How is this possible?

[JakeGil]

Hello, can someone tell me how this is possible

I work for a fairly big haulage firm and have over the last week covered my boss who is off with Covid and I have seen something I have never seen before

What appears to be happening is that the drivers don't pay for over night parking at various moto and road chef sites which normally costs £25 for the night.  

They do this with the intention of getting a parking notice,

The parking notice is then received and they pay some bloke from Birmingham £10 for each one and then each ticket gets cancelled (apparently he has never failed to cancel these particular tickets) so the company saves £15 a time and this has spread to several other haulage firms

How on earth does the company and the guy who does it get away with it? has been going on for years by the looks of it and not done by accident

it seems like they are intentionally getting a ticket as the person he uses knows he can get them off and does it by the dozen. f

 I haven't said anything to anyone else in the company and its interesting it doesn't seem to involve any other parking firm

Thoughts?

[JakeGil]

The address given by the person he uses isn't a company it just appears to be a normal residential address rather then anything professional 

[lookinforinfo]

One scenario could be that the PCNs are shams-ie not issued by the parking company monitoring the car park. Perhaps issued by an employee of the parking company who then gets £10 from your drivers. Can't explain why your drivers would get involved with it if they aren't paying for the £25 anyway. 

But the guy getting the £10 per ticket is doing ok out of it. I suspect that your company is not the only company doing it. 

[JakeGil]

I have got copies of them and they look genuine, i went to the company (parking firms website) and the pcn numbers are genuine

 

The drivers appear to have been told you don't need to pay for parking at certain sites and the company will deal with , the company gets the paper work and emails over to the person dealing with them who sends in a paypal invoice each week

 

I posted this on another forum and they have said it appears to be fraud so I am going to tell my boss he needs to stop doing this.

[dx100uk]

why?

who it harming.?

all speculative invoice are almost fraud themselves anyway so...

[JakeGil]

I was just going of what someone said on the mse parking page

If it isnt fraud then maybe not a problem.  I think i was more shocked by how long its been happening and the ease of them doing it, thats why it appears to have spread to other haulage firms 

[lookinforinfo]

I could take a photocopy of a PCN and I doubt most people would know the difference between it and the original. On the other hand getting them consecutively numbered could be more difficult. Though it may be that there is a small number of them that are reprinted all the time since nobody really looks at PCN numbers nor remembers one for a couple of weeks ago-especially as they are done and dusted pretty quickly.

 

Whatever is going on there is a scam involved. The person who collects the £10 is involved [it is possible that other share in that payout. But your company also benefits. And your manager may presumably have known if they knew that the standard overnight parking was £25 yet invoices received are only for £10 and only because he is off ill has this been uncovered. Perhaps, as this is all conjecture on my part.

 

If the company is involved how high up does it go and could you get embroiled in the fallout. That is something for you to resolve and it should not be discussed here for your own protection .

 

 

[JakeGil]

thank you , ive checked and there to many different parking notices, I found a couple from last week and I went to the parking companies website and they already have appeals in progress

Reading the MSE thread it seems that someone is making use of what might look like a loophole , charging for it and making money due to the volumes involved.  Then the company i work for and others are saving money because they appear to know they can make use of this loophole

I am not however going to identify any of the parties involved

[lookinforinfo]

Well if the "loophole" is that the parking company is not relying on PoFA so all your PCNs are being cancelled by the parking company you could appeal yourself and not pay the £10 per ticket. {When I say yourself, I mean the company ].

[JakeGil]

I am going to speak to him about it when he is back in the office.  It is no exaggeration when I say over the years (quite a number) it appears to have been several thousand tickets 

Edited November 29, 2021 by JakeGil

[Gick]

There is a loser (or rather eventually losers) in this situation.

a) The provider of the overnight parking are not receiving the payment due for the facility.

 

b) The current situation with driver shortages, which is affecting delivery of goods to everyone, is due in part to poor overnight facilities putting off drivers continuing in the job and difficulty in recruiting new drivers to replace European drivers no longer working here since Brexit..

 

Facilities, including secure parking, showers etc., can only be paid for out of the income stream from those drivers paying their nightly charge. Irrespective of any criminality, there is an ethical question here. I make no apology if this sounds 'po-faced'.

Edited November 29, 2021 by Gick
grammar

[JakeGil]

An honest opinion is better then no opinion otherwise I would not have come to the forums for advice etc.

[theberengersniper]

Maybe when your boss returns it would be worth a quiet "I noticed something that struck me as odd" conversation out of earshot with anyone else, posed in a sort dismissive "I'm not actually seriously questioning this" tone to see what he says. If nothing else, it would be interesting to know how this came about, and you never know when a little "inside knowledge" might help you with your boss.

[JakeGil]

Thanks, it was mentioned the person doing this was someone called Tony Taylor on the MSE forum.  It was spotted due to the price charged and the person who spotted this was right.  Seems he is "well known"