Free Traffic Legal Advice

We just came back from holiday to find a claim form stating that we overstayed  at a supermarket car park on the 27 of November last year.

The sum is £262.96! but we received nothing prior to this. Should I not have received some sort of parking ticket first with an option to contest it?

My wife regularly visits the site and she usually visits multiple outlets while there, so it is feasible that she stayed for over their designated time (not that she would have known that at the time) - it isn't a site where you need to take a ticket with a free period. I am sure they will have signs up but if I am to be honest, neither of us were aware prior to this that there was a time limit to shopping at the site. There are no machines to give the option even to extend.

I don't know what the original amount was and this has definitely put us off shopping at the site in future, but is there something we can do about it because being slapped with a £262 charge for staying a little longer at their site while shopping in there stores seems like madness.

Please help

Image of first 2 pages of the court letter:

[IMAGE REMOVED]

Without knowing the location of the alleged parking event and the details of the claim or who the claimant is and whether they are represented by one of the roboclaim firms of solicitors, it is going to be nigh on impossible to assist you.

If you want a chance to avoid paying anything to these scammers, then please follow the advice from @DWMB2 in the post above mine!

Regarding uploading images, same advice as I gave on your other post in April:

Quote from: DWMB2 on April 16, 2024, 10:22:08 am

To help us help you, take a look through the following thread and provide as much information you can that is mentioned therein: READ THIS FIRST - Private Parking Charges Forum guide

Cheers. Just updated the original post with a link to the form

You need to remove the image of the claim form you posted as it shows the claim number and your MCOL password. In the meantime, here is a suitably redacted copy:

With a claim issue date of 12th July, you have until Wednesday 31st July to acknowledge service (AoS) of the claim. There is no advantage to delaying the AoS. However, by filing the AoS, you then have until 4pm on Wednesday 14th August to submit your defence.

You should have a read of the document in the link below on how to submit your AoS. Do not use the MCOL to submit your defence. That should be done as a PDF attachment to an email which will be advised once you have done the AoS.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xvqu3bask5m0zir/money-claim-online-How-to-Acknowledge.pdf?dl=0

There is a new "short" defence that should shorten the whole process and see this either discontinued or struck-out because the claimant has failed to follow the rules, namely CPR 16.4(1)(a).

Have removed.

Thanks for that

With a claim issue date of 12th July, you have until Wednesday 31st July to acknowledge service (AoS) of the claim. There is no advantage to delaying the AoS. However, by filing the AoS, you then have until 4pm on Wednesday 14th August to submit your defence.

You should have a read of the document in the link below on how to submit your AoS. Do not use the MCOL to submit your defence. That should be done as a PDF attachment to an email which will be advised once you have done the AoS.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xvqu3bask5m0zir/money-claim-online-How-to-Acknowledge.pdf?dl=0

There is a new "short" defence that should shorten the whole process and see this either discontinued or struck-out because the claimant has failed to follow the rules, namely CPR 16.4(1)(a).

Thank you for this. Based on my particular case, should I select defend 'all' or 'part' in the AoS?

Unless you accept you owe some of the money, you should be choosing to defend 'all' of the claim.

Well we were parked at the site and almost certainly stayed beyond what we did not know was the limit. I am assuming there would have been signage though we did not see or think to read them. It does seem very unreasonable to charge customers using the site, fines in this way, but I wonder if claiming I shouldn't pay anything would be seen as a weak argument. Or if I would be claiming the escalation of costs should be redacted due to not having sent me fines at any intermediary stages?