Been punished by a parking fine? Make sure to appeal

Have you written to Morrisons and ask them to cancel; dropping a hint that you may be contacting the local press about being “penalised” for a medical emergency. Additionally, you may want to read up on “Frustration of Contract”.

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Laura – You have saved your eye and your daughter has had her parking fine cancelled. If I were in your position I would close this unfortunate episode down as quickly as possible by paying the penalty.

By all means ask Morrisons to grant you a compassionate refund of anything you pay to Parking Eye but I doubt that will be done in a hurry. As Duncan says, you should include the optometrist’s confirmation of your treatment and inability to drive for a period.

I would suggest you do not want to go through the court claim procedure as that could add to your distress. Pursuing Morrisons or Parking Eye on a contractual dispute might be legally sound but, again, are you happy to prolong this and add to your woes with further uncertainty and possible stress?

The American law does not help in your case and I don’t think we should envy it; that could just compound your sense of grievance. For most people health services are not free at the point of delivery in the USA so the law steps in to protect citizens from unfair treatment. As evidenced in this Conversation, there are some unfair aspects to England’s rules on parking on private land and I hope in due course Which? will campaign for improvements; experiences such as yours will be useful in that respect.

There can be considerable differences between stores operated by a single company, so looking at how another branch operates may not be relevant. That may be why I could not find any terms & conditions online for car parks at stores run by Morrisons.

The company was probably operating within the law by issuing the parking charge notice and the terms & conditions may not refer to what happens if someone becomes ill or their car breaks down. Paying up may avoid stress, as John says, but for the sake of others who may be treated in the same way, maybe we have a public duty to fight against unreasonable charges.

Looking at the US website mentioned by Duncan, it is evident that some people would try and exploit leniency, for example by using pre-arranged appointment as a reason for not complying with parking rules. There is also the possibility that people will make up stories to get out of paying. That is why it is so important for Laura and others to be able to provide evidence to support her case.

I do hope that Laura will not let this drop and will report on the outcome of the case.

I consider parking penalties a sensible way to prevent, or penalise, misuse of parking provided for the general good. Our village car park has restrictions to prevent commuters using it instead of the station car park, otherwise residents would have nowhere to park off road for their shopping visits.

However, I consider parking penalties to be excessive – out of proportion to the offence and to the normal parking charges. I would like Which? to campaign for more equitable charges – £20 has been suggested, modified if a car park has particularly high normal rates perhaps – to still act as a deterrent but to prevent the sort of grievances we regularly see published.

I agree, Malcolm. I think it must fall to consumer organisations, and not to individuals for whom parking misery is stressful enough, to campaign for fairness and equity [between the landowner and the driver] in parking regulations and penalties. By outsourcing the enforcement, and with the enforcement companies using automatic systems to generate the parking charge notices, landowners like supermarkets, retail parks and shopping malls are side-stepping their relationship with their customers and making it doubly difficult for them to obtain redress for excessive enforcement. It’s no good going to the customer service desk as they will just direct you to the writing on the wall. The challenge and appeal procedures are remote and hostile. At least with on-street parking enforcement by a local authority there is usually a parking office one can visit to seek advice or raise mitigating factors and where people are treated with respect and honesty.

The process has now swung too far in favour of the landowners with extortionate charges but a massive drop in enforcement costs. The process can now ‘catch’ virtually every driver who in some way contravenes the regulations [which are not always crystal clear]; this compares with a foot-patrol enforcement rate of possibly 25%. People will not resent a sensible penalty, like £20; it will be a lesson for the future but not damaging enough to cause people like Laura to suffer from having it play on their mind as she says it now is starting to in her case. Less robust people could crack under these stresses and we’ve got enough psychological casework already in this country.

Hi @laurark – I hope your eye is OK and that you will have it checked when the eye is back to normal.

You could discuss your problem with your local branch of Citizens Advice.

I tried that! I queued for an hour then waited for an hour and then saw an assessor who just told me she couldn’t give me any advice! She gave me a list of solicitors who do half hour free consultations but non of them wanted to know!

I will try to carry on fighting the case for as you say it may help others. However, I am worried about how much fighting this could cost!

I also think what you say may be best as I am finding this very frustrating and stressful and paying the fine would put an end to it. I will ask Morrisons for a compassionate refund if I do so! Thanks for your advice.

I have written to Morrisons and hope they will help me with this. Thanks for your comments.

Good news! I contacted Morrisons and all ‘charges’ were dropped. I wish I’d talked to them earlier and saved a huge amount of worry. To all those who took the trouble to try to help, my sincere thanks. Thank you too to the manager of Morrisons who was human!

Congratulations Laura. Thanks for reporting back, which might encourage others to take action when a company behaves unreasonably in the circumstances. Even though management of parking has been delegated to ParkingEye, I would expect Morrisons to respond to concerns, not least to help keep their customers. I hope your eye is back to normal.

Which? should be campaigning to rid the country of ‘Parking Eye’ type vultures and for companies to take responsibility for their own car parks. In Laura’s case above, she should have been able to go to the Manager in Morrisons to sort out her overstay there and then and any reasonable manager would have listened and saved her the added stress of the money-for-nothing vultures.

All car parks should be ‘pay-on-exit’. You never know how long a hospital appointment is going to last so how can you be expected to pay in advance? Stores can issue tokens to reduce fees if you shop in them, and prices could go up astronomically for long-stayers abusing the car park. It is not rocket science.

Car parking has become a nightmare for many with fines far out-weighing the crime and it is time something was done about it.