Smart parking fine in Northern Ireland

[ATC110]

The person concerned parked their hire car at a retail park in NI and did not notice any private parking signs or time limits. The first they knew was when the car hire company emailed them with a notice of a traffic violation which is a Smart parking invoice. The hire company procedure is to pass on the details of the hirer so the fine can be reissued to them by Smart so all dealings are then between the hirer and Smart.

The hire company charge the hirer an administration fee for this process and claim to be unable to prevent this being charged without a cancellation notice from Smart.
There are multiple stores in the retail park but none of them own the carpark and are not prepared to contact Smart parking to get the fine cancelled and have apparently had problems themselves with staff getting parking invoices too.

The questions are as follows:

It appears fines issued by Smart are not enforceable in Northern Ireland according to posts on this forum - should the fine be ignored when it arrives?
The hire company has access to the hirers prepaid debit card and will attempt to charge the administration fee so the debit card holder has a balance of zero in their account and has blocked their card - when would it be safe to unblock the account ie for how long will the hire company attempt to debit the admin fee?

Thanks in advance

[Oldandslow]

This is a battle on 2 fronts.

On what grounds do you believe the parking charge to have been incorrectly issued?

Why do you think you shouldn't pay the admin charge to the Rental company?

[caziques]

Many private parking firms issue fake "fines", which are in essence a scam.

Why should anyone be liable to pay for the privilege of having their personal details passed on to such people?

Hire car companies should not be releasing drivers details to anyone except for criminal activity.

[Oldandslow]

caziques said:

Many private parking firms issue fake "fines", which are in essence a scam.

Why should anyone be liable to pay for the privilege of having their personal details passed on to such people?

Hire car companies should not be releasing drivers details to anyone except for criminal activity.

I'm not saying I agree with the principle but parking charges are legally valid where all the conditions are met. You fight them by casting doubt on whether the conditions were met i.e. prominent signage, evidence of over staying, no visit to premises covered by parking area etc. You can ignore them but that won't get it cancelled.

The rental company are doing what most individuals would do too if presented with a valid charge. As keeper of the vehicle you pass it over to the clown who borrowed your car and parked in Tescos car park and went to the cinema for 4 hours. "Here, you deal with this." Presumably they need to charge a reasonable amount for the time of their employees to handle this.

Also no amounts are mentioned to see how unreasonable things are or details of why the charge might not be valid. Didn't notice the signs isn't enough.

Which retail park? If local to me I might be able to scope it out and see what signage there is and what the conditions are. Belfast to North Antrim.

[stupidbutkeen]

Oldandslow said:

caziques said:

Many private parking firms issue fake "fines", which are in essence a scam.

Why should anyone be liable to pay for the privilege of having their personal details passed on to such people?

Hire car companies should not be releasing drivers details to anyone except for criminal activity.

I'm not saying I agree with the principle but parking charges are legally valid where all the conditions are met. You fight them by casting doubt on whether the conditions were met i.e. prominent signage, evidence of over staying, no visit to premises covered by parking area etc. You can ignore them but that won't get it cancelled.

The rental company are doing what most individuals would do too if presented with a valid charge. As keeper of the vehicle you pass it over to the clown who borrowed your car and parked in Tescos car park and went to the cinema for 4 hours. "Here, you deal with this." Presumably they need to charge a reasonable amount for the time of their employees to handle this.

Also no amounts are mentioned to see how unreasonable things are or details of why the charge might not be valid. Didn't notice the signs isn't enough.

Which retail park? If local to me I might be able to scope it out and see what signage there is and what the conditions are. Belfast to North Antrim.

I agree with all of the above tbh, But although I seem to live in the same general area as oldandslow I drive lorries all over the north thus would be happy to be a sluth for during a break to scope out signage to see if it would be valid or not. I cover just about every bit of N.Ireland over a 2 week period.

[anonymous-user]

Regarding the admin fee, I assume you have read your term and conditions of hiring the car?

What does it say about parking fines and admin fees?