Please advise, parking company refused appeal, sending to debt collection agency

[Miffylou]

Hi, I was hoping someone can advise as I am at my wits end, and really stressed.
I took my disabled husband on holiday to Cornwall, one day we parked at Fistral beach, and paid accordingly, we returned home and have since received a fine,I was gobsmacked as I knew we’d paid, so I appealed and it was refused, when I looked at the letters and the registration it looks like I used a 0 zero rather than O for orange , so I explained and they confirmed I had paid but for the wrong registration due the the error, and refused to even consider it, I was livid, it took 2 years to save for that holiday as we don’t have a lot with my husband not working being disabled, so a £100 fine is unacceptable when they have confirmed that I did actually pay.
Them today I’ve received an email to say that they want nothing more to do with it and it has been passed onto their debt collection agency , and they will be intouch, my husband is literally a nervous wreck (due to his illnesses he is under the care of a crisis team and psychiatrist, I explained this as it is genuine, but they don’t care , please can someone advise? I checked and DVLA apparently do not distinguish between 0 and O.
I am terribly worried that this debt company are going to be knocking on the door, taking goods from the house etc, for a parking space we paid for, what can I do when they contact us? Any help would be so much appreciated, thanks in advance

[ostell]

Re: Please advise, parking company refused appeal, sending to debt collection agency

The debt company will not be knocking on the door, their only function in life is to write threatening letters so just ignore them.

This problem comes up fairly frequently and you have found the correct response to it in that the font definitions for zero and Oh are identical. It would be completely unreasonable to issue a charge for using the keys.

Did you get any sort of response from the DVLA that you can send to Smart Parking to officially state that the font is the same for both?

[Miffylou]

Re: Please advise, parking company refused appeal, sending to debt collection agency

Hi, no I didn’t get anything from the DVLA , it was only from going on their website and looking around , I did take the info and send it to POPLA and they said they’d reviewed it but that the fine still stood as I was in the wrong and should have paid again when I realised i had put a wrong digit in, but obviously I didn’t know at the time, I’d get it them hounding me if I’d not paid,but to write confirming I had paid I just think is very unreasonable, but they don’t get that

[ostell]

Re: Please advise, parking company refused appeal, sending to debt collection agency

I would just sit and wait and see what happens. Smart do take to court but not many. They realise it costs them more than they can possibly get back. See here

You will now get more debt collector letters, all being more threatening than the last. Eventually will will get what appears to be a solicitors letter but it is only the same debt collector "borrowing" the solicitors letter head. Come back here when you get a solicitors letter entitled "Letter Before CLaim"

I would be inclined to wait to see if they do take you to court as I don't think it would go down well with a real judge that although the characters are the same you are expected to know what they mean. Also they know what cars are in the car park from the cameras and they could have flagged up the fact that it was possibly incorrect but chose not to.

It's a shame you didn't come here first as it's easier to fight a claim when they don't know who was driving.