so i didn’t read the sign properly and didn’t notice the one hour limit in a Parking Eye managed car park.
I overstayed by 13mins. That is sufficient for a £100 fine it would appear. (£60 if i pay by tomorrow)

Gutted about this, but i’ve looked over the internet and i’m struggling to put up a decent fight on the technicalituies. it was clearly signposted, i did overstay etc etc.
Tried their appeals to no avail.

So shoudl i actually pay it and just don’t worry about the hassle, or try and escalate to the independent body (if i get overruled i have ot apy the full £100.

so £60 now, £100 later with a risk, or just ignore and see how many threatening letter they can send?

WWSTWD?

Parking Eye do, they’re notorious for it.

After they’ve rejected your appeal, take it to POPLA.

it was clearly signposted, i did overstay etc etc.

MTFU, get it paid, move on.

The other thing you could try is to ask the land owner to get them to drop it. Presumably you were a customer somewhere?

Take it to POPLA

Its still an “invoice” not a fine. And a blanket “invoice” of £100 for overstaying 13 minutes in a free car park is not a genuine estimate of loss so therefore should be overturned on appeal

Firstly whos car park was it , if it was an Aldi speak to Aldi dircet before going to POPLA as once you have started with Popla they will not get involved .

Popla will ALWAYS SIDE with technology .

My dealings are I called at a local Aldi one morning at 8.45am nipped in for milk and left 4 minutes later via a different entrance then called back at 1.45pm for a meal at lunch and drove in the same entrance i had left earlier in the day and drove out the original entrance i had entered at 8.45 .. the tech clocked me for 5hours plus ,now as i never kept the receipts for the £2 I spent , after appeals to Popla and Aldi direct everything fell on deaf ears apart from staff at Aldi who have claimed they can get involved and sway appeals with Parking shite !

After Popla ruling against me on the 10 Feb this year I wrote a letter to Parking shite explaining they had no evidence of my vehicle parked in the same place for the 5hours , I had prove of my work place clocking in and out between these times and also images of my personal parking space at work again documented. In the letter of complaint I also passed comment because Parking eye are not the land owners I would not be paying the fine to them and would only pay said land owners ..

Todate I have received no further correspondence from them and Im lead to believe they have 35 day to reply to any complaints

Best of luck because these guys are shysters

+1Cougar. If it’s a supermarket go in or ring the Manager and ask nicely. I was late getting the kids from school, my grandmother fell over in the shop, I had a horrific attack of diarrhoea, I spent £120 in your store. etc etc.

I thought about this, but then I realised that I had in fact broken the rules and cross as I was, it was in fact my fault so I had to pay.

No advice from me but £60 is heavy handed fine tbh.

Its still an “invoice” not a fine. And a blanket “invoice” of £100 for overstaying 13 minutes in a free car park is not a genuine estimate of loss so therefore should be overturned on appeal

Sadly no longer completely true. Cut and past from a previous thread here, to save me typing it out again:

“Used to be the case, but that changed in two ways. First, in the past you could say you didn’t know who was driving, and as the offence rested with the driver then they had no way of pursuing. The law was changed on that point a year or two back so that if the driver wasn’t identified then the registered keeper became liable. Then there was the case that a private company couldn’t levy a fine, only recoup costs. That was squashed with the case referenced above [Beavis vs Parking Eye], where the court basically agreed that there had to be some sort of penalty to overstaying

“Applying these principles to Mr Beavis’s case, they decided that whilst the penalty rule was engaged, the £85 charge was not a penalty since ParkingEye had a legitimate interest in charging overstaying motorists which extended beyond the recovery of any loss. The company was managing car parks in the interests of the retail outlets, their customers and the public at large and had a legitimate interest in influencing the conduct of the contracting party which is not satisfied by the mere right to recover damages for breach of contract*. ParkingEye could not charge a sum out of all proportion to its interests but there was no reason to suppose that £85 was out of all proportion. There was no suggestion about what an unreasonable charge might be”

IGNORE AT YOUR PERIL. Best advice as above is to throw yourself on the mercy of the shop itself, but if you want to try to fight on legalities then you have a pretty weak hand.

