Not paying parking fine

Yes still none of you 'experts' have come up with any data about how likely this company or these private companies in general are to take things to court.

And how would they have sufficient evidence against the OP if the car was with the garage at the time?

This seems to be your area of speciality, do you have any stats about how many private tickets are issued v how many are taken to court? Maybe also the equivalent PCN data? That would be very helpful to see.

Yes still none of you 'experts' have come up with any data about how likely this company or these private companies in general are to take things to court.

However, you should use caution when ignoring a ticket – if the firm decides to call your bluff and take you to court, you could end up paying a lot more.

Yes still none of you 'experts' have come up with any data about how likely this company or these private companies in general are to take things to court.

Where exactly do you propose we obtain our data from, genius?

Now I really am confused - am I a genius or someone who doesn't know what they are talking about and should stay in careers help?

A simple trawl through the internet and any experience of the real world will indicate that, while there is some risk (and you can change your mind at any time), many people successfully ignore these supposed 'fines'. The business model of these companies is that they have no legal basis on which to fine you, but they very carefully design and word their notices to suggest that they do. By doing this, they recoup payments at a level sufficient to sustain business. However, the only way they can compel payment is to take the matter to the small claims court. Other aggravating factors aside in a case, like repeated ignoring of tickets, it is simply not worth a company pursuing random cases like the OPs. Indeed, unless they are a registered company with access to DVLA files, and the OP hasn't given us those details, they can't pursue, because they can't find the address of the owner of the car.

Just search around on the net, it's very clear that these companies are highly unlikely to follow up to the extent of a court case. But in any case, as I said, the OP should take this up first with the garage.

Yes still none of you 'experts' have come up with any data about how likely this company or these private companies in general are to take things to court.

The business model of these companies is that they have no legal basis on which to fine you

Woah this got quite heated up. I'm not trying to cause any arguments or anything here. But anyways

I've decided to wait until Monday for the garage to be open. When they open I will let them know and show the letter. If the garage give me the money there, I'll just pay it. However this is unlikely and I'll write back saying this was not me who parked it there.

Thank you everyone for the help. It is appreciated. Owning a car has been so difficult, I've only had it 2 weeks

Indeed they cannot fine you. They can however sue for breach of contract, and they win.. alot.

Have you ever been to county court? Last time I was there over 50% of the cases that day were XXX Parking LTD Vs...

A lot of those cases will be for more than one ticket.

People also often succeed even in court at challenging them.

If you feel you have no case, there is no need to go to court and no harm in just settling when you get the blue CCJ papers. There are no black marks against your credit file for ignoring them up to that point, contrary to the lurid claims they make in their threatening letters. These companies frequently misrepresent their legal powers and act in an intimidatory manner.

I agree with everything you said. My point was that they can and do sue people so ignoring, as some have suggested, is terrible advice

You naturally should not ignore CCJ papers. But anything short of that in the case of a single ticket, a great many people simply ignore them and never get to the CCJ stage, because the company's profit model doesn't stretch to taking court proceedings against such low value claims.

My wife was sued for a single ticket, so that has not been my experience.

What was the claim on it?

I've had discussions in recent years with friends who have had these and they did nothing and have never had anything other than just the same routine threat letter arriving once a month.

The usual £100 plus made-up costs.

OK. Did she get actual CCJ papers? Another trick they use is sending out false sets of pseudo-legal looking papers.