Popla Avis 1 884

Scam appeals process for greedy and tricky parking operators

Submitted clear evidence including a paid ticket, but the decision appeared one-sided and favoured the parking company. Important fairness issues were not properly addressed. Very disappointing experience.

My son is a Uni Student, forgot to top up his account for a parking fine of £2 as last semester he paid by direct debit. We have appealed all the way from £2 to now £110
We are now at court stage, we have paid £110 as it is worrying him and he has really important exams !!
It’s daylight robbery !!!

I paid for my parking and kept the ticket, but only partially entered my reg number. Apparently POPLA feel that it is perfectly alright for a parking company to fine you even if you have a valid ticket, because in the small print on the car park somewhere it says so. Apparently now it is also fine for a company to charge me £100 pounds for a "keying error" because I should have known to just eat this "S!&T" and pay the kindly reduced fine for parking I had already paid for, in the first place. POPLA are just there to suggest to you that there might be a reasonable solution, so you have to give the companies their full fine in the end.

Simply appalling.
POPLA don't read the evidence or if they do they chose to ignore it.
UKPC parking admitted in their statement that I was not parked in a recognised parking bay but insisted I had breached their rules for a legitimate bay. If I had more time I would have taken it further, as any judge of worth would have laughed them out of court.
I suggest anyone who believes they have been wronged by UKPC just pay the reduced £60 unless you have a huge amount of spare time. This is legitimised robbery and the sooner the government bring in new legislation to curb these shady private parking firms the better.
I will await the stock reply to this saying they are independent and their adjudicator laid out their findings etc etc blah blah blah but the truth is they are a bunch of con-artists.
UKPC and POPLA ...Shame on you but your days are numbered.See less

These guys are the worst, Funded by private operators and claimed independence on the decision. Repeating the shit reasons from Euro carpark and not even giving a closer look of evidence.

Not worth 1 Star but had to enter something to enable a review.
The £zombies that work for POPLA do not answer any genuine complaints
UKPC charge went from £60 to £170 and debt collection threat within the space of 3 weeks whilst out of the country
I sent 3 registered post letters with no response
My vehicle also was registered for loading trade goods
Staff at UKPC and POPLA brains cannot think beyond ££

Don’t waste your time with POPLA

Check the code of practice and raise issues directly with the British Parking Association or your MP.

My rejected appeal for the reasons stated was a joke, basically just ignored the basis of my appeal with no valid reason, completely biased towards its paymasters (the company who issued the wrongly-given ticket). It's all about money. Will go through the courts instead.

Woeful, BEYOND WORDS. Tried to raise an appeal against the vultures “Parking Eye”. I was issued a PCN as although I paid what the parking machine asked of me, it wasn’t sufficient as the car was parked for a slightly longer period of time. I explained this to both Parking Eye, and then to POPLA. Both companies failed to understand the simple nature of my complaint, so ended up having the pay the fine, with the additional add on costs for the delay caused due to the appeal.
Please don’t waste your time or your energy with POPLA.

POPLA says they're independent, but I've never seen them make an independent decision. I gave them strong evidence that the parking system was down, but they still said there was a sign saying I had to pay. They're working with parking enforcement and getting a commission from them.

Was referred to POPLA by the disgraceful vultures that name themselves 'Euro Car Parks' to appeal a parking charge. I paid the full amount but entered the wrong registration, euro car parks tried to charge me £20 for an admin fee?? I rightly asked them what cost incurred to justify the £20 charge and rightly argued it was was a punitive charge. (Clearly a profiteering scheme). Went to POPLA as I was told to, who inevitably sided with this awful company referencing a court case decades ago where a person overstayed by 10 minutes. Hello??? I paid the full amount and didn't overstay, so it bears no relevance to my situation. There is no way your lawyers are that useless, I now have to pay the full £100 just for appealing... £100 for entering the incorrect registration!! Try to get your head around that. This firm is clearly being bankrolled by the car park companies, there is no regulation or laws against it, this is all a legally mandated crime syndicate, avoid Euro Car Parks at all costs, POPLA and these "independent" law firms are all in it together to screw over the common folk. Together we can make them all bankrupt by just not using them.👊🤞

