Free Traffic Legal Advice

My van broke down while navigate around to find a place to park (turned out to be private land). When I returned 15m later I found a parking ticked had been issued by PCM UK LTD.

The mechanic who came out said he would provide a receipt or report affirming the issues but he is turning out to be unreliable and/or busy. To cut a long story short, I gave up on him and decided to pay the ticket at the reduced amount of £60. Problem is, their website seems to have serious performance issues and rejected the payment in spite of me trying several times and then also checking with my card issuer. The believe the issues is with their site being slow to share the data, eventually timing out. I also tried calling the number on the ticket but their phones were equally unreliable.

Today I decided to try again but the ticket has increased in price to £100. Now I did grab a screenshot showing the page declining payment on the 13th of April.

Should I just chase the mechanic for the letter/invoice or is there another way to sort this out.

I must say, this company seems really basic as they dont answer calls and their website is unreliable..makes me wonder if they are even legit.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

It's your money and as long as you don't mind being marked as a "mug" for future scamming, by all means try and pay them. Don't think for a minute that you are dealing with a company that cares about your frustration of contract. They are a firm of ex-clamper thugs whose only interest is how much of your money that can scam out of you.

They have been labeled "cowboys" and "scammers" in parliament. When the upcoming "Private Parking Code of Practice" Act becomes law, hopefully later this year or early next year, they won't be allowed to rip off victims in circumstances like yours where you were broken down. However, for now, your best option is to defend any claim should they decide to pursue you for the alleged debt.

As you have already experienced, they don't make it easy for you to pay the bribe discount, charge. They have now upped it to £100. You can decide that you don't mind paying them or you can fight it. Your choice.

If this ever got to court, your defence would include the fact that you were no "parked". You were broken down which is a vicissitude that has been used as a defence on many cases. The appeal court decision in Jopson v Homeguard [2016] B9GF0A9E, is the persuasive argument that would be used.

One question though... why did you disappear for 15 minutes? Were you aware that you were on private land and that you may be liable for a charge? Was the NtD on your windscreen PoFA compliant and did the follow up NtK arrive within the prescribed time and with the necessary wording to hold the keeper liable? The driver and the keeper are two separate legal entities in private parking cases.

I honestly don't know, but I assume it must have been. I doubt this rogue operation haven't plugged all of those holes.

Better to check rather than assume, especially if there's a prospect of you being sued.

If you want further advice, we really could do with seeing some documents.

Has anything more happened in the 3 months since the thread was started?

We need to see the PCN please.

I've not had any follow-up letters as far as I know.

What do you think I should do?

If you’ve been accessing the website in order to try and make payment, then you must have some relevant information such as the PCN number. That can only be from the NtD that was left on your windscreen or from a follow up NtK that was sent by post.

In stead of trying to waste your money trying to pay it, why don’t you log in as though to appeal it and see exactly what evidence they have. Download whatever there is and show us.

What time of day did this event happen? Was it daylight or dark out? Is the address in the V5C logbook up to date and correct?

I did access it before from the ticket itself but I don't think we received anything in the post from them. I'll have another hunt around. Maybe the browser has saved the login details if I attempt to open their site.