Anger over time taken to quash fine
PASSENGER WAS TOLD SHE HAD BROKEN PARKING RULES
A WOMAN has hit out at a parking company after being sent a ticket despite not breaking the rules at a Nottingham retail park.
Marie Allsopp, 55, visited Castle Marina Retail Park on October 20 last year to get a Samsung tablet repaired at the Curry’s PC World store.
Ms Allsopp was driven by her expartner, who parked in the retail park. She stayed in the shop for “quite a while” before visiting Pets At Home.
But during the visit she was issued with a parking ticket by company UKCPS, which operates the car park.
UKCPS said the ticket had been given because the driver was “observed leaving the site”.
The company claimed this was Ms Allsopp, something the Beechwood resident says was “not true at all”.
“We normally park in the disabled bays but they were coned off, so we parked the vehicle at an end spot opposite the shop and put the disabled sticker on,” she told the Post.
“I was in there for quite a while, then we came out and drove over to Pets At Home.
“I then got a letter from this lovely company stating that I had left the site, but there was no ticket on the car or any notice.
“I then phoned them up and asked ‘what do you mean I left the site?.’
“The only time we left the site was through the exit when we went home.”
Rules for the car park state that the “driver of the vehicle must remain on site” while using the retail park, but there is no mention about whether passengers are allowed to leave.
Ms Allsopp was the passenger on the day but the company wrote to her saying she had been “the driver” of her vehicle, and was spotted leaving the retail park on foot.
When she questioned this, she was given a description of a man leaving the retail park but says she was provided with no photographic evidence.
“I asked ‘where’s the evidence of me leaving the site. Can you give a description of me?,’ and they described a man leaving the site, so it wasn’t even me,” she added.
“If you look at the sign there, it says that the driver is not allowed to leave the site.
“It doesn’t say anything about whether the passenger can leave, so if I did leave I wouldn’t even have been breaking any rules anyway.
“I went into the shops to ask for help providing proof that I myself didn’t leave the site, and was informed that staff have had similar issues.”
In the weeks following the parking ticket, Ms Allsopp said she was filled with “stress” over whether she would have to pay a fine for something she “didn’t do”.
She says people from a debt recovery service, acting on behalf of UKCPS, even came to her door asking her to pay the fine outright.
But, after failed attempts at appealing against the fine and asking shops in Castle Marina for support to prove she didn’t leave as the company suggested, the ticket was “quashed” earlier this month.
Ms Allsopp added: “The appeal got rejected and I had no notification, then I was contacted by a debt recovery service on behalf of UKCPS.
“I rang them up and asked why I had people at my door when it was under appeal, and I hadn’t even been notified that the appeal had been rejected.
“I told them I wasn’t paying it as I didn’t leave the site while I was there.
“I myself sent another letter to UKCPS at the start of January, and it wasn’t until Thursday that I got a letter back with no apology stating that it had been quashed out of the blue.
“So I had three extra weeks of stress worrying about what was going on. “How can they get away with this? “How many other people have paid the fine, without wanting it to go any further and not challenged them?”
The Post has attempted to contact UKCPS on multiple occasions for a response to Ms Allsopp’s parking ticket situation but has not received a reply.