Excel Parking: Driver turns down reduced penalty charge offer vowing to fight 'unreasonable' practices

Katharine Smith said Excel Parking reduced its demand from £100 to £20 after her story appeared in The Star.

She took 17 minutes to pay at Broomhill Rooftop car park where Excel imposes a limit of 10 minutes. Its densely-written signs take about three minutes to read fully.

Ms Smith said she spent all 17 minutes battling with a “very frustrating process of navigating a QR code scan, a failed download of the Excel parking app and repeated attempts to log car details into a website which kept resetting to a blank car details section.”

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She said: “Excel Parking has now offered to reduce my parking charge from £100 to £20. Involving publicity has clearly been instrumental in this.

“I continue to feel that the PCN was unreasonable and have declined their offer of a reduced charge. It isn’t about the money.”

An Excel Parking spokesperson said: “We consider that our offer of a reduced settlement, made in good faith, was reasonable given that Ms Smith did not reveal the issues she claims she encountered (with the pay by phone App) when she initially appealed to us.

As this offer has been rejected, we now await the decision of the Independent Adjudication Service.

“The terms and conditions clearly stated that the parking tariff must be purchased within 10 minutes of entry. Had Ms Smith simply called our helpline number on the day it could have avoided a parking charge being issued,” the firm said.

The Independent Adjudication Service is run by trade body the International Parking Community. It is funded by parking firms including Excel.

The IPC did not respond to questions from The Star.

The car park in question is above a parade of shops in Broomhall where Morrisons operates a supermarket.

The chain previously urged customers who had a problem to approach them.

A spokesperson said: “Parking facilities for our Broomhill store are owned and operated by the Broomhill Shops Rooftop Car Park. If a customer believes they may have an issue with their ticket, we would advise them to speak with our customer service team when parking."

Car park owners Staghold Ltd - run by John Lawson, Leslie Frankel and Andrew Michaels - did not respond to The Star.

Excel Parking doubled profits last year.