Excel Parking release new fictional GPEOL explanation

Excel have released a new version of their genuine pre-estimate of loss calculations (version 2.0). This makes it at least the sixth different explanation used since July 2013 (not counting sub-variants used for manual/ANPR,  POPLA/Court and Excel/VCS).

The known versions and approximate release dates are:

July 2013 (unversioned)
December 2013 (unversioned)
January 2014 1.4
February 1.8
July 0614
October 2014 2.0

The documents are internally inconsistent, leading to the inescapable conclusion that Excel are not telling the truth in one or more versions. For instance, the 'final reminder process' is costed at £4.41 in 1.4, £6.92 in 1.8 and £2.72 in 2.0.

Excel Parking believe they can get away with these lies because each POPLA case is handled independently and assessors do not refer to previous versions. Similarly in court cases judges will not refer to old cases.

As a service to motorists The Prankster has therefore compiled a full list of all known versions and made them available on his website, together with an analysis of the charges. Using Excel's own figures, The Prankster has calculated the true GPEOL to be £13.13. This is in line with known costs from other parking companies, such as ParkingEye.

Motorists can download these documents and use them as evidence in POPLA and court appeals.

Excel have been known in court cases to claim that these documents are confidential because they could give information to other car parking companies. This is an obvious fiction because:

1. Other car parking companies could easily obtain these documents by getting a parking charge then appealing to POPLA, where they would receive the document in the evidence pack
2. Car parking companies are known to collude with each other and swap information about how to fool POPLA with fake GPEOL costings. This can be shown by the similarity between operators GPEOL explanations, and how changes in one operator's explanations are matched by other operators.

Conclusion

Although the analysis is fairly detailed and too long for a blog entry, the conclusions can be reported as follows.

• Excel have submitted a number of different GPEOL documents to account for their costs. These cannot possible be ‘pre-estimates’ because they continually change in response to losing POPLA appeals and court cases.
• Excel’s various GPEOL documents are contradictory, untrustworthy and use dubious accounting practices.
• Various amounts are claimed at too high a figure
• Various amounts are fully charged even for rare events
• Various amounts are double charged, being already paid for by the landowner
• POPLA has discounted many of the heads of cost as being general running costs of the business and not applicable to any breach
• POPLA has discounted many of the heads of cost as not applicable to all events
• POPLA has discounted many of the heads of cost as not being losses resulting from a breach, such as write off allowances.
• An analysis using publically available figures puts the true average cost per ticket issued at around £15.
• Their car parks are clearly run as a regime to maximise income from penalty charges. No attempt is made to mitigate losses. The charges are arbitrary and wholly out of proportion to the £15 actual costs.