In reply to The Lemming:
With the greatest of respect to all the contributers to this thread, and there is some really good advice here, I wonder how many have had first hand experience of this. I have. I will expand on the story a bit as it might help with some of the myth and legend in a few of the less reliable responses...
My son's car was caught on parking camera, at a retail park where he worked in Aberystwyth (while at Uni). He was at work and overstayed the 2 hr limit by 22mins. For this Parking Eye wanted £85.
He ignored the first two letters, in line with most of the advice on the net at that time. This advice all missed the change in the law in Nov 12 after which time it became unecessary for the driver of the car to be identified. Action could now be taken against the registered keeper.
Almost 6 months later the Court Claim papers turned up. Luckily he showed them to me and from years of dealing with these Bl**dy things at work I knew the Claim was real, issued by the Court, validated by the Court stamp and the clock was now ticking!
You only have a short period to admit (now £185+costs) or to acknowledge service and defend. PE count on a proportion being dumb enough to do nothing; PE will almost certainly get judgement in their favour in the absence of a defence. Otherwise they hope people pay all or the large part of their claim to make it go away. If I am being cynical I suspect the Aber ones were chosen to persue as they may well be students (big %age student pop) who could have moved on, and would not defend.
I sent the AOS and then spent the next 5 months writing letters, preping defence and relying heavily on the advice from Pepipoo.
All the stuff on here about whether the charge is a penalty (its an argument, but there are cases both ways)....whether there is a contractual right to levy the charge (as PE arent the landowner, but they will try to prove that they have the owners consent)...are PE afraid of loosing (yes, but a few good wins are worth loads to them)...and do the retailers want the hassles etc etc is good stuff. BUT all miss the point that by the time you have the Court Claim in your hand you have to spend time looking into and discovering all this. The judge will not protect you and although PE have been largely unsuccessul they have won a few and the ones they lost were generally well defended (at the cost of loads of time, and hopefully not too much dosh if you can find a helpful sole to do it FOC for you).
My sons case was sorted in the end largely by me grinding his employer down (who did help in the end) and just bashing PE with everything and anything we could think of.
If you fancy the challenge and feel lucky (punk!), do nothing and wait to see what happens. All the best!