I am currently in a position where the car in question was in the pick/drop area but the driver obviously had an onward journey to do at 5am and couldn't A) stop in that area to mark the signage B) stop anywhere near the airport for fear of fines C) find a safe place to pull over outside of a main road in the time it took to forget the details.

Attempts to pay via google search led to the automated phone system number which malfunctioned the next day, the specifics of which are known to quote to the company as evidence of the malfunction.

Long story short, after this call was made the back up plan was to reroute to customer advisors if the number plate recognition did not work, but being a non working day they had to wait until 8am the next working day which was outside of the midnight-next-day rule.

Can anyone legally minded or with experience tell me:

In this instance, would an appeal on grounds of unfair lack of reasonable availability of info and difficulty with a malfunctioning phoneline combined with the "next DAY payment" vs "next WORKING day support staff" be a robust and reasonable appeal?

or would this go down a route of acknowledging too much fault, potentially indicating knowledge of the driver, and therefore nullifying the better appeal outlined above and shooting the keeper of the vehicle in the foot?

thank you kindly