Sainsbury's car park

Dollardog

I was in a Sains car park just after Christmas and it was chaos. I mentioned to one of the staff members about how busy the car park was and how there were not many spaces left. He said that people were parking there to go to the sales in the town, but they would get a shock when they came back to find tickets on their cars for overstaying the two hour parking allowance.
I said it wouldn't make a difference to some as the 'Fines' were unenforceable anyway. He asked what I meant, so I said that only the owner of the land can enforce the charge anyway, not the private parking company (Excel in this case), and then they have to prove who was driving and also the charge can't be disproportionate to the offence.
He said he didn't know about the rest of it, but the car parking company had bought the land from Sains, so they were the land owners. I found this quite hard to believe to be honest, I can't imagine Sains selling off their car park to anyone, in case they needed it for expansion or something.
We had to agree to differ in the end. Not that I was bothered as I wasn't going to be there for longer than two hours and I wouldn't have paid the charge even if they had have given me a ticket - thanks to all of you on here.
Having said that though. It wouldn't have surprised me if people genuinely shopping in there had been given tickets. The queues were so bad, I had to wait over 20 mins in the queue for the checkouts. Anyone doing a big shop, having to queue to pay, then going into the cafe could quite easily have gone over 2 hrs.

molerat

Where I used to work the parking attendant was adamant that his tickets were legal fines and would not have it any other way.

A few years back Tesco scored an own goal when the store refused to back down from one of their "fines" from a woman who lived miles away and genuinely spent more than 2 hours in the store as she had a full meal in the restaurant with friends and did a month's shop. Their PR must have been cringing at the local press and TV coverage it got and eventually apologised.

Viper_7

Our local Sains now has signs up saying £50 fine for parking in a Parent with Child spot and also as you say for overstaying the 2 hours.
Again it's a separate "enforcement company" who is "policing" it.

All rubbish

trisontana

Viper_7 wrote: »

Our local Sains now has signs up saying £50 fine for parking in a Parent with Child spot and also as you say for overstaying the 2 hours.
Again it's a separate "enforcement company" who is "policing" it.

All rubbish

Does those signs actually say "fines"? If they do, then they are breaking the law. There was a similar case mentioned on here a few weeks ago where one of the posters wrote to Sainsbury's pointing out this breach of the law,and they were forced to amend the wording.

fb1969

This one http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1966977

eco

Everyone parks at the local supermarkets in town where I live and don't always do there shopping at the supermarkets, it's quite a good little saving, they used to do the ticket thing but haven't seen anyone issuing them for ages.

Viper_7

trisontana wrote: »

Does those signs actually say "fines"? If they do, then they are breaking the law. There was a similar case mentioned on here a few weeks ago where one of the posters wrote to Sainsbury's pointing out this breach of the law,and they were forced to amend the wording.

They do say "fines" I'm 100% positive.
When I'm there next, I'll take a picture and post.

Thank you for the linky fb1969, I missed that one.

Dollardog

trisontana wrote: »

Does those signs actually say "fines"? If they do, then they are breaking the law. There was a similar case mentioned on here a few weeks ago where one of the posters wrote to Sainsbury's pointing out this breach of the law,and they were forced to amend the wording.

The sign at the store I was talking about, it was Euro by the way not Excel, said 'charge'. It was the staff member who called it a 'Fine' when I mentioned it to him which is why I used the quotes.

I still think it highly unlikely that Sains would sell their car park to the private parking company, even more so because their petrol filling station is the other side of the car park to the store. They would be competely crackers to sell the land in between to someone else.

Coupon-mad

Dollardog wrote: »

The sign at the store I was talking about, it was Euro by the way not Excel, said 'charge'. It was the staff member who called it a 'Fine' when I mentioned it to him which is why I used the quotes.

I still think it highly unlikely that Sains would sell their car park to the private parking company, even more so because their petrol filling station is the other side of the car park to the store. They would be competely crackers to sell the land in between to someone else.

Supermarket Managers believe the spin they are given by the PPCs and jump at the chance to have someone police their car parks for free, in the hope that they can then not worry about PERCEIVED misuse of their disabled bays, etc.

I have had the same discussion with a Duty Manager in my local Sainsburys, he also insisted that the use of the word 'fines' was correct and that you did have to pay if you got a ticket.

I tried my best to explain to him that Euro Car Parks tickets are unenforceable tosh (like any PPC ticket) and can be safely ignored. He looked astonished and said people would get taken to Court if they ignored this fine. I informed him that Euro Car Parks have never taken anyone to Court and just rely on frightening people into paying with threatening letters. I told him I was shocked that Sainsburys allow this extortion in their name and I asked how on earth can they tell that someone is disabled or not, seeing as the displaying of a blue badge is irrelevant on private land. He did not get it at all.

I have also had the same discussion with the Duty Manager in the local Co-op who also use Euro. Same response, he didn't have the first clue about the truth of these charges.

In the case of Sainsburys I wrote a strong letter objecting to their use of a PPC and specifically, objecting to a leaflet they had on Sainsburys CS desks 'Disabled and Mother & Baby Spaces: fine if you qualify, £50 fine if you don't'. I think they feel the play on words is funny and clever! Never got a reply at all.

I feel like making up my own leaflet for Sainsburys, along the lines of:

'Disability Discrimination Act: fine if you comply, £xxxxx fine if you don't'. :T:rotfl:

taxiphil

The lack of basic legal knowledge amongst the British public is incredible. It seems that the majority of otherwise well-educated people are completely under the spell of the PPC lies and nonsense. I've spoken to countless friends, family, etc, who truly believe these PPC scams are "fines" and that failure to pay will result in automatic credit blacklisting and even a criminal record which might affect their employment!

The basic legal rights of the citizen should be a compulsory part of the curriculum in schools.

dacouch

Apt timing...

http://www.bitterwallet.com/tag/kettering

http://www.bitterwallet.com/sainsburys-charge-customers-up-to-33p-per-minute-for-parking/17864