Parking Eye, Fistral Beach, Court Letter.

Stormster · 10 Oct 2013 at 20:03

Hi all.

Myself and my Girlfriend went on Holiday to Newquay, Cornwall at the end of May. We parked on a carpark, which is controlled by Parking Eye, on Fistral beach. We popped down to watch the sunset, we were on there for about 35 minutes at about 8:30 or 9pm at night as the carpark overlooks the beach itself.

Unbeknown to us (our bad) we needed to pay parking and thus received a parking ticket/fine/invoice, whatever you would refer to it as. Apparently you are allowed 30 mins grace or similar but we were just over.

Now, my girlfriend has received a few notifications/ticket reminders etc through the post and up to yet all have been ignored.

She has now received this letter from the court:

What do we do at this point?

She's been advised not to ignore it incase a CCJ is placed on her and to offer perhaps £20 to cover admin fees?

There is a payment slip but you can write on why you're not paying and return it.

Can you advise of whats best to do?

SB118 · 10 Oct 2013 at 20:09

I'd get over to peepipoopoppoo for advice, I've never actually seen a parking firm take one of these to court.

Edit out the issue date and other details from the image and don't give exact details in the thread either, the parking firms prowl the sites hoping to find people "incriminating" themselves.

[TW]Fox · 10 Oct 2013 at 20:30

http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showtopic=84203

Amazingly this sounds like the same carpark, too.

Stormster · 10 Oct 2013 at 20:58

Thanks guys will cut out other bits of the letter etc. Will ask on there too, thank you

Haggisman · 10 Oct 2013 at 21:34

What would you have had to pay for 35 mins parking? £185 doesn't sound reasonable, £20 to include an admin fee does (ish) but obviously I'm not a legal professional!

Stormster · 10 Oct 2013 at 21:56

A couple of quid no doubt, in all fairness if we'd have looked properly we'd have paid it, no point saying we didn't notice any signs as it's a poor excuse.

We've gotta do something about it now though

Have posted on Pepipoo and told my missus to look on there and keep tabs too. If it ends up costing I'll just pay half and she can pay half, one of those things, but we'll defend it first after we've completed researching

teulk · 11 Oct 2013 at 05:35

Stormster said:
A couple of quid no doubt, in all fairness if we'd have looked properly we'd have paid it, no point saying we didn't notice any signs as it's a poor excuse.

We've gotta do something about it now though Have posted on Pepipoo and told my missus to look on there and keep tabs too. If it ends up costing I'll just pay half and she can pay half, one of those things, but we'll defend it first after we've completed researching

Its good to see someone actually going to pay instead of going down the " oh i got this parking fine can i just throw it away". It really annoys me tbh - don't get me wrong £185 is a lot of money for failing to have a valid ticket and way over the top BUT they have to enforce parking and you didn't have a valid ticket after all. I bet you always have a valid ticket from now on

"andy" · 11 Oct 2013 at 08:06

teulk said:
BUT they have to enforce parking

yes but not by aggressively demanding unreasonable amounts of money

£185 for what ? what has OP cost them by staying there for an extra 5 minutes in a free car park ?

Dr House · 11 Oct 2013 at 09:03

Chances are they will not show up to court

So show up to court and try and defend your self, its your local court so they will have to travel up from where ever they are based.

The_Abyss · 11 Oct 2013 at 09:10

I imagine they take a firm approach as too many people just bin the initial letters, wrongly thinking that they're scammers or they simply just don't want to pay.

I don't know if £185 is too high or too low relative to the actual cost of parking (probably too high) but the business has the right to make a reasonable profit from the investment it has made in implementing the parking control systems and car park itself.

What would be far better would be to use the system to send the actual parking bill through to the driver, but ironically few would pay because they'd consider the amount insignificant.

mattyfez · 11 Oct 2013 at 10:47

The_Abyss said:
I don't know if £185 is too high or too low relative to the actual cost of parking (probably too high) but the business has the right to make a reasonable profit from the investment it has made in implementing the parking control systems and car park itself.

While the business has to right top make a profit, this margin is built into the hourly rate they charge for parking.
They cannot make a profit from a breach of contract, they can only recover their financial losses, i.e. the price of the ticket for the overstay plus reasonable costs, such as admin, sending letters etc.

If they invoice a person £200 for an overstay of 1 hour, and the parking is charged at £1 per hour, then their out of pocket losses are £1, plus whatever they can reasonably charge for sending letters etc. £199 would not be reasonable, it would be a penalty charge, which they cannot legally invoice for.

I'd still like to see a defended case where the parking company has to justify their inflated invoice as out of pocket losses.

EDIT: interestingly in this example they are trying to claim solicitors costs as well which if the claim is lost, you could probably have removed as an unreasonable expense. The court fee would be payable though.

Westyfield2 · 11 Oct 2013 at 13:15

Can't actually read what the image says, but can you just go to court (assuming they turn up), argue the invoice isn't what they lost through your non payment, and pay them the actual cost of what you should have paid at the time?

Randomface74 · 11 Oct 2013 at 13:22

As above, they can only recover costs incurred.

Imy · 11 Oct 2013 at 13:55

Can they recover costs incurred for chasing payment and going to court?

inogen · 11 Oct 2013 at 14:03

Imy said:
Can they recover costs incurred for chasing payment and going to court?

They could claim for these costs if the court decided that the monies they are claiming are reasonable. Which is unlikely as they're not.

Sasso · 11 Oct 2013 at 15:51

Westyfield2 said:
Can't actually read what the image says, but can you just go to court (assuming they turn up), argue the invoice isn't what they lost through your non payment, and pay them the actual cost of what you should have paid at the time?

show up, claim the charge is outrageous, chuck them a quid and walk out like a boss?

Dr House · 11 Oct 2013 at 16:00

Really just go to court I cant see them showing up to court and even if they do at max you will end up paying £185 I cant see the judge awarding more and I dont think they can recover legal fees for the small claims court.

#Chri5# · 11 Oct 2013 at 16:21

Go court - I'll lob in a tenner towards the £185 if you lose

mattyfez · 11 Oct 2013 at 16:38

Indeed, and if they did show, you would contest the solicitors fee is frivolous - a solicitor wouldn't reasonably be required to put together such a simple case, and for such a small claim value.
You would ask them to quantify how you have cost them £100, and when they can't, or can only quantify a couple of quid, request the case be thrown out due to being a fabrication/waste of the courts time.

phil675 · 12 Oct 2013 at 05:21

court