but there are some that would take a dim view of a driver running up so much debt and then using the Law to avoid payment. That is one of the reasons we keep asking for a sight of one of the PCNs as well as photos of the signage in the car park at the entrance and around the carpark including T&Cs on any payment meter if there is one.

 

[I know you were using a permit but as they don't appear to be use in this car park, then a sight of what their rules are around the car park can often help to shoot down VCS in Court.]

 

If VCS manage to win in Court the final bill will be a fair bit higher than £1500 so it is in your interest to have as strong a case as possible in order to avoid such a sad and unnecessary result.