Whatever ....
So they get denied access, fold the company, start up a new one with the same address, staff etc. then get access again.
Another waste of time.
Rogue private parking firms are to be stripped of the ability to access the UK government's driver database. Private parking firms can buy vehicle-keeper records from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) for £2.50 a pop, which they use to slap tickets on car owners for parking violations on private land. The number …
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So they get denied access, fold the company, start up a new one with the same address, staff etc. then get access again.
Another waste of time.
Yeah, they should have linked the ban to the company directors (and connected persons), not the company. But I guess this meets the usual Government criteria of generating favourable press coverage without actually changing anything. I wonder what bad news it was used to cover up.
It won't work, just like all efforts by so-called watchdogs to regulate dodgy companies, cold callers etc.
In particular, the British Parking Association is a complete waste of space. It doesn't even bother to wag a finger at Marks and Spencer about their use of an 0845 car park helpline that's been banned for years, and that they're also breaching Ofcom regulations by failing to warn of the rip-off charges.
So, that would be most of them then.
Had a classic one a few years ago.
A town centre.
In the morning I parked in car park of shop A, did some general grocery shopping at shop A.
In the afternoon, had to make an "emergency purchase" (i.e. unplanned) of some hardware and parked at shop B and did hardware shoping at shop B
... later
Attempt to charge me for overstaying parking time at car park A.
Turned out same parking company patrolled car park A and B.
However, car park warning / restrictions signage in each car park made no mention of car park company, separately badged with name and logo of the shops themselves i.e. distinct car parking and not related.
This was not in a big retail park, it was in a town, each shop (and car park) was separate
When attendant was recording car reg plates they were not specifying which of the 2 car parks the car was located in.
So 2 distinct visits to different car parks were falsely recorded by them as car being in same car park at 2 different times
For all the fuss people make about parking, I have literally never had a problem.
Mainly because, if they have stupid rules or payment systems, I just don't park there. I'll literally park miles away and walk instead, or just not bother.
I'm sure that this attitude achieves only one of two things a) the landowner gets what they intended and I don't park there, b) the landowner loses out on potential revenue because they're overbearing and I don't park there.
Neither of which I really want to change.
For instance, in any of the towns I go to, I have a nominated car park that I always park in because they are the one that don't have stupid junk. Ticket-in, ticket-out ones are normally the best, because then I have a timed, dated, stamped, paid receipt (and now that the TITO ones also auto-recognise your number plate you get to keep the receipt more often than not). Pay-and-display are open to interpretation, abuse, etc. but with a TITO one you can't argue about when I arrived, when I left, and you can't go around sniffing every car to see if you can pull it for being a second over because the ticket isn't even on the car anyway. There's almost no point patrolling a TITO car park, except to find abandoned cars (which will flag immediately on your database anyway after 24 hours, so you know exactly what you're looking for).
Plus, I have a dashcam for this purpose too. I even like to park near the signs if I'm forced to use a pay-and-display so that I can get those on camera too.
To be honest, though I don't doubt there are unscrupulous people, those are easily combated by the vaguest use of a personal record of any kind. Everything else, like speeding fines, is an idiot tax on people who park where they know they aren't supposed to. I still chuckle every time I see someone arguing with a traffic warden despite clearly being in the bus lane / on the double-yellows / etc.
@Lee D
the thing is, if every behaved like you do the parking companies will come up with ever greater ways to entrap you. i say parking companies, but its more likely the enforcement businesses they employ encouraging the parking companies to be wankers in order to ensure they can make some profit of enforcing the parking rules they have dreamt up and had the parking owners agree to.
If the company exists purely to earn out of fines, then they will find ways of fining more and more people every year in order to keep their revenue up.
The other example here is smart meters & green policies. Utilities need to keep their profits up. If smart meters and green initiatives are to be successful, then utilities need to charge us all more to maintain their profits. Even if they are not being greedy, they have fixed costs that won't go down if we use less so our cost of electric rises per unit to maintain revenue to pay for stuff like maintenance etc.
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"It's 5.30 pm. I want to park for 1 hour. No change given.
Before 6pm it's a £1 per hour.
From 6pm it's £2 for 12 hours.
