‘They took me to court after I refused to pay £60 parking fine – it backfired’

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/took-court-refused-pay-60-084306335.html

by FlabbyShabby

29 comments

  1. “A North West mum who refused to pay a parking fine for two YEARS and was ‘called a liar’ says she feels vindicated after she was taken to court – and won.

    Jamie Rock, 47, received a text message confirmation after she thought she bought a ticket to park near a hospital for a medical appointment online, with the parking machine broken. But she later found out the phone payment hadn’t fully processed and she was handed a £60 fine.

    But the mental health nurse refused to pay, claiming the parking operators ‘refused to entertain’ her evidence and instead told her she would have to now fork out £300 for non-payment. However, after taking her to county court, the judge struck out the claim in a matter of minutes – and ruled the firm pay Jamie’s £26 travel expenses.”

  2. Honestly, the rage i feel reading that. Anybody who has had to deal with this cunt-like companies must feel the same. The endless, useless, phone options. The zero details on websites etc. Absolutely useless staff if you ever do get through to them.

    They lie, decieve and the process is entirely part of the punishment and deliberately designed to draw you into a situation where paying £60 seems like a minor price for not having to sit on hold for another 2 hours only to be cut off.

    And it’s not even just parking, in fact, it feels like the default mode of operation for most companies now. I recently had a tangle with my energy provider that only got resolved when I cancelled my DD and let them come to me and then suddenly *that* person could fix everything. Wankers.

    Good on her, but I wish we could normalise punitive damages in these cases. The case they brought was unacceptable, and it should cost them sufficiently that they think carefully next time. Unfortunately, they’ve lost nothing worth speaking of so there’s no deterrent

  3. I had the same once. I pulled up on the side of a road for a total of 11 seconds, in which time I saw a “No parking” sign and pulled back out to find an appropriate spot. This was caught on their CCTV, timestamps and all, and they would not listen to my story.

    I got letters for about 4 years until a court date was set. The first date they did not bring the evidence required, and were given a new date to submit evidence prior to the next court date. They failed to do so, but the court date still went ahead, and the judge threw it out immediately because of this.

    They just spit out as many aggressive looking letters as possible in hopes people pay up, take it all the way to court but have no intention of following through. Parasite companies!

  4. Validating your reg plate should be the first thing you do with this type of shit, so fuck that company for having a shit system in place.

  6. Please if you are posting from Yahoo at least also say what the original source is they used.

    It’s fun to guess, I’m guessing from the Sun or mirror here, but I’d prefer to know.

    Damn guessed wrong.

  7. It’s not a fine, private parking companies cannot issue fines. It’s an invoice. It’s rare for private parking companies to take someone to court though, and they only do it if they really think they will win, so they can use it to scare others into paying. They didn’t even bother to turn up to the court which is why she won.

  8. >But when Jamie came out of the hospital, she was told her parking had not been “validated” because she didn’t put in her number plate, she claims. She said she wasn’t asked to do this until 12 minutes after receiving the “accepted” text – and didn’t notice until it was too late.

    What is this bullshit

  9. She won by default because they didn’t turn up.

    Good for her for chancing it, but have to wonder what the outcome would have been after a properly contested hearing.

  10. I parked in a shopping centre that was free for the first hour but if you were to stay longer you would have to get the ticket from when you first arrived. I did just that and paid for 2 hours. 1 month later I got a ‘fine’ through the door from the parking company saying I hadn’t paid. Luckily we don’t clear the car out very often and I found the old ticket. We went back on the site with the evidence. Miraculously the fine disappeared but no apology or even acknowledgement from the company. I wonder how may innocent parkers have thrown their tickets away and just end up paying?

  11. My dad got a fine once in the lake district somewhere. Luckily he’s a civil engineer and knew all the processes for designating parking restrictions.

    At first he was going for showing that the wall sign stating restrictions was obscured by ivy but turned out that the legal document for that restriction had been done incorrectly as someone had described the parking restriction as running 120m East when it was actually 120m North so the actual restriction went across the road and into the river and through a house and not where my dad was parked. He got his cancelled and then asked via an FoI about other fines and got them all refunded too as they were illegally fined. (approx 150 fines)

  12. I wish newspapers would be clearer that this is not really a « fine ». This is all contractual.

    Illegal contracts are a thing. A very common and quite complicated thing. Crooks take advantage of them all the time. Crooks in suits.

  13. I once got a fine for not displaying a ticket. Apparently I was supposed to show it in the windscreen but instead I attached it to the side window. You could clearly see the ticket in that window in the photo they took of the windscreen but I still got fined. Luckily I appealed and won.

  14. The “it backfired” part is supposed to make people feel like the company really lose out but in the end they only paid £26. and the way these companies work is predatory, they send out masses of these letters to people demanding payment of excessive amounts and the ones who do pay make them far more than they lose.

    Realistically when these companies lose cases like this they need to lose much greater amounts of money to ensure that they don’t harass people who have done everything they could do to pay.

  15. Its a joke it went that far, but you love to see the outcome

  16. The fact they didn’t even bother to show up to the court for the case should be used against them. Companies like this should be banned from bringing cases to the county court if they aren’t prepared to actually attend. It’s used as another tactic to threaten people. An abuse of the system that slows down the court process.

  17. The fact the THEY took her to court and then THEY never bothered to show up, surely that proves it’s all just bullying techniques to try and get money from people? How are they even licensed to operate when that’s how they act

  18. These companies are a joke. I recently had a fine as the car park used by my local gym is privately owned and you have to register your registration upon entry to the gym for 2hrs free parking. On this occasion the registration machine was out of order and gym staff had put up a sign saying don’t worry about it.

    I then get a fine in the post and when challenging it I was told that I shouldn’t take advice of a third party (gym staff) regarding parking arrangements and if the machine was broken I should have taken immediate steps to park elsewhere instead. After several back and forth emails I was told my complaint would no longer be receiving any response at it has been closed. Seems they test their luck and do what they can to try and make a quick buck.

  19. I love that it was written by Neil Shaw & Neil Shaw

  20. Try local authorities (namely Cumbria County Council in this case). Was issued a fine by then (incorrectly). Appealed the fine intensely. Stood by it (in sure that’s a kangaroo court anyway) and it went to a real court where we both made our representations. And they found in my favour. Case closed you’d think? Oh no, they only “recommend” them to cancel the original ticket and they continued to pursue it, even though a court has found in my favour (yet would never be able to enforce it). I mean, what the fuck?

  21. Also, how the fuck are these shitty composites allowed the authority to issue such fines? Or should have to go through a court with evidence presented and the fine issued by the court. I don’t acknowledge the sovereignty of these shitty companies to issue me a fine, so they can fuck off.

  22. My in laws are going through a similar issue. There is a car park nearby that they have parked in dozens of times over the last couple years.

    Because they don’t live in the UK, only visit for several weeks in the year in their EU plate car, the car parking company seemed unable to register that they’d paid, despite them buying tickets everytime. Something to do with the foreign number plate I guess.

    It took them about a year to catch up but they sent them a massive fine to their EU address that they are trying to enforce.

    I don’t think Euro Car Parks will have any luck enforcing that outside the UK, but it’s certainly undue stress.

  23. those we vote for, give these investors lawful mandate to fleece the electorate however they wish.

  24. I’m in a similar situation, the matter is with a court. Although, I still have the paper slip (ticket) and the bank account statement that shows how much and when I paid. I sent it all to the parking company a few times over the last 2 years, but they refuse to budge. We’ll see…

  25. yeah you have to pay them! We all learn the hard way! You got scammed by the government welcome to England!

  26. Nice to see a precedent being set about things like this tbh
    Fuck car parking companies.

  27. Good if you are a UK citizen, you can chance going to court and getting a favourable judgement. If this is someone who’s working on settling down in the UK, they will just have to pay the “fine” as they can’t risk going to court and having a ruling against them which will essentially ruin their entire life’s work up to that point.

  28. Private parking companies are absolute scumbags.

    Back when I was renting, we had a permit for our bay and on the rare occasion where we’d have to run up to the flat to get the permit they would legit fine us despite it being a few minutes…. Challenged them endless times which they dismissed.

    Ended up taking it to the landlord who was confused as fuck because he didn’t authorise them to cover the bays and it was private property – turns out the scummy fucks decided to just operate there without permission!!

    It was a joyous day standing outside with my cuppa and watch them remove their signs with a smug look on my face – they even refunded all the money they scammed with their “fines” once they were informed we were looking at taking them to court over it.

    Fuck you Parking Eye!!

  29. Public Institutions are absolutely damaged. There was a time when these clowns sh** their pants hearing about trading standards is coming.

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