PCN Excel Crossley Retail Park, Halifax

[b789]

Yes. You should now use that email address and resend the complaint and appeal there. Please show us the email address used as it will be useful for future correspondence.

Excel have expressly opened that complaint/appeal channel by inviting confirmation and further information, so it should now be used to box them in. You should not just resend it as a complaint. Make clear that it is both your formal complaint and your formal appeal against the PCN, and that it must be treated as both under section 11.2 of the PPSCoP.

You should also attach the 9 screenshots. They are not proof that Excel actually received the original webform submission, but they are contemporaneous evidence of your attempted submission and of the fact that Excel’s system is wholly unfit for purpose because it provides no acknowledgement, no copy of the submission and no independent proof of delivery.

So yes, use that email address now, resend the full complaint and appeal, attach the screenshots, and make clear that any failure of their webform or internal systems is their problem, not yours.

Dear Excel Central Processing Office,

A formal complaint and appeal were previously submitted via your website contact form. Your system generated no acknowledgement, no copy of the submission and no independent proof of delivery. That is not a neutral administrative failure. It is a system design that conveniently deprives consumers of evidence and then allows Excel to assert that nothing was received.

You now state that you have no record of the complaint. If your systems failed to record or retain a complaint submitted through your own website, that is your failure, not mine. If, as appears, your webform is deliberately configured so that consumers are left without any evidential record of submission, that raises serious concerns as to deliberate subterfuge and unfair commercial practice.

I attach 9 contemporaneous screenshots showing the text of the complaint and appeal as entered into your webform at the time of the original submission attempt. Those screenshots are the only evidence available because your system provides no acknowledgement, no copy of the submitted form and no other means by which a consumer can retain proof of submission. The fact that 9 screenshots were required merely to preserve the text entered into your small comment box only serves to underline how wholly unfit for purpose your system is for the submission of a proper complaint or keeper appeal.

The position is aggravated by the fact that your appeals portal is itself unsuitable for a registered keeper appeal because it forces first-person driver-based admissions such as “I did this” or “I did that”. In other words, the consumer is first funnelled towards a defective appeals process and then, when attempting to use an alternative webform, is left without any proof of submission. That combination is plainly unacceptable.

For the avoidance of doubt, I now restate the matter by email. This email is my formal complaint and my formal appeal against the Parking Charge Notice. It must be treated as both. Under Section 11.2 of the Private Parking Single Code of Practice, where a complaint includes a challenge to the validity of a parking charge it must also be treated as an appeal. It is not to be treated as a complaint only.

I am the registered keeper. I deny any liability for this charge.

Your Notice to Keeper does not comply with Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 and you are therefore unable to transfer liability from the unknown driver to the registered keeper. In particular, the Notice to Keeper fails to comply with paragraph 9(2)(a) because it does not specify any period of parking. It states only a single contravention time of 16:23. A single timestamp is not a period of parking.

That defect is fatal to any attempt to rely on keeper liability. The statutory conditions must be met in full. As they have not been met, there is no keeper liability in this case.

There will be no admission as to the identity of the driver and no assumptions can be made in that regard.

In the circumstances, this charge must be cancelled.

If you refuse, then please treat this as a request for all photographs taken, all notes made by the operative, and a full copy of the notice relied upon.

Any attempt to sidestep the appeal process, or to rely on the inadequacy of your own systems as a basis for denying receipt of the earlier complaint, may be relied upon in subsequent complaints to the relevant authorities, including the CMA, as evidence of an unfair and obstructive consumer process.

Please now acknowledge safe receipt of this email and confirm that it is being treated as both my formal complaint and my formal appeal.

Yours faithfully,