* finally it comes down to whether £80 / 85 / 100 is high enough to be a disincentive but low enough to not be unreasonable. And TBH, I’m fine with the law as it is now. If all that was enforceable was the actual loss, then you could go into a car park, not buy a ticket (or buy one for an hour) and then stay as long as you like. If you stay longer than you paid for, no worries, just offer the difference once you get caught, or if you don’t get caught then well done, you’ve stuck it to the man. That’s not right in my book.”

I’ve always ignored them and still do. They hassle you for a bit with a few letters and phonecalls. I’ve never paid any of the half dozen private parking fines I’ve been issued with and never had any recourse

You’ve been very lucky.

Time was, “ignore them” was good advice. But some companies are now actively pursuing non-payment (Parking Eye being one of them), it’s no longer considered to be a good idea.

MTFU, get it paid, move on.

From experience, this.

I’ve always ignored them and still do. They hassle you for a bit with a few letters and phonecalls. I’ve never paid any of the half dozen private parking fines I’ve been issued with and never had any recourse

When was the most recent. Read an article recently that they have a backlog but they’re working through them post beavis.

My 2p – I still ignore them. I don’t get many, I try to park within the rules but the way things are with signage and the sheer volume of new places I have to visit with work I get 1-2 a year.

IMHO by and large, they don’t chase – their business model is still most profitable by sending huge volumes of tickets and expecting a percentage return, chasing people through the courts is expensive and time consuming – when I was in FS we didn’t bother to take people to court for less than £5k but that figure has come down a lot since the advent of the CCJ bulk centre, but I still doubt it’s worth doing it for £100 – yeah I know they get “costs” but it’s not nearly enough to cover the true cost by the time you consider man-hours etc.

What I sure they do / did, was read all the websites devoted to it and places like MSE which suggested ignoring them and then making examples out of some people and indeed spinning a few tales online. We shouldn’t assume that social media marketing people are all about FB and don’t bother with forums, it’s a free marking goldmine a lot of the time.

I still doubt it’s worth doing it for £100 – yeah I know they get “costs” but it’s not nearly enough to cover the true cost by the time you consider man-hours etc.

It’s not just one ticket though is it. Loads of people “knew” they could safely ignore tickets. Then a few companies started making examples of people, so now folk start going “shit, it’s Parking Eye, I’d better pay up” instead.

My OH got a CCJ because of a a Parking Eye “fine”

They sent all the correspondence to the wrong address, court letters, the lot.
They took her court without her even knowing about it (roughly the equivalent of ignoring them, but not wilfully)
And obviously, with her not being there, she lost.

She knew nothing about any of it until she did a free trial with Experian and saw she had a CCJ 😯

All sorted now, but took a while (and she didn’t pay anything in the end either)

chasing people through the courts is expensive and time consuming

No it’s not, because they use the small claims courts, so it’s an easy and cheap clerical activity, nothing more.

It comes down to how much £60 is worth to you. If a probable couple of hours minimum trawling various forums to get the right form of words to put in your appeal to the parking firm, knowing it will get rejected, and then doing the same to POPLA, on the slim chance it may be upheld, is worth saving £60 (and a feeling of ‘sticking it to the man’), then go for it. If you’d rather get on with your life, pay the £60.

Yes they do take people to court, including me.
I chickened out, it was causing me sleepless nights so I stumped up the £100, but swore to educate as many folk as possible in future…

You could re-appeal to Parking Scum. They will bounce it to POPLA, but before they do they will weigh up whether its worth the £20 or so they have to pay to POPLA to do so. If its a genuine proven overstay, with no ambiguity, your unlikely to win though.

The points of law are pretty much null & void until someone with influence & means decides to take them to task, & lets face it, if your of that well heeled your unlikely to be shopping at Aldi…
Defence used to rest on a ruling way back, surrounding contract law, in that you cant make money out of a breach of contract – only recover your losses. Clearly Parking Scum aren’t out of pocket at all unless its a fee paying car park & you’ve not paid…I’ve not seen a ticket machine at any Aldi I’ve been to.
The other point was whether parking Eye have planning permission to run a profit making business in someones car park. Often a request for a copy of the planning permission was enough to scare them off.
Likewise the business lease, & whether the business could effectively sub-let their car park to Parking Scum. A request for a copy of the lease as evidence for a court defence saw them scurry back off to whatever maggot infested carcass they infest these days.
Lots of technicalities…
There was a test case at Southend magistrates court, when a circuit Judge heard evidence on a couple of test cases & found in Parking Scums favour on every count. Sadly, a lot of magistrates use that as an example.