Either didn’t look or didn’t care about the evidence sent. Went through the complaint procedure too, and still didn’t look at the evidence!! Just said it was private land even though attached to a local authority car park and use the same payment meters. Payment meters stipulated that parking free after 6pm. POPLA also said I sent evidence of the local authority rules from the internet, which apparently was inadmissible, even though it is the exact information on the payment meters. Then stipulated I had raised a complaint about a different car park to the one I was in, even though it was a screenshot of all the car parks and their payment hours in the area!!
**Note to POPLA, I am not interested in your cut and paste comments you like to attach to your reviews. Only comment on this review if you are going to reassess the evidence you have received and overturn your ridiculous decision**

•••Unbelievable!!!! As if I needed proof that POPLA doesn’t read anything!!!! They have copied and pasted a ‘catch all’ response. POLPA, as I said only respond if you were overturning your decision, I take this as confirmation•••

AWFUL and not impartial at all. I am awaiting the outcome but already know my appeal will be turned down. Spoke to 2 staff members as I missed the 7 days response deadline due to a medical emergency. They were cold, heartless and plain rude. I had clear evidence. Not sure why I bothered using them. DO NOT bother appealing. Pay the reduced fine and be done with it. Highly unlikely a decision will be made in the driver’s favour trust me!! Horrible and biased organisation. Not sure why they exist really.

I went through the full POPLA appeals process after receiving a parking charge due to a genuinely unavoidable situation; a major rail disruption caused by a fatal incident, which prevented me from returning to my vehicle on time.

I provided clear, timestamped evidence showing:
• my original travel plans
• the disruption to services
• the alternative route I had to take overnight
• and that I returned to my vehicle as soon as physically possible

None of this was disputed.

However, the appeal was still rejected on the basis that I could have extended my parking session remotely.

That, in my view, exposes the real issue with POPLA.

The process presents itself as an independent and fair assessment, but in practice it appears to operate on a very narrow interpretation of “compliance” rather than a balanced assessment of reasonableness or real-world circumstances.

The decision effectively states that even in the middle of a serious, unforeseen emergency, a motorist is still expected to actively manage a parking contract – otherwise they are liable for a £100 charge.

Mitigating circumstances were acknowledged, but ultimately treated as irrelevant.

This raises a serious question:
What is the purpose of an “appeals” service if genuine, evidenced, unavoidable situations still result in automatic enforcement?

The outcome felt less like an independent review and more like a validation of the operator’s position.

If POPLA’s role is to assess fairness as well as compliance, then this experience suggests that balance is not being achieved.

Popla is supposed to be an impartial body for appealing private car parks fines. How is it funded? By the private car parks themselves. So when you go through the laborious process of appealing a fine.. for 16 minutes in a Starbucks car park. Only to find out it wasn't successful.. what a suprise! Totally in cahoots with the people that pay their wages. What a shameful body!

POPLA are clearly financially motivated by upholding the illegal charges by car park operator. POPLA is funded by the car park operators and therefore not independent. They ignore clear evidence backed by both their policy or by case law. Don't waste you time appealing through them.

Awful company. Obviously subsidised by the parking company you're appealing against. Completely ignored the points I made, even though they did a round up of events. I know it was ignored because when detailing why they refused my appeal, they brought up those points. The fact I was told by the hotel staff my car was safe to park where I had and I proceeded to pay £10 for parking at the hotel. Why the hell would I pay to park if my car was not safe to park there!? They claimed they couldn't obtain evidence from the hotel to support my case, yet took 6 weeks to reach a decision. Claimed signage is clear in the car parks, despite Google maps proving my point.
Absolute joke and scammers just like nexus carparking company they obviously work with. They are not fair or impartial, they are bought and paid for

It would be nice if they actually bothered to read what you write. They completely ignored the strongest point in my appeal, as if it wasn’t even there. I’m not even annoyed about having to pay the fine, what frustrates me is that the parking company is essentially stealing from their customers by issuing fines that can’t realistically be challenged.

The auditor even claimed the company had “apported proof”, yet the evidence wasn’t even from that parking location. It feels like a joke when a supposedly independent body doesn’t even bother to read or check whether the evidence is relevant to the case, and yet the have the cheek to tell you not to use AI and to write stuff in your own words... waste of time.

An absolute joke of a website. I'm not particularly interested in defending my case to a fake website. Take me to court and let a truly impartial judge decide on the outcome.