Forums Forums Wirral Information Law And Your Rights £40 PARKING FINE IN ALDI CARPARK (PRENTON)

Some of this is wishful thinking, if in this case the £25 is published ie on reasonable display, then they are well within their rights to pursue it through the courts, it is part of the parking fee.

The other point of denying you are the driver is also quite dodgy, if they have you captured on camera or cctv and you have are shown to have lied then you could be wide open for a criminal charge as well as the civil offence.

It is in the interests of these companies to recover the money, if it shown that you have been at all uncooperative then the costs will almost certainly be awarded against you and will probably be much higher than if you played it straight. If they are reasonably confident that they have sufficient evidence then they have nothing to lose by taking you to court - it will be judged on the balance of probabilities, not necessarily on absolute proof.

You can read as many stories as you want on the internet and chose to believe the ones in your favour, they won't be much use in a court other than to highly amuse the judge at your naivity.

Except that no one has been able to find instances of where these companies have ever actually taken anyone to court, never mind won.

The £25 charge whether advertised or not is punitive in nature and therefore unlawful in the UK.

And Im not just going on stories I have read. I am going on personal experience of ignoring these parasites.

In a private car park it is not punitive, it is a parking fee. There is no legal restriction on what parking fees they charge, if they want to put a sign up for £2000 a minute and someone parks there, they are fully legally able to take them to court to obtain the stated charge, the court cannot make a judgement based on if it excessive or not, although they may make comment on it.

Here is an example list of cases where parking fees have resulted in successful county court judgements.

Mr Simon Malin 9MA21782


Mr John Delaney 9Q202947


Private Hire Uk 9MA12611


Richard Crossland 9MA10907


Surefix Roofing 9MA11445


Carcroft Commercial Ltd 9MA11444


Mrs Carole Carter 9QT78386


Bailey-Edwards £304.76 9MA08392


Zarafat £293.86 9MA07110


Tomlinson £303.70 9MA06847


Pledge £303.95 9MA07107


Patel £308.88 9MA07329


Morgan £303.83 9MA07345


Mohanad £303.55 9MA07114


McDonald £293.66 9MA06846


Koloko £307.24 9MA07109


Connell £314.59 9MA07347

Yes a parking company can charge £2000 per minute. But they cannot then say that if you overstay we will charge you £200,000. Thats the punitive part. That have already advertised that the fee for parking is £2000 per minute. Any overstay can only be charged at the same rate.

And how many of these were defended?

Dunno mate, but it shows they Do go to court and they Do get CCJs. If it goes to court on a civil case you are unlikely to win unless you were truly innocent - in which case it would have been unlikely to go to court anyway.

No doubt some of those £300 CCJs started off life as £40 "fines".

It costs the parking companies NOTHING to pass the debt on to a debt collection company, the collection company doesn't survive by not collecting the money and costs are awarded.

CLICKY - DRPL offers a ‘No Collection - No Fee' recovery service for your unpaid Parking Tickets

Then all I can go on is personal experience. And we will have to respectfully agree to disagree as to whether these tickets are lawful or not.

Ok, my last post unless I dig up some hard evidence. There is no question as to whether they are lawful or not, the question is: are they enforceable?

Very similar problem as speed cameras which were passed through the highest courts as lawful, but the technicality of proving the driver made them almost unenforceable.

Unless it is issued by a court, no one can make you pay a fine of any nature regardless of who issues it, which is why the police always offer you the oppertunity to go to court to protest it. If you wish to just pay the police fine then so be it, chances are you'll loose if it is from the police.

ONLY A JUDGE CAN MAKE YOU PAY A FINE END OF MATTER.

DOn't know anything about the law relating to this sort of thing but I do have 2 friends who've had these tickets (both from Aldi carparks) and have just ignored and not received any sort of court summons. However neither had actually broken the rules, which appears to of happens in this case, so I'm not sure how that would affect it.

you HAVE to pay if its a council or police parking fine but just ignore the fines if its a private firm. the cost of taking you to court is more than your fine so makes no sense in sending you to court! there was a programe on radio merseyside concerning this and so far no-one has been taken to court! but just ignore it, dont get into any corrispondance with them or if you do get them to prove who was driving and they cannot prove it and dont admit anything!! good luck! check out moneysavingexpert.com or peppipoo.com, they will tell you more.

same happened to me, I haven't been back to the Home n Bargain nor Aldi since. When I was "caught" having spent 19 mins over the supposed time limit I deffo did not see any signs, I mean, lets face it, on the way into the carpark your lookin at the road not up in the air!lol. Well, I phoned them and told them it was ridiculous etc etc but it fell on deaf ears - I said what are they gonna do at Xmas, when there is big queues etc... didn't have an answer did they!! i rang CAB, they advised me to pay however I have heard of many more getting stung like this. Just makes my blood boil, nowt more than vultures as far as I'm concerned. Best of luck,

Very true, and what happens if your car wont start and breaks down.....surly they cant expect you to work miracles....