MSE news: The £95 parking ticket for taking too long to spend

Coblcris

I am sorry to say that you fell for it and paid needlessly. Hopefully you will never make this mistake again..

mzungu1960

wont be shopping at homebase they will suffer

Coblcris

It is G24 that needs to suffer but Homebase is a good start.

patman99

A handy tip if you ever have to use the A+E at Colchester General Hospital, speak to the receptionist, and they will give you a free 'get out of the car park' ticket. Works every time.

Being near a main rail station, they used to see over half their parking spaces used by commuters, thus forcing the people who really needed to park there to go park in the side streets.

You can understand why such parking measures then get introduced, but why not use entry/exit barriers which require cards issued to be validated in-store to exit without paying?, that way, customers would not have to end-up with fines for 'overstaying' their welcome. This system works in Colchester's 'Liesureworld' complex really well.

venace

Lopo wrote: »

So annoying......society needs to change its behaviour to one another. Boycott the retail parks that deploy such schemes... people must fight back.

Hear Hear!

What I want to know is how they come up with these figures for 'fines'? Is there a maximum they could request or is it just whatever is 'reasonable'?

peter_the_piper

They only invoice for what they can get away with, there is no maximum amount. The stupid thing is if they charged about £5-£10.00 no-one would object and would pay up. Though I expect greed would take over and they would make up spurious reasons for charging.

equinox_2

This struck a chord with me - I am struggling with a disability which means it take me much longer to shop. Three times now I have recieved parking "fines" whilst shopping at Aldi for exceeding 90 minutes, having done a substantial shop. These were from Europark who manage their car park. I have had to spend time writing letters and sending copies of receipts from Aldi to get them to back off. However, it is most intimidating and time consuming and reflects the ridiculous greedy, and anti-consumer friendly culture that sadly now prevails in our country.

My advice - boycott these and any stores which cause shopping to become complex and penalised. Through solving one problem (presumably that of illegal / overnight or daytime commercial or office parking) they should not be landing their genuine customers with another.....

trisontana

equinox wrote: »

This struck a chord with me - I am struggling with a disability which means it take me much longer to shop. Three times now I have recieved parking "fines" whilst shopping at Aldi for exceeding 90 minutes, having done a substantial shop. These were from Europark who manage their car park. I have had to spend time writing letters and sending copies of receipts from Aldi to get them to back off. However, it is most intimidating and time consuming and reflects the ridiculous greedy, and anti-consumer friendly culture that sadly now prevails in our country.

My advice - boycott these and any stores which cause shopping to become complex and penalised. Through solving one problem (presumably that of illegal / overnight or daytime commercial or office parking) they should not be landing their genuine customers with another.....

Why go to all the bother of contacting the shop with receipts etc.? Just ignore their unenforceable demands and they will stop bothering you.

As I have said before, if they want to stop unauthorised parking then all they have to do is to install barriers which let you out of the car-park with either a token or some other proof that you have been in the shop.

roar77uk

roddydogs wrote: »

He spent 2 Hrs 22Mins to buy a table and chairs

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yeh pull the other one!

The article did say he was with his wife/partner! - they probably had a right time of it choosing what to get, plus there were other smaller DIY items, to make the outing more tedious. They probably went round in circles and saw every piece of furnature in the shop. So I sympathise with them and congratulate him and his partner on enduring 2hrs 22 mins in Homebase. It's usually a good place to go watch couples break up, so I also wish them the best of luck together in their new home :j

If the stores have a legitimate reason to protect parking why not have a barrier and ticket system at these places, whereby the ticket is swiped when you get to the till and you can just drive off?

It's a shame to set bully-boy outfits on your customers just because you can't be bothered to run your own car park, but we'll get the message eventually. Our money is more important to the carpark cowboys than it is to Homebase.

Rajeev

I suggest we start a forum / database and let MSE's post details of shops which don't co-operate with "parking charge" cancellations. Then we can weekly create a list of top 10 offenders per week and then we can jointly take following actions against those particular store branch (no need to bycott the whole chain as pressure on that particular branch manager should be enough :
1) Name & Shame the store branch weekly.
2) All MSE's should bycott that particular store for 1 month and ask family friends to do so as well
3) Host a MSE protest/party at the store by MSE's occupying all parking spaces at a particular time and spending less that £1 and staying for full 60 / 90 mins.

regards,
Rajeev