Free Traffic Legal Advice

https://imgur.com/a/ktNvsbu

Seeking advice on how to proceed with this PCN. Here's a summary of what has happened so far:

18th July - Date of parking offence. Driver arrived at hotel, receptionist mentioned there is a parking fee if driver parked in car park. Driver questioned if parking was already covered as this was booked through company driver works for. Receptionist informed driver this should be fine, driver questioned the "should"?. Receptionist reassured driver it's fine. So the driver assumed it was fine and no payment was made.   

11th Aug - Opened PCN letter. Driver called hotel reception and explained the situation. Informed to send an E-mail with a copy of the PCN and the Hotel will resolve. E-mail was sent, no follow up received from Hotel. 

29th Aug - Driver called again, explained situation again, informed it would be resolved when a manager/supervisor looks at it. No follow up from Hotel, unable to confirm if they've even contacted UKPC as no information has been given. PCN progressed to debt collector. 

8th Sept - Driver called again, informed manager would be in later and will contact them. No call back. Called again at 4, informed a request would be sent to UKPC and driver would receive an update. No update received

9th Sept - Driver called multiple times, reception ignored calls most of day. Tried calling on another number, receptionist hung up call upon realising it's related to this PCN.

Now believe hotel is actively ignoring calls from Driver's number. Driver has been polite entire time, but believe they've been misled during every attempt to communicate with hotel. PCN has now increased in price (£100 PCN + £70 Debt Collection fee). At no point has the driver communicated with UKPC, only calls/E-mail to the hotel. Where each time the hotel has either said they'll resolve this or get back to the driver with an update, which never happened.

What should their next steps be? Do they have a leg to stand on if UKPC pursue this?

Are you the registered keeper of the vehicle or is it a lease?

As you have learnt the hard way, a phone call is not worth the paper it isn't written on. You could have dealt with this and probably concluded it much earlier if you had simply made your complaint to the hotel in an email and, hopefully received a confirmation in writing that they are going to "deal with it".

You didn't and left it too late to appeal. Had you, the Keeper, appealed with a simple "No Keeper liability", waited for that to be rejected and then appealed to POPLA with a simple single point appeal on the exact same reason, you would have almost certainly been successful and that would have been the ned of the matter.

However, you are where you are now. All you have managed to do is prolong the process to a conclusion where, if you follow the advice, you will not be paying a penny to UKPC. It just means that you now have to ignore all the useless debt recovery letter and wait for the inevitable Letter of Claim (LoC) from DCB Legal and subsequent County Court claim that will follow. As long as you defend the claim with our template, I can guarantee that the claim will eventually be either struck out or discontinued.

Instead of this being over within a month or two, it will now most likely drag on for up to a year or more before concluding and requires you to defend a claim which will never reach a hearing.

We don't need to know about any debt recovery letters and you can safely ignore them. Debt collectors are powerless to actually do anything except top try and intimidate the low-hanging fruit on the gullible tree into paying out of ignorance and fear.

Come back when you receive an LoC from DCB Legal.