Parking Fine help!

[Lako42]

Yes another idiot asking for help.


My girlfriend went to Tamworth last weekend to meet her mum and parked in the Moto car park. They paid for 2 hours parking, anything over this and you have to ring and add on for £10, which imo Is ridiculous. They realized they were going to be over the 2 hour mark and rang the specified number in order to pay, my girlfriend first spent 20 minutes trying to use this automated phone sytem with the end result being that the card could not be processed etc, so then her mother called and also tried, receiving the same message with both of their cards it was apparent that it was not a fault that end but was a system error or something similar, somewhere along the line they were also asked for their pin number (absolutely outrageous) which I'm not sure is even legal.

Long story short they tried twice to pay the extra money required, where not able to do so and this morning she received a letter with a lovely £80 fine attached saying we must pay within 28 days.


I have no idea where we stand on this but I would be sick to the stomach if we paid this fine, if there is any grounds whatsoever I am willing to fight the notice but just wondered if anyone with more knowledge on matters relating to this would be able to offer any advice.



Cheers

Lako

 

[bocadillo]

Yes another idiot asking for help.


My girlfriend went to Tamworth last weekend to meet her mum and parked in the Moto car park. They paid for 2 hours parking, anything over this and you have to ring and add on for £10, which imo Is ridiculous. They realized they were going to be over the 2 hour mark and rang the specified number in order to pay, my girlfriend first spent 20 minutes trying to use this automated phone sytem with the end result being that the card could not be processed etc, so then her mother called and also tried, receiving the same message with both of their cards it was apparent that it was not a fault that end but was a system error or something similar, somewhere along the line they were also asked for their pin number (absolutely outrageous) which I'm not sure is even legal.

Long story short they tried twice to pay the extra money required, where not able to do so and this morning she received a letter with a lovely £80 fine attached saying we must pay within 28 days.


I have no idea where we stand on this but I would be sick to the stomach if we paid this fine, if there is any grounds whatsoever I am willing to fight the notice but just wondered if anyone with more knowledge on matters relating to this would be able to offer any advice.

Is this the car-park on the Moto service area on the M42. If so, I'm surprised she had to pay for the first two hours parking.

Was there any other way that she could have paid for the over-stay? If there was, she should pay the £80 penalty. If there was not, she should write to explain the attempts that she (and her mother) had made to pay for the over-stay and enclose a cheque for £10 in payment.

 

[MKFox]

it's a nightmare, most of the meters in london are now pay by phone and the software is, in the words of the wardens, shite.
the ones that are pay by card are even worse, with 80% of transactions timing out.

I'd do what boc suggested, send £10.
Doesn't matter how many times they tried, if they knew the 2 hours were up they should have left, surely.

 

[camberwell fox]

Hi Lako,

Does your girlfriend still have the ticket that was issued for the original 2 hours? If so this will be helpful.

First step is to ring them and explain what happened - they may be receptive. If they are not appeal as it outlines (or should) on the back of the fine. Make sure you provide as much accurate info as you can, the phone bill showing the date and times of the calls to pay for the parking. Showing you paid for the initial £10 plus the calls may be enough.

Take copies of everything and send all correspondances to them recorded.

If this fails you will need to find out whether they were 'acting' for themselves or as agents for another company.

A half decent solicitor then should be able to advise yoy whether to pay the fine and then appeal or whether not to pay - my guess would be to pay and then claim as you may end up getting your car clamped if they proceed without your payment.

You can win this- don't give up - i sued a parking company and their clampers and won, a bit of a pain in the arse adn long winded but the the principle is what drove me to sue them.

Good luck.

 

[Leesoh]

More importantly, why the hell does anyone want to spend more than 2 hours in Tamworth?

 

[Nottingham Fox]

If this is the car park as mentioned by Boc, according to the Moto website, the first 2 hours are free of charge with £10 payable for anything between 2 and 24 hours.

It appears the car park is managed by a company called CP Plus who deal with appeals via an e-mail address: [email protected]

I can't find anywhere on the CP Plus or the Moto website to suggest that there is an alternative way to pay. On this basis, and has Camberwell has stated you must provide them with as much accurate information as possible. Submitting an appeal will automatically put a hold on any ticket, and should they decide to dismiss your appeal, you will be allowed to pay the fine at the previous rate and within the same time scale without any further fees being added.

It does (on paper) seem that you have a case to put to them, but you have to make sure that you put forward enough evidence to fight your corner.

 

[Nottingham Fox]

Just out of curiosity, why (if the Moto M42 car park is right) did they park there? It's approx 4 miles from Tamworth town centre.

 

[Jeff]

I have no idea where we stand on this but I would be sick to the stomach if we paid this fine, if there is any grounds whatsoever I am willing to fight the notice but just wondered if anyone with more knowledge on matters relating to this would be able to offer any advice.

It's not a fine, it's an invoice.

They'll send a few reminders and threats of legal action, then they'll give up. Just ignore it. That's what they did with me.

 

[camberwell fox]

It's not a fine, it's an invoice.

They'll send a few reminders and threats of legal action, then they'll give up. Just ignore it. That's what they did with me.

With all due respect Jeff, for all you know they could still be persuing you in the background without your knowledge and at some point you could get a nasty surprise...i wouldn't ignore them.

 

[FryattFox]

It's not a fine, it's an invoice.

They'll send a few reminders and threats of legal action, then they'll give up. Just ignore it. That's what they did with me.

Jeff is spot on. It's an invoice, not a fine. They have no legal right to fine you, although they do everything possible in order to appear to have the authority. They rely on people paying the invoice quickly without questioning it (hence why they often offer an early settlement discount).

