Car parking charges

juliescot

SallyForth wrote: »

I loathe pay and display machines, and will do anything to avoid carparks which use them - even going to another town if that's an option. Why? Because I often don't have the right change either, and I hate paying more for parking than I actually use.

The best carparks make you take a ticket, which you take with you shopping, you pay when you return (often with the facilty to use a debit/credit card) and then put the paid ticket in the exit barrier kiosk - brilliant!

However the example you describe tend to charge for parking in blocks of time rather than actual parking time, as far as I am aware.

If I park in my nearest shopping centre car park and park for 2 hours and 15 minutes I will get charged for up to 3 hours. So that's me wasted 45 minutes then;)

pendulum

I stopped using in-town shops for shopping due to the bs parking charges. Sorry to say I now drive to Tesco and do all my shopping there where parking is free...

I feel sorry for the local shops because they are hit hard by the stupid greedy councils and their high / unfair parking charges.

mrcol1000

Laz123 wrote: »

I can't understand the security issue because the machines are full of cash anyway, even if they don't give change. But why can't the machines give the exact amount of time which has been paid for?

If they had machines which issued change then the cost of parking would increase. You need more complex and so expensive machines. Instead of just having someone empty them you would need somone to go round and fill them with change which would take much longer and so you need more people. You would also need more accounting and paperwork to ensure the change that went out for the machines was accounted for and the change put in and the money taken out all accounted with what the machine thought it had taken.

maninthestreet

mrcol1000 wrote: »

If they had machines which issued change then the cost of parking would increase. You need more complex and so expensive machines. Instead of just having someone empty them you would need somone to go round and fill them with change which would take much longer and so you need more people. You would also need more accounting and paperwork to ensure the change that went out for the machines was accounted for and the change put in and the money taken out all accounted with what the machine thought it had taken.

Strange, commercial organisations that operate vending machines manage to cope perfectly well with change-giving machines e.g train operating companies.

RadoJo

maninthestreet wrote: »

Strange, commercial organisations that operate vending machines manage to cope perfectly well with change-giving machines e.g train operating companies.

But surely most of these change giving machines are placed in areas which are staffed between certain times (at least in the case of station ticket machines, vending machines etc). The point of pay and display car parks is that nobody has to man them, meaning that if they were to be changed over, the cost of parking would have to go up to pay for the increase in staffing costs.

OP - I do understand your frustration, but I think it is quite common practice for pay and display ticket machines not to give change, in fact I don't remember the last time I saw one which did, so I am guessing their argument will be that you were welcome to park elsewhere if you weren't happy with the terms of that car park. If you are committed to pursuing this, then good luck to you, but I think you will need to be prepared to invest a substatial amount of time into fighting it to actually get a result!

SallyForth_2

juliescot wrote: »

However the example you describe tend to charge for parking in blocks of time rather than actual parking time, as far as I am aware.

If I park in my nearest shopping centre car park and park for 2 hours and 15 minutes I will get charged for up to 3 hours. So that's me wasted 45 minutes then;)

I don't dispute it, it's possible to waste time you are paying for. I haven't seen the time increments being any different to Pay and Display (at least not round here), but I still think it worse to have to shove 3 hours in the machine upfront, when you don't know if you may need it nor not. Or worse still, knowing "time" is going to run out soon, and you need to race back and pay more -assuming you are allowed to, when you don't need another hour.

I find it's more likely that you will pay nearer to what you actually use, with the pay after systems.

mrcol1000

SallyForth wrote: »

I don't dispute it, it's possible to waste time you are paying for. I haven't seen the time increments being any different to Pay and Display (at least not round here), but I still think it worse to have to shove 3 hours in the machine upfront, when you don't know if you may need it nor not. Or worse still, knowing "time" is going to run out soon, and you need to race back and pay more -assuming you are allowed to, when you don't need another hour.

I find it's more likely that you will pay nearer to what you actually use, with the pay after systems.

I find it stupid that with all the techonology we have we still have to feed coins in a meter. IF you could electronically pay for parking then there would be no mad dash to feed the meter and overpaying as you don't have the exact change. I know some places allow various stuff such as mobile phone payment but its not very widespread. What we need is some kind of prepaid card that is universal across the UK that will allow you to prepay a fixed amount and then you just swipe when you arrive and swipe when you leave and your automatically charged for the parking. Maybe some kind of small barcode on the car for wardens to check parking is valid.

geordieracer

maninthestreet wrote: »

Strange, commercial organisations that operate vending machines manage to cope perfectly well with change-giving machines e.g train operating companies.

thats because TOCs employ people to do this - notably booking office staff so it costs them no extra apart from the delivery charge of the change. Also a P&D machinie in a car park would then need to be larger to hold enough change in the machine and these all cost money to buy and then money to get them emptied/topped up and you are then putting people at risk by carrying so much change in the van and when transferring from van to machine and vice versa. Then you have the risk of machines gettin g broken into and the P&D machines are not as secure as the ones TOCs use, so the cost of parking would rise even further.

Enfieldian

BFG wrote: »

Emails tend not to require a stamp.

Unless this is some new stealth tax that you know about???

Good spot. It was late.

Just a waste of time, bandwith and electricity then.

Laz123

Enfieldian wrote: »

Good spot. It was late.

Just a waste of time, bandwith and electricity then.

He/she says whilst doing exactly that.

Okay, so change-giving machines may be more expensive to run. But it wouldn't cost any more to give the time paid for to the nearrest minute.