A lot of folk consider Parking Scum to be the scum of the earth. Bottom feeding pond life of the business world, up there with those parasitic cancerous failed lawyers, looking to pounce on every mistake the NHS make.

Apparently they are owned by Capita, alleged major Tory party donors, which is presumably why the law was changed in the UK to protect their revenue stream; at the expense of backhanders to the Tory elite they managed to win over. It was thrown out in Scotland & Wales apparently…

Out of interest, why are they scum? Surely parking rules need enforcing?

There was a test case at Southend magistrates court, when a circuit Judge heard evidence on a couple of test cases & found in Parking Scums favour on every count. Sadly, a lot of magistrates use that as an example.

Yep, that’s Beavis. Apparently he tried to defend himself, **** it up royally and hence we now are where we are.

A lot of folk consider Parking Scum to be the scum of the earth. Bottom feeding pond life of the business world, up there with those parasitic cancerous failed lawyers, looking to pounce on every mistake the NHS make.

In fairness…… I think the parking industry has cleaned up a heck of a load since the days of (cowboy) clampers. Then they could just clamp you for a supposed infringement and you had to pay to get it removed; no 14 day appeal or nothing. I was once clamped while actually at the ticket machine – the nearest was out of order and so the next was another distance away and had twice as many people as normal queueing to use it, and by the time I got back the boot was already on. And they refused to remove it until I’d paid the fine, and then you had to try to appeal to them. And they’d ignore your appeals with proforma responses of ‘no ticket visible’ until you finally gave up.

I suspect there are a few who fall foul of eg: incorrect camera style enforcement but the majority are now guilty of overstaying, whether deliberate or ‘by accident’. And as per the judgement, there has to be a penalty because otherwise you can just not pay and if you get caught, offer to pay the same as you’d have paid anyway, or otherwise pay nothing – which in my book is theft.

A different company, but I got chased for a parking fine for which I didn’t think i’d done any wrong (and a guy who had done exactly the same was never chased up!) and I complained, complained, got hung up on the phone a number of times, complained and waited. I’d not heard anything for a while and then almost SIX YEARS later they tracked me down to my new address and tried again! I complained again and i’ve not heard anything since, that was about five months ago.
They hound you companies like this.

They hound you companies like this.

Exactly, or you pay £60 and they pi$$ off

Exactly, or you pay £60 and they pi$$ off

Now, where have I seen that business model before…

Out of interest, why are they scum? Surely parking rules need enforcing?

IMO they have no interest in parking management, just issuing fines. Regardless of the circumstances.

My experience was parking in a residential space allocated to friends i was staying with. They’d neglected to tell me it was a permit zone until the morning and too late as it turns out.

Personally i just boycott retailers that use these types of companies unless it’s obviously an abused car park.

Edit, i didn’t pay BTW. Pretty Popla days.

IMO they have no interest in parking management, just issuing fines. Regardless of the circumstances.

Although possibly more interest in parking management than your friends, who let you park in a permit zone without giving you a permit 😆

It gets worse, they forgot because they’d got pissed after I’d chosen to drive! Although as neither drove at this point it wasn’t much of a choice.

IMO they have no interest in parking management, just issuing fines

They’re the enforcement company, it’s their job – not the management company.

What would you rather they do? Issue a stern talking to? Lobby the supermarkets on your behalf?

you must find STW very friendly then with friends like that 😉

Out of interest, why are they scum? Surely parking rules need enforcing?

1. the charge is often utterly unrelated to the loss and draconian for what is a minor breach.
2. Its just about money from the company
3. No one like fines
4. Many folk did not realise the breach

What would you rather they do?

