APCOA website not working

[kidsgalore]

My son parked at a station car park and attempted to buy a ticket online, the only means of purchasing a ticket as all machines have been removed from the station. The system failed, but their terms and conditions allows for late purchase up to 24hrs after parking. When he returned to the vehicle after 8hrs there was a parking ticket on the windscreen. He has appealed to the operator, but this has been rejected m. It appears that POPLA is now the operators marking their own homework. Does he have good grounds for a successful POOLA appeal.

[des8]

He might have a very good defence but without seeing the Parking Charge Notice, the location of the station of the station and the wording of his appeal and their rejection it is difficult to advise.
Does he have a record of the attempts to pay and the failure of the APCOA system/APP?

[kidsgalore]

Thank you. He didn’t take a screenshot of the payment failure notification, but they acknowledged that they could see he had tried to pay in their rejection letter. Having read how POPLA have become the operators marking their own homework we just went ahead and paid the fine due to concern things could escalate, which is what these companies rI had seen that many similar cases had failed;

[des8]

sorry to hear he has paid.
A failure of their system is a good basis for a defence which I would expect to be successful.

Appeals to the companies are rarely successful (accepting appeals does not produce an income) but appeals to POPLA can win.
But even a loss at POPLA does not mean that a court claim can't be successfully defended.
Often Parking companies will pursue a victim to court, and then discontinue the claim at the last minute, or even just not turn up at court.

[kidsgalore]

I agree with all you say,. Had there not been other things going on in his life I would have encouraged fighting it, but the extra bit of stress was too much