Great Western Coffee Shop

Decision:  Unsuccessful

Assessor Name: Bethany Young

Assessor summary of operator case: The parking operator has issued the penalty notice (PN) for use of private car park without making a valid payment.

Assessor summary of your case: The appellant has raised the following points from their grounds of appeal: • They registered by telephone and paid on the day. • They believed the payment had been completed as it was their first time using this system. • They had opted to not receive confirmation texts so were not aware the payment was unsuccessful. • They do not believe they should have to pay the penalty. After reviewing the operator’s evidence, the appellant reiterates their grounds of appeal and states their history shows they pay for parking. In support of their appeal, the appellant has submitted their original appeal to the parking operator. This evidence has been considered in making my determination.

Assessor supporting rational for decision: When assessing an appeal POPLA considers if the parking operator has issued the penalty correctly and if the driver has complied with the rules of the car park. This penalty has been issued for a breach of the Railway Byelaws. The Byelaws make the owner of a vehicle responsible for the charge, who the operator can assume is the registered keeper. The parking operator has provided evidence of the signs on the car park, which advise that a £85 PN will be issued to drivers who fail to purchase a valid parking session via RingGo, rail ticket vending machine or ticket office. The parking operator has provided evidence of a system search for the registration XXddXXX, to show that there was no payment made for the vehicle in question to park. I appreciate the appellant attempted to pay for their parking in good faith. I also acknowledge that they always pay for their parking. I cannot take into consideration any previous parking experiences as this does not dispute the validity of the PN issued. Whilst I completely understand the driver had no intention of failing to comply with the signs, the parking operator has obtained the RingGo call transcripts for the day in question. This confirms that the appellant failed to enter the additional details required to progress to process the payment. There is no evidence to confirm that a valid payment was made on the day. Therefore, I am not satisfied the appellant complied with the terms and conditions or that their parking was authorised. POPLA’s remit is to determine whether the PN has been issued correctly. Upon consideration of the evidence, the motorist used a private car park without making a valid payment and did not comply with the rules and regulations. I conclude this PN has been issued correctly and refuse this appeal.

* Perhaps a letter to someone at APCOA or SWR to invite them to comment.

We endeavour to respond to all customer complaints in 14 working days.  However, if we are unable to resolve a complaint within 28 days (due to the nature of your complaint), we will write to you to advise you of our progress.

Any sign online of your account being semi-complete, for example? Anything that might point to your attempt to pay?

In my experience it is very unusual these days for a mobile call to drop mid conversation when the user is not moving about.  Almost makes you wonder if “the system” hung up. 

... A number had the same problem. ...

I have learned over the weekend that I am far from the only one - sounds like APCOA or the agents they use may have a systemic problem, but be putting the onus on their customers rather than admitting to the issues.   Is it just me, or does that remind others too of another organisation that's in the news at the moment; the problems of APCOA users, mind you, are many orders of magnitude less.

On 1st November, I parked in the APCOA car park at Woking Station as Storm Ciaran developed, and for the first time found myself faced with electronic register and pay as the only way to pay - not even a machine with a contactless card panel.

I phoned in to the automated system and entered my details - registration, time I wanted to park for (system confirmed price back), credit card long number, expiry date and security code. I declined to pay extra for text reminders and receipts, and headed off to London for the 50th celebration event of the Campaign for Better Transport.

Imagine my shock at getting a letter a week later with a picture of me entering and leaving the car park (yes, that was me) and telling me I had not paid, and was required to pay a penalty charge.  Hindsight and subsequent evidence suggests that my phone connection cut out before I answered final questions covering the make and colour of the vehicle, and although the fee had been agree by me and details give, APCOA had not taken the money and considered me to be in breech.

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On the grounds that I had every reason to believe I has paid, I questioned the fee with APCOA who pointed out that I had been parked there, that they had not received my money, and they upheld the penalty charge.  Most unsatisfactory; I had made every effort to pay and as a first time user of their system had no way of knowing that I had not done so.

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The Car Parking industry has a trade body - POPLA - who will take appeals from motorists who feel that one of their members (APCOA in this case) has got it wrong, and as I believe that the APCOA system is out of order, I appealed - result back in the last few days.   Here is the judgement:

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A tale of caution. I have "sat on" this decision for a couple of days, wondering whether to follow up.  I feel very hard done by in that I am a reasoanble person and what I consider to be a shortcoming of the system - a hole into which I fell - has been denied.  You will note that the assessor fully accepts that I had every intention of following the signs (which I did) to pay - and indeed I believed that I had.

Actually "hard done by" doesn't cut it - more "furious".

What now?
* A learning experience - and indeed I suppose that is a silver lining.
* A story I can (and will, loudly and for a long time) share.
* Perhaps a letter someone at APCOA or SWR to invite them to comment.


Edit to add - short URL to this thread - http://www.passenger.chat/apcoa - to allow easy sharing

As a councillor and general person of influence, I would not blame Graham for not wanting to risk a court appearance.

Sounds like a job for BBC's Watchdog team   :o

Pay only the parking fee due. Don't pay any penalty. Railway land covered by byelaws so they'd have to take you to magistrates court. Highly unlikely.

Maybe worth seeking some Legal advice Graham.

Our complaints policy is an opportunity for customers to tell us when we might have fallen short of expectation, and how we can put things right.

Dear Graham,

Thank you for your email dated 27th January 2024 which has been passed to me to investigate and respond.

After a full investigation, I can confirm APCOA enforce Woking Station Oriental Road on behalf of South Western Railways. Unfortunately, APCOA are not the payment provider for this location. Payment for this location is to be made via RingGo. Unfortunately, your complaint regarding the system will need to be made to RingGo directly as it is their system your complaint relates to. Unfortunately, RingGo is not operated by APCOA, it is a separate payment provider.