Manage car parks, do a good job get paid more. Not the other way round.

from the parking eye front page;

We are the leading UK car park management company specialising in ANPR solutions

you must find STW very friendly then with friends like that

😀 aye, pair of gobshites

1. the charge is often utterly unrelated to the loss and draconian for what is a minor breach.

yes, but as said there has to be a penalty element otherwise there is no incentive to follow the rules. The ‘losses incurred’ argument died at that point, and the only issue then becomes what is reasonable. And the court found ‘fines’ in this region to be reasonable. If the fine was £10,000, they wouldn’t. If it was a fiver, then people would overstay with impunity.

2 Questions

Do you think the concept of a disincentive to prevent overstay is acceptable; and if you do
What level of penalty do you think is reasonable?

What would you rather they do?

had reasonable rules and charges that were enforced , with reasonable fines [ £30]* when abused but gave a little lee way to minor overstays/parking infringements

What part of this do you object to ?

Essentially they exist to make money from parking and use a business model that is voracious being based on overcharges. Furthermore they barely do any “service” other than fine issuing and collection.

* I assume this is sufficient to deter most folk but STW does have some folk with deep pockets.

EDIT: I answered without even reading your post

I am not against parking enforcement nor fines nor disincentives but the charges and the reason are often just taking the piss and excessive – to support the business model rather than because its truly reasonable.

Actually, it’d be good to see standardised signage across the U.K. which the parking management companies had to use with almost no deviation allowed. Excluding variations to days of week etc.

Written in clear, easy to understand text.

Furthermore they barely do any “service” other than fine issuing and collection.

I can’t find the post/thread where I moaned about this before but my company pays to rent several spaces in a small business centre. However local residents frequently steal these spaces which means my staff at times have to pay to park in town centre car parks – and as a comapny we reimburse because it seems fair. We’ve offered that they can use them from 6pm to 8am and at weekends as long as they leave daytimes in the week free.

But they don’t. And every time they don’t it’s like they’re stealing the car park money they should be spending on a town centre car park or a road residents parking permit from my business.

So we have been looking at a parking enforcement company to protect our losses, because some people just can’t play fair.

The parking company can keep the fines, we just get our spaces.

That would be a pretty useful service to me.

I agree and they will do it by massively overcharging for the use of the spaces

We had the same issue at work and the two i remember most are

1. They used to use our toilets so knew us all and the car one day they booked the manager as her ticket had fallen off then came in and told her what they had done

2. you could not see the signs till you pulled into a bay. A guy pulled in in a van saw the signs and went to reverse and they blocked him in and tried to charge him. The police had to be called to that one

However in many many places the volume of the space is not really an issue.

As I said I dont hate them only the excessive charge

DO you think folk will still park there if you issue a £30 fine? or does it need to be £60-100?

are bollards and a chain not an option for you as I can see why it irks and its not on

Do you think the concept of a disincentive to prevent overstay is acceptable; and if you do
What level of penalty do you think is reasonable?

For staying for an hour and a quarter rather than an hour on a *free* car park, I’d argue that anything more than a couple of quid is excessive.

Deliberately not buying a ticket on a paid park is fare dodging just like on a train and should be fined accordingly. National rail says “the penalty is £20 or twice the full single fare from the station where the passenger got on the train to the next station at which the train stops, whichever is the greater.” So double the price of the ticket they should have paid / £20 seems reasonable to me.

£100 for 16 minutes overstay on a free park is taking the piss, however you slice it.

For staying for an hour and a quarter rather than an hour on a *free* car park, I’d argue that anything more than a couple of quid is excessive.

No, because then people would stay all day, happy to pay the few quid. Small free car parks have restrictions because they aren’t big enough to handle demand in that spot. If they are for shoppers, then they can’t be clogged up with people visiting friends for a week, for example, or working nearby all day. The shoppers would then have nowhere to park.

£100 for 16 minutes overstay on a free park is taking the piss, however you slice it.

Huge sign saying “Don’t do X, if you do X we will fine you”
Person does X
Person gets fined

Unreasonable how? Fines have to be a deterrent, that’s the point.

It’s alleged breach of contract, assuming they can satisfy a court you entered into a contract, they’d have to prove £100 of damages.

Tall order for 13mins.