I’ll probably make several more of my timewarp-posts(tm) over the next week or two, as part of the catch up process for the last few quiet months of non-blogging. Let’s all pretend I wrote these on the date they’re posted under, and I promise the world will be a better place.
Even before my first extended trip away from the UK last year, I’d heard of a new scam sweeping our rainy little island: the Parking Charge Notice. It relies on the lack of public knowledge about the difference between criminal and civil law, by making it as easy as possible to park on private property, and then notifying hapless motorists that they parked without paying before harassing them to pay outrageously high charges for alleged illegal parking. They use deliberately confusing terminology to bamboozle us into believing we are in receipt of a government or police issued Penalty Charge Notice, which you certainly should settle if you are unlucky enough to receive one.
Anyway, these terrorists had laid claim to my long-time favourite evening parking spot for a night out in my adopted hometown of Worcester. During my better part of a year out of England, the Aldi chain has subcontracted their car-park management to one such group operating under the name of Parking Eye. A few weeks after unwittingly driving past their camera to my favourite spot in the nearly empty car park outside the closed Aldi store, I received a PCN from Parking Eye. I was considerably annoyed by the lack of effort they had made to make me aware that there was now a charge to park here, and an obscene charge of £70 for not collecting a parking ticket (reduced to £40 if I admitted fault and paid without contest — you can see how these guys work by now, eh?) from the machine in a darkened corner of the car park. After 2 phone calls, and a rejected letter of appeal, I used the mighty Google to help put together as convincing a refusal to be terrorised into paying as I was able. Despite the fact that I wasted several hours of my time, I did at least win the satisfaction of persuading them to stop harassing me with the letter attached below.
As a public service to you, dear reader, I’d be delighted if I can save you some hours of research in compiling your own letter of complaint. Please feel free to tailor my letter if you find yourself at the mercy of Parking Eye or their bretheren, although please do take care to ensure that you don’t misrepresent yourself, and only use the parts that actually apply to your own case.
Gary Vaughan
c/o (My Address)
Parking Eye
c/o 797 London Road
Thornton Heath
Surrey
CR7 6YY
6th November 2007
Take formal notice:
Sirs,
I am writing with reference to PCN number (my PCN ref) which you issued
directly to my DVLA registered private address without prior warning. I
was upset by your response to my 2nd telephone call regarding this matter
on November 1st wherein you stated that you are “unable to cancel this
ticket”.
I have since taken legal advice regarding your private PCN and have
several legitimate grounds under which to contest its validity, which I
intend to vigorously defend at the County Court should you wish to bring
the case before them. These are outlined as follows:-
The PCN simply states that my vehicle was parked at Worcester Aldi
store on the 28/09/2007 from 20:16:03 until 23:35:43. It then states that
I am therefore responsible for the payment of this PCN in accordance with
the terms and conditions clearly displayed at that car park. There is no
statement on the PCN explaining either the terms and conditions I am
supposed to have agreed to or in what way I have specifically breached
any such terms and conditions. So there appears to be no basis for the
charge other than being present outside the closed store between the
stated times.
The PCN format itself quite obviously purports to be of an official nature
with a misleading black-and-white-checkerboard border as used by real
traffic enforcement parking fines. This document is in fact nothing more
than a notice from your company sent unsolicited to my private address. It
is also of a threatening and intimidating nature with comments such as
“legal proceedings may be issued against you in the County Court” and "this
may result in your possessions being seized" written in a large font and
clearly aimed to cause alarm. The police would take an extremely dim view
of such documentation if I presented it as evidence of my complaint of
attempted extortion and deception by yourselves.
Your PCN refers to the Aldi car park, where in fact the store was clearly
closed, and the lighting for the store and in the car park was either very
poor indeed or entirely switched off. I have made use of this car park
outside of store hours without charge for at least 12 years and I was
totally unaware of any of the terms and conditions you allege were
prominently displayed. I do not recollect any such notices and neither do
any of the group of friends who I was with at the time. If you truly
wanted to make drivers aware that an out of hours charge has now been
introduced, it would have been cheaper and easier for you to install
automatic barriers to rise and dispense a ticket on entry, and only rise
to allow exit upon collection of a paid ticket. It seems to me that you
seek to entice previous users of the formerly free evening car park past
your cameras in the hope of subsequently harassing them into paying an
exorbitant charge.
Furthermore, your conduct in this instance is in direct breach of the DVLA
code of conduct pertaining to the enforcement of parking restrictions on
private land. Specifically, point 3.2 of the code states:- “Notices giving
full details of the parking contravention and the proposed course of action
to be taken by the enforcer should be placed in a prominent position on the
offending vehicle without causing it damage. Vehicle keepers should be made
aware that their name and address will be requested from the DVLA”. No such
notice was ever placed on my vehicle but you clearly obtained those private
details from the DVLA without my prior knowledge in order to send your PCN
to my registered address. Under these circumstances I am considering
writing a strong letter of complaint to the DVLA regarding your abuse of
their system. If pressed they may decide to withdraw your company’s right
to obtain vehicle keeper information.
From a legal standpoint, I am advised that private charges can only be
based upon an agreed contract. You will have to prove in court that I
agreed to this contract, that I agreed to park under the terms of the
contract, that I agreed to pay a charge if I breached the contract, that I
actually did breach the contract and that the charge is both fair and not
an unenforceable penalty charge in excess of a reasonable estimate of your
loss. I deny that such a contract ever existed and as such consider your
most unreasonable charge to be unenforcable under civil contract law.
I imagine that you will now agree that not only is yours an unreasonable
parking charge, but you are also in breach of the code of practice as
stated by the DVLA. I am sure that your company would have due regard for
its reputation for operating both ethically and within regulation,
particularly as you are effectively representing the interests of your
customer, Aldi. Should this in fact be the case, I certainly expect a full
written apology and notification in writing that you are going to withdraw
your charges with immediate effect.
Should I receive further demands for money from you in the next 12 working
days, this will result in the following actions on my part:- I will
report your company to the DVLA for your failure to comply with their code
of practice; I will report your company and Aldi to the Office of Fair
Trading; I will write a strong letter of complaint to my local MP, to the
local press, and to Which? magazine; I will write a strong letter of
complaint to Aldi regarding your conduct and methods used in an unlawful
attempt to extract money from their customers; I will report this entire
incident to the police for nuisance and harassment and for attempting to
extract money using threatening unsolicited mail purporting to be of an
official nature.
Although I will accept a letter of apology and notice of cancellation of
this matter from you free of charge, for any other communication, I will
be forced to levy a £50 administration fee to cover my costs in assembling
a response. Upon receipt of a second communication, in addition to my
administration fee I will most certainly report the entire matter to the
police (along with logs of the content of telephone calls I have made and
all letters we have exchanged) under the Protection from Harassment Act,
1997.
Regards,
Gary V. Vaughan
Legal Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and not qualified to give legal advice. I make no claims that you too will successfully contest a PCN with a letter of this form, or that you will avoid having to defend your claim in court. I’m merely showing you what worked for me!