So, do I put in £1 or £3? (Already feeling ripped off)"
It's 5:30pm and you don't know whether to pay the before 6pm rate or the after 6pm rate for 1 hour's parking?
Am I missing something here?
In France if you park at 17:00, pay for four hours, then as its free at 18:00 until 08:00, you have until 11:00 to finish your petite-dejuner in a civilised fashion. In some cities you get a small amount of time free, say 30 minutes, enough time to grab lunch. Passing on unused tickets doesn't seem to be an issue, surprised someone in the UK has not take somebody to court re parking tickets not being transferable.
"In France if you park at 17:00, pay for four hours, then as its free at 18:00 until 08:00, you have until 11:00 to finish your petite-dejuner in a civilised fashion."
Also in exotic Bradford-upon-Avon where I once put in money late on a Saturday and a ticket came out for some time on Monday morning.
Who would want to live in your country? You'll be charged for walking on the pavement next. And if you don't have a helmet on you'll be taken to court. The English speaking countries ought to take a step back and look at themselves. What are you doing, what life situation are you making for yourselves?
at least we aren't fined for crossing a road, and unlike in some states, it's not illegal to capture rainwater that falls on your land (yep, some states have determined that private companies own rain)
how's it going trying to buy alcohol 24/7? how many civilians have your cops murdered today?
Had something similar.
Needed to pick up something from John Lewis at the new out of town shopping centre in York so went at 9:00am one Saturday morning. Picked up what I needed and left within 10 minutes, stopping off at a couple of different places on the way home.
Later same day, visited same out of town shopping centre and visited a couple of shops and then had some dinner with my wife. Was there less than an hour in total during the day. Parked in a completely different spot to the morning.
Came back to the car to find a PCN stuck on my windscreen for £75 because they thought I'd been there for more than 6 hours. Went over to the management hut to find knuckle dragging security guard. Showed him the ticket. He went 'Yeah, I put that on. You've been here since 9:00am - you even parked in the same parking space'. After asking him whether said restaurant and John Lewis were at the same side of the park 'No - they're at opposite ends' - I explained that he'd cocked up, I parked in 2 spots, was there less than 1 hour in total, and that I had plenty of evidence to back me up (I use Waze, so my google maps tracking showed movements all day, along with a dashcam with GPS tracking) but he said 'It's been done now'. I didn't get shirty as I knew this guy was a bit dim, so I asked for the site manager's details but he wouldn't tell me. I think he knew he was in the shit.
A bit of googling got me the complaints department for the parking company, the site manager, the john lewis manager for that site and the manager of the restaurant we'd been in. I sent a very matter of fact email to all of them with a PDF showing tracks of where I'd been and pretty much cast iron evidence to show where I'd come in/gone out and screenshots from cameras etc - obviously CC'ing them all in.
On the Monday afternoon I got a very apologetic email from the embarrassed site manager telling me that the security guard for the parking company had been doing this 'quite a bit' and had lots of complaints, and that they are putting in ANPR to combat the issue, and then CC'd me in on an email to the parking company explaining how they'd cocked up and requesting my parking charge be reversed (they confirmed that was the case and cancelled the PCN). I also got a phone call from the John Lewis manager and the restaurant manager apologising. I'm not sure if the same parking company still runs it (I don't think they do) and there's massive signs up now when you drive in that shows you your reg number and how long you have parking for.
Still makes me think twice about going shopping there though as I plainly don't trust they're not going to try it on again.
Have a rummage around on the Pepipoo forums for ANPR related threads. As well as plenty of systemic failures, you may also find things from parking companie's boneheaded belief their systems are infallible all the way to doctored photos and evidential pictures of signs (but taken in different car parks). You really couldn't make some of it up.
Do you seriously have to pay any fine a private parking company gives you? I mean, as long as you can leave the car park without paying is it actually enforceable? I can see how a car park owned by a municipal authority may be able to do so through by-laws as they possess law making authority, but a private company on private land?
If it is enforceable then the UK must be one of the most utterly fucked societies on the planet.
If it's a private company it's not a fine, it's a debt.
But it's enforceable as this lady found out when she was hit with £24,500 for having parked outside her mother's garage (where no-one else could pay to park because it would have blocked access to said garage). So the parking company suffered no loss of income, and no-one else was inconvenienced. There was no victim.
