'Car park is a money spinning scam'

It is monitored by ANPR cameras and has two machines where you enter your car’s number plate and make a payment.

Just the other day I received a PCN dated October 4 from Highview Parking (they seem to manage the site) relating to a car park stay on August 9 for nonpayment of the parking fee.

The PCN is £85 reduced to £50 if paid within 14 days.

Almost two months after the event and I receive a PCN!

Who retains a ticket for two months? I certainly didn’t but fortunately I always pay by card and found the £10 payment on my card statement that I made that day with the description ‘Empire Court Car Park’ and sent an appeal through to Highview.

But Highview rejected my appeal saying the payment to Empire Court Car Park was unrelated to Winmarleigh car park.

This is of course utter nonsense as a payment for this car park always has the ‘Empire’ description on my card payments.

I appealed to POPLA and Highview submitted their evidence which included a list of payments by machine that day together with reg numbers that had been typed in.

I quickly realised what I had done as a £10 payment recorded as being made three minutes after I was clocked as entering the car park had a reg entered of FY17FYA (instead of MT17FYA).

This payment has to be mine.

Although Highview said they had ‘blanked out part of the VRMs for data protection purposes’ a simple copy and paste revealed the full VRM of each car on the list for that day. On it there appears to be three invalid VRM’s entered as well as my own incorrect entry.

I assume that these three vehicles will also receive PCN’s from Highview, if paid by cash good luck if you retain a ticket for two months and if paid by card they will deny that a payment marked Empire Court Car Park is for their Winmarleigh car park.

What a great little earner not far short of a money spinning scam for a mistype of a reg number into a machine.

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