In this case the vehicle keeper (Stan) visited a friend for her 50th birthday party in Oxford, travelling in convoy with another vehicle. They stopped at the M40 Oxford Services between 13.55 and 14.10 for 15 minutes. On the way back, they popped in to fill up with petrol, stopping from around 18:35 to 18:45.
Some days later Stan received a parking charge from ParkingEye accusing him of staying in the car park for 4 hours and 52 minutes.
Stan appealed, explaining that he visited the car park twice on his way to and from a party.
ParkingEye requested proof.
Stan sent them 3 witness statements confirming he was at the party.
ParkingEye ignored this, and sent a letter asking Stan who the driver was.
Stan sent another letter, telling them to read his previous two letters and witness statements
ParkingEye told Stan he had reached the end of their internal appeal process and gave him a POPLA code
Stan appealed to POPLA, including as evidence the witness statements and also a photo he took at the party.
ParkingEye submitted a 93 page evidence pack, including 40 pages listing the last 3 digits of all the vehicles that had entered and exited the services that day.
The registration details of Stan's friend's car was not listed amongst all these numbers, despite the fact that he, too, had also visited the service station twice.
Stan sent an email to POPLA pointing this out, along with a signed statement from his friend including his registration number.
POPLA upheld the appeal
Prankster Note
It is clear that ParkingEyes ANPR is fatally flawed. Stan's friend passed the entrance/exit four times, yet his registration was not listed even once in ParkingEye's printout.
Stan also passed four times and his registration was only listed twice.
ParkingEye are fully aware their ANPR is not fit for purpose yet their appeals service fail to cancel charges even when faced with overwhelming evidence.
This situation is not healthy and need to be addressed.
Happy Parking
The Parking Prankster
Had this 2 years ago. Stopped at a hotel who had PE in their car park, if I had known before I wouldn't have used their hotel.
ReplyDeleteI entered the car park 3 times and exited 3 times.
Managed to get myself a begging letter, was going to tell them about the other entry/exits but thought I'd just get the hotel to cancel.
PE and ANPR, not a good combination.
the answer is very simple, in order to enforce there must be 24hr hi-res cctv at all entrances exits. Recordings must be kept for at least 1 year. ANPR is not up to it.
ReplyDeleteNote the way Parking Eye dismissed all those witness statements. Who the hell do they think they are? Did they actually read the statements,or was it a case of "The computer says no"! and no actual human was involved?
ReplyDeleteThe lengths these jockstraps will stoop to get your cash in their grubby bank account 😱
ReplyDeleteSurely the thing to do is get caught in 2 parking eye controlled car parks in a double dip that overlaps and see if thei extensive quality process allows them to try it on for parking the same car in 2 places at the same time.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Pranky has already done that.
DeleteI did, and believe me they were right grumpy about it
Deleteor get your mate to fill up with fuel on site on a furl card , and actually not be seen on the ANPR system ,, refund time?
ReplyDeletei do wonder with missing registrations, did parking eye doctor the list, remove any entries without exits and vice versa, it would seen strange for the same car to be missed twice and their friend four times, if they did doctor the data, seems at least to prove parking eye are dishonest (not that people didn't know already) and a worst fraudulent.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it good news that POPLA saw sense and upheld the appeal?
ReplyDeleteAt what stage do these cease to be mistakes and just turn out to be fraud?
ReplyDeletewhilst the company is owned by crapita , who are in the government's pocket ,, never
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