Thank you FPO and daveyjp.

I shall certainly review the pepipoo site and take advice from there.

Update will follow. Toodle Pip

Perhaps sprayedconcrete, you might enlighten us all if you string them along far enough. You may annoy them enough so they self destruct or tie themselves in knots. You know the old saying: the higher the monkey climbs the more he shows his a***. I admire your attitude and I am curious about the outcome. Still a huge grey area around this issue. Best of luck and support. Concrete

I thought I should just chip in my penny's worth. Parking Eye sent me an "invoice" for overstaying my parking at the Beehive Centre in Cambridge (limit 3 hours) back in November of last year, with the new "guff" about my obligation to say who was driving. I haven't responded and all I had was another demand but nothing since. I think if they did take me to court they would have to demonstrate their financial loss. As parking is technically free for the first 3 hours, then their financial loss is nil as they wouldn't have charged anyone anyway. I will leave it another six months to see what happens. I think that if they were going to take me to court they should have done it within 60 days.

Hello Peter, very interesting your situation. I wonder if, despite the new obligation, that it is still a big deal for them to take court action. As you point out so succinctly, there loss is nil so damages are irrelevant. Also I believe that in some cases the parking company cannot proceed against an offender because they do not own the land or need the permission of the landowner. Some landowners are not keen to pursue motorists who are their clients(shop renters) customers(parker). I think you are pretty safe after this length of time. Cheers Concrete

I'm not at all surprised. I'm still waiting for ACPOA to contact me regarding the ticket I had stuck on my windscreen in December. Correct that - I'm not really waiting - I don't think they will ever do so.

I doubt that you'll hear from Parking Eye again - they will go after easier prey.

Sounds to me as if your case has been filed under "Too troublesome to continue", which reinforces one's view that these parking companies thrive on those too timid or too busy to take them on.

"...they are filing hundreds of County Court claims a week. Week beginning July 8th they filed over 1,000."

Potentially worrying. Have any of these cases been dealt with yet? Any found in PE's favour?

P.S. Came across this on another forum, in a thread about PE:

"My dad is a County Court judge and I was asking him about this new tactic that the ticket agencies seem to be employing and whether he had come across any in his court. He told me that he had seen a few cases where proceedings had been issued but that once the defendant filed a defence the companies hadn't taken the matter any further and had withdrawn the claim.

So it seems that they have just upped their threat level by another step but they are still falling short of actually pushing the case all the way through and actually testing the law."

Edited by FP on 31/08/2013 at 00:21

PE win some, generally poorly defended cases and they also lose a lot. There is however something called the Cambridge case which was heard in small claims, so no precedent, which found in favour of Parking Eye. It is generally seen as a perverse judges decision, made almost to prevent huge waves in an industry which puts over £5m into Govt coffers a year. The judge did allow leave to appeal and the defendants are going down this route, so many months to wait before anything further is heard. What it does mean is if anyone gets PE court papers they can request the case be stayed until the appeal is heard. Today's news regarding how Govt are to prevent Councils issuing tickets by post will no doubt also move on to include private parking companies and once it does the cheap (and flawed) way of them giving tickets will have gone.

Very interesting news daveyjp. In my experience of the Small Claims Court the judge is always very fair and open to argument. If this is a 'peverse' judgement then the appeal may overturn it. The judges and magistrates at this level of the justice system surely have no axe to grind for the Government. Their cases do not set legal precedence so there is no incentive for them to rule against someone simply on the grounds of expediency. It was probably a poorly defended case and the vital evidence has been lost in the melee. Interesting though and we await the outcome. Well posted. Cheers Concrete.

Not speaking for everyone but if I am going to park on someone elses land, even if its to spend money with them I follow their instructions, if thay say 90mins max than 90mins max it is. After all its only fair, not just on the land owners but on others who also may want to park there and use the store.

I guess if you are not happy,you can always use someone elses car park...even walk!

And who exactly spends 90 minutes in Aldi?!!!

.

>>"Who spends 90 minutes in Aldi?"

The people who bought £10 worth of groceries and then nipped into the Bank, Chemist in the High St, coffee shop etc to take advantage of the free parking and forgot thr time.

"I am just wondering. If I type my Reg No in, am I then agreeing to enter into a contract with PE and Aldi, so that they can legally get their loot if I stay over the 90 mins, without any chance of me winning the argument in terms of asking them to prove the loss to Aldi if it goes to court."

Interesting thought.

Without the entering of your regstration, the legal argument is normally that by passing the signs detailing the terms and conditions and continuing to park, you are deemed to have entered into a contract..

Some legal wrangling is then possible as to whether the signage was adequate.

I assume the entering of your registration details is intended to remove this issue, so that in court it might indeed be more difficult to argue that a valid contract was not entered into, but it does not avoid the matter of whether the payment demanded for breaking the supposed contract is a reasonable amount relating to actual losses caused, which in most cases is difficult for the parking company to prove, and remains so.

If you don't enter your registration details and you continue to park, you are possibly open to a charge of trespass, but I think that would put your legal position outside the normal arguments about parking. If you had not caused any nuisance it might make it harder for the parking company to act in law.