You can’t be fined by a private company. They can only “invoice” the driver for their loss of earnings for the excess time the vehicle was parked on their property.
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Got issue with one from Morrison’s in Northampton a few years ago. Refused to pay it, no action taken.
I think the advice of ‘just bin it’ is a bit out of date. There have been examples of people being taken to court for non-payment. No, it isn’t a fine, but if they really want to pursue payment of a charge they can. It’s easy to adopt a position of indifferent bravado, but court proceedings are not fun and my advice is not to take the possibility of it lightly.
What gives the whole scam the appearance of being able to ignore a charge is that the parking companies will pick and choose when to escalate. The result is anecdotal evidence from friends and family of people who threw their charge in the bin and heard nothing more. The cynic may conclude that this is to encourage more people to park beyond the specified time, giving these companies more cases to choose from.
In short, you’re taking a risk if you decide not to pay.
The DVLA allow all of this to happen, and in my opinion it is not their intended function to provide car registration details to private companies. But they can and do; three cheers for capitalism.
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Also, if you lease a car they bill the leasing company directly and then they (leasing company) charge you automatically
It happened to me!
They are not fixed penalty notices like you might get from a local council or the police (which are enforceable via the criminal court), but they can constitute breach of contract (the signs often say something along the lines of “if you park here it constitutes agreement to our T&Cs”) which can be pursued by the civil court route. If that happens, and you lose, then it would become enforceable (by the court) - and a hell of a lot more expensive.
If you have a genuine argument that the charge is unfair (e.g. anything from it wasn’t your car or you weren’t the one who parked it there, you entered the car park but didn’t actually park - or not for as long as stated, payment machines out of order, you were delayed in returning by circumstances totally out of your control, insufficient or unclear signage, genuine mistake in not paying any parking fee within a specified time span but you did pay/attempt to pay as soon as you realised your mistake, etc, etc) then you should submit an appeal to the issuers. I’ve done that several times and been successful every time (private tickets that is, with the 2 police ones I’ve had they refused to enter into dialogue and left the threat of going to a magistrate’s court to decide it - and I chickened out even though I believe that in both cases the tickets were issued unfairly).
If you are bang to rights with no excuse though, you are taking a chance in just ignoring it. Many of the cowboy outfits may well just let it drop as not worth their while to pursue, but some of the bigger boys with reputations to maintain might be more and take you to court - which would put your costs up much more than paying the original penalty. Up to you whether you are a gambler.
Even the Morrison staff have been fined and had to appeal it
Didn’t ignore it, refused to pay it and challenged it’s legitacy and they just decided there are far easier targets and wasn’t worth their while pursuing.
I attended court in January this year for two tickets where a ticket machine was out of order. I didn’t pay out of principle after having an appeal rejected. It is a lot of time and effort to brush up on law and compile your defence and witness statement. There are some helpful websites, not least Money Saving Expert that I used and got support from.
In my case I also got a very helpful judge who smashed the junior legal bod the Parking Company’s Legal firm put up and I ended up not uttering a word in court before he announced case dismissed. The only thing I messed up was costs as I reckon I could have walked away with £75 for my troubles, I was just so dumbfounded to hear the judgement I couldn’t string a sentence together! 
It is a stressful experience but rewarding if the result goes in your favour, sticking two fingers up to the corporations for the little man/woman 
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Could you not argue that the DVLA are in breach of GDPR for passing on personal identifiable information to another company without the permission of the individual? If the DVLA made it more difficult for these big companies to obtain the data, then they’d be less inclined to impose penalties.
The car park itself is private property, therefore if you are able to cover your VRN before you pass the camera, then they are unable to identify you. You are also not breaking any UK laws to what I’m aware as you’re on private property.
I would argue that, as would others. But they make a nice bit of cash on the side charging private companies to query their database, so they won’t be in a rush to change things.
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No all you have to do is show you have a legitimate reason for the request, i.e pursuit of recovery of loss through legal procedures and they have to give it. Even a private individual could make such a request and proving they can show such a reason for it they would have to provide it.
That’s true. If someone parks on your drive without permission, the police will not be interested and tell you it is a civil matter. You could apply to DVLA for information about the owner and send them a bill for the inconvenience you were caused ,and if they did not pay up you could then take them to court.
The Parking Company has to be a member of a register trade association to be able to request and obtain data from the DVLA.