ParkingEye confirm they issue 2/3rds of their tickets in error

The number of tickets issued incorrectly by ParkingEye has shot up from half to two thirds, as confirmed by recent documents used by them in court cases.

Previously ParkingEye stated that they had to cancel 55% of appealed tickets.

This has now increased to 65%, according to ParkingEye's witness, claims handler David Greenbank.

Although ParkingEye regularly lie in court, file false and misleading evidence, and redact parts of documents relevant to the case, The Prankster believes David Greenbank is telling the truth in this instance. The Prankster has found David Greenbank to be slightly more reliable than his predecessor, Jonathan Langham.

Obviously, there can be no confidence in a system in which the parking operator admits only 1/3 of tickets are issued correctly; The Prankster has his doubts about the remaining third, as do POPLA, who cancel all ParkingEye tickets appealed to them on the grounds that the charge level was not a genuine pre-estimate of loss. ParkingEye's overall record at POPLA last year was that 38% of appeals were upheld.

This translates to an overall figure of 78% of tickets being incorrectly issued, or almost 4 out of 5. (This assumes tickets which were not appealed are also issued incorrectly in the same ratio of appealed tickets).

Issuing incorrect tickets causes a great deal of stress to motorists and landowners. B&Q cancelled ParkingEye's contract because it was alleged they lost a 7 figure sum due to a drop in trade while ParkingEye were aggressively operating their car parks. Although it would be difficult to prove the entire sum lost was due to ParkingEye, it is noteworthy that trade has picked up now that ParkingEye are gone.

As ParkingEye issue such a large amount of tickets incorrectly, it therefore follows that their raison d'etre is not to enforce car parking rules, which their own figures show they are spectacularly bad at. The only remaining conclusion is that ParkingEye issue large amounts of incorrect tickets in the hope of bullying motorists into paying, even though in at least 4 out of 5 cases, the motorist should not.

Figures released by ParkingEye in court show that parking compliance only improved by 1/3 after a month of operation. This proves that neither landowners nor ParkingEye are terribly interested in compliance; the whole point of the operation is to milk motorists for huge sums of money. Although ParkingEye argued in court (ParkingEye v Beavis) that their contract would be terminated by the landowner if motorists did not comply with parking rules, these figures show there was no factual basis for that claim.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster