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Thursday 29 August 2013

BPA allow operator to ignore appeal reasons they have lost with in the past

Previously, The Parking Prankster won an appeal at POPLA against CP Plus when their Notice to Keeper was delivered outside the required timescales. CP Plus withdrew the charge rather than supply any evidence.

When they sent him a new notice, also outside the required timescales, The Prankster therefore appealed using the same grounds he had won at POPLA before. CP Plus refused to accept this as a valid appeal, ignored his letter and started debt collection procedures.

Astonished, The Prankster complained to the British Parking Association Limited.

The BPA Ltd found in the operator's favour and replied that:

"The operator has advised that they never accepted your correspondence as an appeal."

The Prankster considers that letting an operator decide what is or is not an appeal is not the right of the operator, especially when they have lost on that appeal point in the past.

Presumably operators will now be flocking to follow in CP Plus's footsteps, and decide that all manner of grounds are no longer valid ones for appeal. The Prankster guesses that landowner permission and justification of pre-estimate of loss will be the first ones to go.

6 comments:

  1. For the avoidance of doubt in future I would put the word Appeal in 100 point type (just type 100 in the box in MS Word where it says 10 or 12 or whatever) across the top of the letter. They might notice it then?

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  2. Agree with both. PPC's are starting to decide themselves what is and what is not an acceptable appeal. Obviously, this is an attempt into getting a motorist to pay up and avoid getting spanked at PoPLA.

    I'd say the way forward (as above) is to list every appeal point in the soft appeal, giving the PPC no room to move. They must either accept the appeal, or provide a PoPLA code.

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    Replies
    1. I sadly agree. I was hoping to test out the appeal reason and get a full POPLA verdict for a specific appeal point, but it looks like this will now not happen.

      On the plus side I have got to test out Mr Mustard's previous recommendation and send off a complaint about Debt Recovery Plus to the Credit Services Association. No doubt there will be a future blog post about that.

      Delete
  3. Dear PPC,

    I wish to engage your appeals process regarding my PCN #123456789. Please accept this as my appeal.

    blah blah blah

    On this basis I do not feel liable for this charge
    Sincerely
    Joe Bloggs

    -------------

    Let them reject it if they want. If it's explicitly marked as an appeal, a key part of any resulting court claim will be that your right to appeal to POPLA was fettered.

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    Replies
    1. I seem to remember I used something like the following.
      "I confirm that I have already appealed. The words ‘I wish therefore to invoke your appeal process’ in my original letter were intended to convey this to you."

      Sadly CP Plus never do court, but at least this formed another point in my complaint against Debt Recovery Plus who threatened court action in direct conflict with their code of practice which states they must only do this if there is a reasonable chance it will actually happen.

      Delete
  4. PP

    I still think your 'one point at a time' defence could work.

    List all the points in your initial appeal to the PPC and then go back to just one point for the popla appeal.

    ReplyDelete