Ticket received from private parking company - cloned plate

[NiceCupOfTea]

As the subject says, my wife received a parking ticket for her car from a private parking firm (CPM - UK Car Park Management) for last Saturday.

It is her reg and the car looks identical (reg, colour, model year, etc.) - except for it having a "UK" sticker on the back which my wife's car does not.

The weird thing is the ticket was received very locally to where we live, so it's obviously somebody who has seen it on the road and got plates made up.

We have google location data showing she was elsewhere at the time (or at least her phone was), and (hopefully) dashcam footage that shows she was driving before and after the offence, but nothing actually at that time.

What are the chances of successfully appealing this? I mean, I shouldn't be worried as it's innocent until proven guilty, but she has no proof of where the car was or what it was doing actually at the time. For reference the offence isn't more than half an hour from the location of her car and in theory there would be time for her to have driven there, parked without paying, and got back in the timeframe!!

What's the next step? I assume report a cloned plate to the police and get a crime number, and report to the DVLA, but with a lack of concrete evidence what can she say to the parking company?

[NiceCupOfTea]

Just checked and the dashcam footage doesn't go back far enough

[Magic919]

Just tell them it’s a clone and not your vehicle.

[NiceCupOfTea]

Magic919 said:

Just tell them it s a clone and not your vehicle.

Will do, but the coincidence is incredible - she pretty much drove past the location on her way to visit somebody in hospital. No real way of proving her movements apart from ring footage of her leaving home and google location tracking and ring footage of her arriving home again. She bought petrol but it was in the area and not at the exact time so that proves nothing either.

Just infuriated that she could end up on the hook for this when we know it wasn't her. Or am I being paranoid?

[Sheepshanks]

Is it absolutely clear from the picture that the reg is the same? I ask because daughter got one from the Runcorn bridge - she lives fairly close to it and does use it, but not often. At a glance it did look like her reg but looking closely you could see a letter wasn’t as it first appeared.

If it the same you should report it the police. I wouldn’t expect any great difficulty in getting it cancelled but I might be being over-optimistic!

[2 sMoKiN bArReLs]

Sheepshanks said:

Is it absolutely clear from the picture that the reg is the same?

That's what I was going to say. Similar cars often have similar registrations, particularly if they are registered on 1st March or 1st September.

If it was cloned I'd be expecting more problems than just one parking ticket? (Not wanting to make you paranoid!)

[002510]

We received a ticket for somewhere we’d never been (by several hundred miles) for a car that wasn’t remotely similar (different make and style) with a reg plate that was close(ish). I couldn’t be bothered with their procedure as we’d done nothing wrong so located the names of the company directors and flagged their error and complained about data protection etc. an email cancelling the ticket came in hours.

You may wish to do the same rather than spending much time on it was their formal procedure will probably be a faff as it will likely be designed to put people off.