St Neots Station Parking

[TrainMan1956]

There are two car park operators at St Neots station. At the entrance to the car park there is a sign offering a PayByPhone option operated by Euro Car Parks.
We paid the fee, but unwittingly aprked in a space operated by APCOA, and duly received a £100 fine.
It is not immediately apparent which operator operates which parking spaces and, having paid the fee, why would we even think of looking for further options?

Appeals to APCOA and POLPLA have been rejected.
It seems we are not the only ones to have fallen fould of this scam.

I've registered a complaint with station operator Great Northern.
We're awaiting a response.

 

[jfollows]

It's not a fine, it's an invoice for payment under the contract you entered into when parking. Railway byelaws will apply, which mean that if you string out non-payment beyond six months the issue will time out.
If you want to take it further, I suggest you use a more specialist resource such as https://www.ftla.uk/ (the successor to Pepipoo) under the "Private parking tickets" heading.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Pepipoo is still there. It seems it had a long outage which caused the competitor to be founded.

 

[Kite159]

The parasites known as private parking companies strike again. Don't pay APCOA as like @jfollows says, they call it a Penalty Notice which times out after 6 months (as it's issued under railway bylaws).

And they wouldn't take you to the magistrates court as any revenue from penalty notices under bylaws are payable to the crown, so they would get barely anything.

 

[30907]

We have certainly had this issue before, and it is confusing. Arguably the signage on the main car park is inadequate.

The sign you refer to is AIUI at the entrance to the Euro Car Parks car park (and on their property) so I don't think they are at fault.

 

[Howardh]

It's something that needs taking up by one of the consumer papers eg. Money mail, and also your local councillors/MP - it sounds like there are two areas in one car park run by two companies, and the signage unclear (??), that simply won't do.

 

[30907]

It's something that needs taking up by one of the consumer papers eg. Money mail, and also your local councillors/MP - it sounds like there are two areas in one car park run by two companies, and the signage unclear (??), that simply won't do.

The problem is that one of the two (Euro) is on non-railway land but accessed off the station approach road, which now has "railway" parking along both sides.