As no payment was made for parking on this date, the vehicle was parked in breach of the Terms and Conditions of parking. As a result of this, the notice was issued correctly. After checking the system, I can confirm the notice was appealed and your appeal was rejected with the option to pay the notice at the discounted rate of £50 or further to appeal to POPLA. After checking the system, I can see the appeal to POPLA was rejected and the notice is now outstanding at the full amount of £85. As the notice was correctly issued and your appeal to POPLA has been rejected the £85 is outstanding.

Kind regards,
Emma Millar
Complaints Handler
APCOA Parking UK

You can pay for parking at our stations by downloading the RingGo app. Once it’s set-up on your smartphone, you’ll get lots of great features such as text messages to tell you when your parking is running out and extending your stay virtually without having to return to your car. You can also book for parking online or calling RingGo on 01256 80 28 04.

Daily parking tickets are also available from self-service ticket machines in stations.

If you are in charge of any motor vehicle, bicycle or other conveyance you must not park where charges are made for parking without paying the appropriate charge at the appropriate time in accordance with instructions given by South Western Railway.
Any motor vehicle, bicycle or other conveyance used, left or parked in breach of this condition may
incur liability of payment of a penalty and may be clamped or removed. The owner of the vehicle,
bicycle or other conveyance shall be liable to South Western Railway for the cost incurred by South
Western Railway in clamping, removing, storing or disposing of it.

If you use instant access (access without account registration) you have accepted our Terms of Service by using instant access. You will have been made aware that you can access and read these Terms of Service at the following URL https://www.myringgo.co.uk/onlineterms and our office address (Ground Floor East, Maplewood, Chineham Business Park, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG24 8YB) and that you can request a copy of these terms is sent to you.

You acknowledge that the use and availability of our parking payment systems is highly dependent on the operation of ‐ for example ‐ your mobile device, the internet, your GPS receiver and other resources you can use to access our services. If you are unable to access and use our parking payment systems, for any reason, you, and not we, are required to use alternative payment methods to pay for parking or there may be a risk that you could be liable for additional parking fees and parking tickets.

You can access our parking payment systems and related services via one of the tools made available to you, including smartphone, personal web page, text messaging, interactive voice recognition (IVR) by telephone and mobile/in‐car applications. A description of our tools, including instructions how to use them, can be reviewed here https://www.myringgo.com/howitworks.

Certain ways to access our parking payment systems do not require pre‐registration of an account, but allow instant access. Where you use instant access, we will create an instant account based on the telephone number or payment information used for the relevant access to our parking payment systems. Instant access is provided at our discretion and may be refused.

You are responsible for providing all of the necessary and correct details for your parking action, such as vehicle number plate and the correct location code. Your parking action will be automatically processed on our parking payment systems on the basis of these details. The details you provide about your parking action are key for us to correctly process your parking fees. You alone are responsible for providing us with the correct details for your parking action and you will be responsible for paying any penalty charge or parking fee issued as a result of incorrect parking action details.

Please take note of the following: We are not responsible for verifying whether your parking action details are correct. We emphasize that you must read the instructions before you start using our parking payment systems, as incorrect use might lead to penalty charges, incorrect payments or other consequences.

You may choose to receive confirmation messages that your parking action is still active or to confirm that your parking session has commenced. In addition you can elect to receive a reminder advising you when your parking session is due to end. We emphasize that your parking action still remains your responsibility. You acknowledge that receipt of the reminder depends on the availability of your network and can be interrupted/delayed. Any additional costs relating to these reminders will be charged simultaneously with all other charges. Costs for these services are detailed https://www.myringgo.co.uk/parkinglocator.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-laws-set-to-ban-mandatory-hidden-fees-from-online-shopping-saving-money-for-consumers

So, it appears that you have to pay extra ( 10p at the moment ) to ensure that you have successfully paid for parking... or is there a final stage in the voice payment process that tells you? Obviously Grahame didn't get that far, so does anyone else on the forum know how a successful RingGo telephone payment ends?...

All I will say is this: if someone as tech-savvy as grahame can be caught out, what hope for the rest of us?

I'll give them top marks for speed in answering


As I understand it, that's rather like me complaining to GWR about a cancellation and asking for Delay Repay, and being told to contact Hitachi because they failed to provide a train to run the service.   

[pedant mode]
Aaaaarrggggghhh!
There is no such time as 12pm!
They use Midnight correctly, but 12pm means '12 hours after midday', which, in my world means 'Midnight'
[/pedant mode]

I'd disagree - surely 12am is midnight? And therefore 12pm is midday.

There's a simple solution: use "12 noon" and "12 midnight", as PhilWakely and Royal Museums Greenwich recommend.

At work we used the 24-hour clock for our expense claim forms, with a day running from 00:00 to 24:00.

Or should that be 00:00 to 23:59?

Good point.  We had to use 24:00 to make clear that the claim covered the full 24 hours - this ensured that we didn't get short-changed.

Noon used to be 12:00 am in the last century, now it's 12:00 pm.

Thank you for your response. As previously advised RingGo is a separate payment provider chosen by South Western Railways to take payments on their behalf. APCOA Parking UK do not take payments on behalf of SWR. APCOA Parking UK are a private company who are in no way associated with RingGo. For clarity, APCOA Parking UK manage and enforce this location but do not take payments.

Your complaint is regarding the payment system provided by RingGo, due to this, your complaint regarding the system would need to be made to RingGo directly. APCOA are unable to assist with the complaint regarding RingGo payment systems.

After checking the system, I can confirm the notice has been paid and is now settled on our system and no further action is required from yourself regarding this notice now.

Graham, this is the kind of subject the 'Blackbelt Barrister' on YouTube likes to cover. I would drop him a line outlining your case.