There's plenty of threads on it online, such as here.

Don't pay, and don't contact them. They'll send increasingly aggressive letters but will eventually get bored, usually after 4-6 letters.

 

[Jeff]

With all due respect Jeff, for all you know they could still be persuing you in the background without your knowledge and at some point you could get a nasty surprise...i wouldn't ignore them.

Their only option would be to take me to court. If they do, they wouldn't have a chance of winning the case due to the circumstances, and Lako is in the same position.

This company makes lots of threats to make people scared so they'll pay, without considering the circumstances involved. The only instance I'm aware of where they actually took someone to court was for someone who was repeatedly using their car parks without paying.

 

[FryattFox]

With all due respect Jeff, for all you know they could still be persuing you in the background without your knowledge and at some point you could get a nasty surprise...i wouldn't ignore them.

What sort of nasty surprise? They have no authority, and cannot use bailiffs, etc. They have to take you to court to have any power, and there have been very few cases, if any, of this being successful. IIRC they can only really claim the amount of lost revenue or claim any costs that you have caused them for parking on their property, which would be very minimal.

I stand to be corrected, but just ignore it and it will go away without issue. It cannot affect credit ratings, police records, etc.

 

[FryattFox]

Here's a link for the letters to expect (and ignore).

 

[camberwell fox]

Fair enough Fryatt/Jeff, i (mis)understood it to be a fine similar to the ones you get in London.

 

[FryattFox]

Fair enough Fryatt/Jeff, i (mis)understood it to be a fine similar to the ones you get in London.

Yes, there's a difference between council issued fines and privately issued fines that a lot of people aren't aware of.

I guess that you could argue that people should pay the fines out of courtesy (i.e. you did overstay in their car park) but given that a court wouldn't even back them up I would say that for now there's no reason to pay the fine. Especially in cases such as this one where you feel unfairly fined.

 

[bocadillo]

Their only option would be to take me to court. If they do, they wouldn't have a chance of winning the case due to the circumstances, and Lako is in the same position.

This company makes lots of threats to make people scared so they'll pay, without considering the circumstances involved. The only instance I'm aware of where they actually took someone to court was for someone who was repeatedly using their car parks without paying.

Why do you think they haven't a chance of winning? If they have all the necessary signage in place and all of the signs and their procedure is within the law, I would say that they have a very good chance of winning.

Yes, they might just give up if their letters are ignored - but they might not.

 

[Lako42]

Thanks for the advice guys, very very helpful and certainly much appreciated.

What I may do is actually ring them and discuss the situation and the short falls of their system, If they do not accept this as an explanation then I may do what Jeff suggested and simply ignore further contact. If I have to I may offer to pay the £10 but seeing as it was their system that did not not allow them to pay in the 1st instance then I am also reluctant to do this.

Sorry, just to mention that the 1st 2 hours were free, and as for getting back to the car on time, they were held up and made every effort to call and extend the parking time, so saying they should have been back in 2 hours is irrelevant.


Thanks again.

 

[Jeff]

Why do you think they haven't a chance of winning? If they have all the necessary signage in place and all of the signs and their procedure is within the law, I would say that they have a very good chance of winning.

Because from what Lako was saying they made every effort to pay but the system wouldn't let them. They might be liable for the normal parking charge, but not for the invoice that will have been sent to them that will be for a lot more.



This is what happened in my case:

I stayed at the Travelodge at Markfield services last xmas. When I checked in to the hotel they should have asked for my registration number, so cpplus wouldn't try to charge me for parking. They didn't. I didn't see a sign in reception saying I should have given them my number - if there was one it wasn't very prominent.
It was dark when I got to the very badly lit car park, and any signs there were had a covering of snow. So I wasn't aware of the parking charges, and I shouldn't have had to pay them anyway. Travelodge won't intervene in cases like this, so I just ignored it and they stopped hassling me.

 

[bocadillo]

Because from what Lako was saying they made every effort to pay but the system wouldn't let them. They might be liable for the normal parking charge, but not for the invoice that will have been sent to them that will be for a lot more.

Which is what I said - pay them the £10, having told them how you had already made attempts to pay it. In those circumstances they are very unlikely to get a judgement for the £80.

This is what happened in my case:

I stayed at the Travelodge at Markfield services last xmas. When I checked in to the hotel they should have asked for my registration number, so cpplus wouldn't try to charge me for parking. They didn't. I didn't see a sign in reception saying I should have given them my number - if there was one it wasn't very prominent.
It was dark when I got to the very badly lit car park, and any signs there were had a covering of snow. So I wasn't aware of the parking charges, and I shouldn't have had to pay them anyway. Travelodge won't intervene in cases like this, so I just ignored it and they stopped hassling me.

Night time, snow around, obliterated signs etc. I doubt if this has any similarity to Lako's case.


fwiw I have read the signs on some motorway service areas. They say that if charges are not paid, they may clamp immediately if you return to any of their service areas anywhere in in the country - and I am pretty sure that the Moto signs say that. Now for a tenner I would rather avoid any risk of that happening.

 

[Jeff]

Which is what I said - pay them the £10, having told them how you had already made attempts to pay it. In those circumstances they are very unlikely to get a judgement for the £80.

When I looked into them when I got my invoice in December, I found examples of cases similar to Lako's but they refused to back down.

fwiw I have read the signs on some motorway service areas. They say that if charges are not paid, they may clamp immediately if you return to any of their service areas anywhere in in the country

Do they have a legal right to do that?