There were mentions of consequences to credit ratings etc if you contest and lose, so pretty intimidating
So many people must be getting caught out and then hit with these draconian charges.
Lots of money being made …
My wife got hit with a £60.00 or £100.00 later for 20 minutes over in the Mk2.5 about 6 years back in our local retail park. On the side of this park there are a Costa, A Pets at Home, our Vet Surgery, and a shoe outlet.
An email from our vet to the company involved with an invoice proving our 18 years old Bengal cat’s euthanasia process which unfortunately took a bit longer than anticipated, plus an email from me pretty much stating “see you in Court on that one then and let a Magistrate decide”…plus one from the Costa manager we know stating my wife need a strong coffee and a quite corner to herself… resulted in not hearing from them again.
Liah did not want to die that day. She needed a lot of additional intravenous “assistance”. She was rotten with liver cancer.
Sometimes… too much to lose even for these social vampires. Not to forget they also found out my niece happens to be the sub-ed of our local press.
I was quite ready to go to Court no matter how much,and I told them that. And, I would have.
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We have to accept if these controls,however they are applied did not exist, people would park all day long and none of us would find a space to conduct our affairs .
Put simply, too many people live in their own entitled bubble of self importance. Not all by any means…but unfortunately more than sufficient to cause disruption.
Canny have it both ways…entirely.
I was also caught overstaying at Hopwood services on the M42, just south of Birmingham. I was driving late at night and I was tired, I decided to stop and sleep for a bit and then continue my journey. Lo and behold I got a parking charge from parkingeye - cant remember how much it was but it was in the excess of 100 squids. As I did not recollect seeing any signages with the advertised car park charges I decided to go back and record on video entering the services with a headcam taking the same route, below is the video.
As you can see below there are a lot of people that are being caught on ANPR at services, and only a fraction of them actually bother to complain online about it.
After looking into this the advice I could find was spurious. I contemplated paying, ignoring and fighting this. I opted for the later as my argument was that if one drives in the services and enters straight into the petrol station one cannot come across the sign with the advertised car park charges, therefore I could not enter into the contract…
I challenged the claim and eventually went to small claims court (believe me they will take you to court)… I presented my case and my argument was against a lawyer paid by parkingeye (note barristers advocate in actual courts).
I thought I went prepared… I wasn’t. If you look at it economically it would cost me more money hiring a lawyer to represent me in the small claims court and that’s even if you have a change to win the case using legal arguments. The human element does not come into play - its all about whether you have entered the contract or not.
I end up paying the parking fees and the case expenses. which was considerably more.
My suggestion is to pay it as early as possible and move on.
Another one we use in a city is the Tesco Extra car park. For many years it’s ok to park there shop at Tesco walk in to the city to shop, don’t be longer than 3 hours though we are watching you.
Apparently when Tesco came along years ago they agreed the store could be built at the location which encapsulated a free car park for city parking. All was ticking along nicely until Tesco decided they want to charge folk £5 for parking. If you spend £5 in-store you don’t pay owt but you still need a ticket to flash at the machine before exit.
This went down like a lead balloon with locals, it probably didn’t last 12 months as Tesco were losing customers. They’ve now covered up the shiny new parking machines that we installed at considerable expense, not used any longer.
I still ask if I need a ticket just to be sure as they’ve never taken the signage down.
Note that its worth pursuing cancelling the overstaying parking charge fees with the company/supermarket the carpark belongs to if you have a reason you have overstayed. If you get an answer back “Its not managed by us and its managed by a parking operator and there is nothing we can do” my suggestion is to pay up, they will chase you up.
Parking enforcing and the private clamping companies are the only lowlife private companies that can rob your hard earned cash legally…
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