She may have been more than a tad unwise not to challenge the notices, but the outrageous charge seems contrary to natural justice.
Welcome to rip-off Britain.
From the images in that article the double yellow lines are a bit of a giveaway that you cannot park there and her general arrogance (ignore rather than refute the penalties) was likely to have coloured the outcome as mentioned. I think her case was wafer thin at best, especially when she could have parked issue free for £40/mth.
"So 2 distinct visits to different car parks were falsely recorded by them as car being in same car park at 2 different times"
I suspect that's more down to incompetence / stupidity than anything else. They simply hadn't considered the possibility of someone using one shop/car park, going away, then coming back and using the other shop/car park.
(Icon for them, not you.)
I suspect that's more down to incompetence / stupidity than anything else. They simply hadn't considered the possibility of someone using one shop/car park, going away, then coming back and using the other shop/car park.
And even if they had considered that.... what about if you visit the same shop/carpark more than once a day? Perfectly possible if you forget something important!
60 uk pounds fine for hovering in a UK car park for 11 mins with abundant spaces while my partner picked up something from the post office and met a queue. Parking was free for two hours (big words). But only with ticket (small words). Other small type on cameras suggested anti theft protection - why else have cameras? Ok now I know. The law of contract runs much more of a corporate hegemony than is realised.
As people have already noted, this will have little effect on curbing intent to disproportionate penalty as a revenue stream. Whereas a market can establish a sense of fair pricing, a penalty scheme offers no service excepting in support of providing a parking service.
As always buyer beware - and beware entering legally binding contracts regardless of what may appear to be public space - because there are signs saying so.
>60 uk pounds fine for hovering in a UK car park for 11 mins with abundant spaces
Pfft! Just don't pay it.
You only need to pay up if you get a ticket from the police, traffic warden or local council parking official for parking on public land [ie streets, bus lanes, etc] when you shouldn't have. You've committed a [civil] offence.
Parking on private land [as is the case with all these supermarket, retail park carparks, etc] the worst you *may* have done [and even then it depends on specifics like signage, etc] is commit a breach of contract, which is a private affair between you and the owner of the land the carpark is on. If they want you to pay up, they'll have to bring a private court case against you and no-one is going to be daft enough do that for the sake of £50 or £60.
So, damn their eyes to Putney Bridge and laugh in their stupid faces. There's bugger all they can do,
Finally, someone with some knowledge on this issue. A private company cannot, under the constitution, issue a "Fine"; only a court of law can, after being found guilty of an offence. DO NOT pay the "fine". See what happens. Nothing will happen. If everyone does this, they'll have no choice but to go away.
If I were the parking company, I would simply keep my evidence of your parking and my claim of 'breach of contract', and then sell it to a debt collecting agency at half-price. The debt-collecting agency has the experience and admin systems to generate court cases swiftly and efficiently, and will add a charge to the claim to reimburse themselves.
So you will be looking at a court case plus costs....
"Stay at home, keep the car on the drive, fire up Amazon.
Save fuel, save a parking fine, get it cheaper."
Except the time it takes trying to track down WHERE they delivered your parcel to, then arrange collection...
Had that happen end of last year - parcels were being delivered to different addresses - seemingly at random. At a guess: They were rushing to make deliveries and didn't care who they delivered to.
> Except the time it takes trying to track down WHERE they delivered your parcel to, then arrange collection...
That's Amazon's problem, not mine. I just complain I didn't get my package, and they have to sort out their delivery subcontractor. I notice when UPS got shitty on this side of the pond that Amazon switched to FedEx for a while. This was when UPS started insisting on signatures for the hell of it and leaving "person not there" stickers if you took more than 30 seconds to get to the door.
When FedEx started getting lazy, they switched back to UPS who's been pretty good ever since.
Heck, UPS has even started delivering on Saturdays.
Those that don't will be blocked from accessing driver data and issuing fines, the government said, "effectively forcing them out of the industry" .. as if DVLA will kill off a cash cow or control dodgy companies that will close on a Friday and reopen on Monday under a different name, but same owners and staff. Companies should be forced to put up a big bond and if they break the rules, lose it and then get banned.