Free Traffic Legal Advice

Firstly, glad to see there is a replacement to the valuable Pepipoo!

The issue - Car was dropped at the Meet & Greet at LHR T5 Level 4, early August. As requested, went to pay the short term parking, gave ticket to driver and left.

Received a Parking Charge Notice today stating "For the alleged contravention of:
Parked without payment of the parking charge."  Which is clearly false. Pics show entry at 0839, and exit (by M&G driver) at 0924, well after the time he was given the paid ticket.

Appeal made to APCOA (we all know how likely this is to succeed) attaching credit card receipt showing £8 payment to APCOA on correct date. Contact also made with airport parking company who have requested (and been sent) pic of the Parking Charge Notice as well as credit card receipt.

As I understand it, once the ticket is issued from the machines, you then have around 10 mins (perhaps longer) by which time the car needs to have exited the parking? So I assume that the driver did not exit in time OR there is some other contravention. However if the ticket was not paid, the barriers surely would not have raised to allow exit?

I guess I now have to wait for the appeal to be knocked back, but I assume the parking company is the one on the hook for this, even if I need to take them to small claims after the event?

For future reference for airport tickets, had you come here before appealing, we could have advised you of an appeal that would have had a close to 100% chance of succeeding, but we cannot change the past.

Yup - kicking myself a little as I have used the wording in the past for the dropoff charges when incorrectly fined. This is such an open and shut though and is not the dropoff charge.

Please show us the PCN you have received, and exactly what you submitted as an appeal.

Attached.  https://ibb.co/Qv5PfNQv
 I can't access the exact wording now it's been submitted, but it was close to:
"Car entered the barrier and ticket collected. Waited for a few minutes for Meet & Greet driver. At their request, ticket was then paid and handed to Meet & Greet driver. Credit card receipt for ticket purchase attached."

NB _ at no stage was there any reference to 'me' 'us' 'I' 'our' etc.

I'm unfamiliar with the Meet & Greet at Heathrow, so I'm not entirely sure what has happened here - it seems unusual that you also have to pay for short-term parking when you are using the Meet & Greet car park? Is this a third party company providing the Meet & Greet service that is not associated with the airport?

Yes, third party company. Standard procedure is that Level 4 is for meet and greet. Collect the ticket at the entrance and then pay for the ticket and hand to the driver so they can exit the car park. It's become commonplace to do this as the all parking companies don't then add the cost of the parking to their overall charge.

Did you say who was driving (when entering the car park) in your appeal to APCOA, or was the appeal done solely as the keeper? If the latter, we can probably get this cancelled at POPLA stage regardless of any arguments around the Meet & Greet driver's late departure from the car park.

However it pans out, APCOA have always been a pretty benign company, and so far we've never seen them take a case to court.

It's quite an interesting one this - at face value, the contract with APCOA would appear to be between them and the driver who entered the car park, accepting the contract by entering and parking up. That they delegated responsibility for leaving the car park to someone else (namely the M&G company via their driver) would seem to be irrelevant to this. On that basis, they arguably wouldn't be wrong to reject the appeal. If money was found to be owed to APCOA, you'd then be trying to recover this from the M&G company, presumably (depending on the terms of the contract with them) arguing that their negligence has caused you loss. But, as above, there's a fair chance we won't need to get into an argument as complex as that.

No, I didn't say who the driver was. The appeal was sent solely as a keeper.

Good - in that case, if APCOA reject, I'd be minded to appeal on the grounds of PoFA and relevant land. This stands you in good stead for getting the charge cancelled with the least amount of fuss.

I assume APCOA would fairly assume the driver who exited is the same one as who entered.

As I was getting at above, it likely doesn't matter to APCOA if the driver who exited is different. Their position could reasonably be that the driver who entered the car park entered the contract with APCOA - in entering that contract, he agreed to ensure that the correct tariff was paid before the car left and that the car left within X minutes of payment being made. The fact that he passed responsibility for leaving the car park to someone else wouldn't matter.

In a similar way that if you order an item from a retailer online, and they pass responsibility for delivery to a courier who then loses your item, your recourse is against the retailer, not the courier.

UPDATE - The Meet and Greet company has paid the parking charge. The video evidence was pretty damning so it's good to see them doing the right thing without any argument. Confirmed by them via email this morning after a phone call where it was also confirmed last week.

Interestingly, I just received this from APCOA re the original appeal:
"Having considered the circumstances, we have cancelled the Parking Charge on this occasion and a
refund request has been issued, please allow sufficient time for this to show in the payer's account
We have closed the case on our system and noted our records to ensure that we do not send any further
correspondence pursuing this charge.
Please retain this letter as proof of cancellation, should you need it in the future."


I assume this is simply something a computer has spat out after payment made. I couldn't imagine them actually upholding the original appeal. Either way, this is now concluded and once again, thank you for the valuable advice and the potential help had this gone further.