Free Traffic Legal Advice

Them spending £35 initiating a court claim they inevitably discontinue won't make them change. The government properly regulating the industry just might.

Yes I see.

The purpose of this part of the forum is to advise people who wish to challenge parking charges they have received. Our advice is focused on the steps a motorist can take within the system as it stands to get their charge cancelled as quickly and cheaply (both in terms of money and time) as possible. The quickest way to do that is to get the supermarket to cancel it. The second quickest way is to appeal. If you provide good evidence, you have a good chance of getting it cancelled long before court.

Understand that too. The members here have previously helped me in that regard (or those on the last forum but I believe its many of the same) and so thanks for that. Its basically not your remit to advise on what I'm asking about though right? I hear your suggestion re writing to my MP and I'll do that for sure.

Re our current situation is there anywhere I can get advice on 'the good fight'? Its small fry as you say, but I wonder whether the hourly rate they pay for their admin is quite as low as you suggest, once everything is taken into account. And I would also hope that if there was a good route to tying them in administrative knots when one is clearly in the right, others would also copy it, so it does feel like something other than a one off route to costing them a few quid and ourselves many hours of effort. But maybe not.

Regarding avoiding getting into trouble with the court, would advising them today that their equipment has made a mistake and that the driver left the car park between their first registered and last registered ANPR records be sufficient? And then leave it in their hands to decide how to proceed? Or does a formal 'appeal' need to be made? Because we would really prefer not to follow their appeal process. It seems that advising them of the facts should be sufficient to cover ourselves with the court surely.

Your posts are contradicting each other slightly here. You started off by saying you have good proof, but are now saying that you would still need to obtain evidence, and that this would be "difficult and expensive". If you have the receipts you mentioned, that and a compelling Witness Statement would hopefully tip the balance of probabilities in your favour.

I have seen the video, and disconnected the disk. But plugging it into a computer does not yield any data. Putting it back on the DVR the video is still there. So its a format that my PC does not recognise. I would probably send it to a expert to extract the video but I don't imagine that would be cheap - I am not sure what point I should do that at. I would hope its not expected that I risk a few hundred pounds expert IT people fees at this point, I would want to know that I had a very good chance of getting it back ideally before doing that (IE I am going to court).

Beware the risk of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Everyone involved in your case on ECP's side is being paid for their time dealing with your case, you are not. Last financial year ECP issued an average of 170,938 parking charges every month (based on DVLA request data). Even if only 50% pay up at the £60 rate (I'd estimate it's far far more) then that's £5m a month in revenue. They'll not notice spending a few £100s on a solicitor.

If it were me, I'd be appealing, and if you want to make the point, filing complaints with ECP, British Parking Association, the supermarket, and DVLA.

Yes, its absolutely true that this is cutting my nose off despite my face. Although OTOH, I am also hoping to kick up a stink with the supermarket in question. I feel that if it did go to court I would have more to rant about on social media etc. 'Supermarket took me to court' type stuff. It has more punch than 'Appeal granted for parking fine error' IMO.

I am done with filing complaints BTW, I don't believe it has any effect whatsoever. Maybe I'm wrong but I think supermarkets are likely to look at the balance of PR vs revenue from these parking operators and it does not take much bad PR when customers spend thousands a year in your supermarket to make a dent IMO - how much ECP are paying for the rights to this car park I don't know but surely its not much. Profit mainly comes from parking fine I imagine.

Yes OK thank you for that detailed answer.

I've been told that one can request copies of the data - images in this situation obviously - and I wonder if one can request copies of the entire days data (or between rough time periods) so that they can show ECPs images of the driver leaving? Of course it was suggested that this causes the parking company cost which I see as a plus. It will be difficult and expensive for the driver to obtain copies of the cctv that shows them at a different place between the alleged arrival and leaving times in the car park, and it seems that the driver should not have to front that cost when ECP's own video is available. The reason is that its on an old antiquated system, it can't just have a USB stick plugged in and copied. And the visit to a company during this period to return some professional equipment does not currently have a paper trail but is on their computer system (as equipment was logged back into their system). The driver probably won't be able to obtain a paper copy of that easily. I imagine though that at a push in court with the 'backing' of the court it could be supplied.

How does the driver navigate these aspects?

Incidentally the driver is less bothered about being awarded costs or any payment, more interested in costing ECP as much as is possible (in time and solicitors fees etc). Maybe they are so streamlined that its not possible to do that I dont know.

So for the second time in a year or two a driver has had a notice from ECP for overstaying the local supermarket car park when actually the driver made 2 visits (morning and evening). They've got good proof (cctv and receipts) that the driver / car was not there for the 7 or 8 hours they allege.

The driver could go into the shop again and complain to the manager and get it cancelled but I wonder if its possible to cause them some trouble. Since the driver is completely provably innocent of this can they just let them take the driver / keeper to court and present the evidence there?

Or should the driver notify them of something within the 28 day period (which incidentally ends today - they've been really busy).

Rather than explain all the details here in public, to keep any powder dry we prefer to ask first - in case the experts here suggest keeping things low key and over personal messages for now.

The driver is prepared to go the full distance if it causes them strife. About 14 years ago this company towed the driver / keeper when the signs were not in place, the ECP agent being aggressive and all the while the driver had a premature new born in hospital so was too busy and distracted to take the matter up properly. The driver / keeper has waited 14 years for some kind of redress so far and does intend some day to get it so I hope this explains why they want to take the action we have explained. They don't mind if they lose money as long as they ECP significantly more.

I've gleaned some possibilities from googles AI bot which seems to think the driver can take various actions like suing them for obtaining details when they are innocent, threatening to drag the supermarket into it (which we would like to do only to encourage them that ECP are not worth the trouble and lost custom). But whether this AI bot is talking sense I don't know and don't trust hence coming here.

Kind regards