'Threatened' with a ticket at Asda

TrickyDicky101

Virtually every Saturday for a very long time my wife has walked to the nearest Asda store, completed the weekly grocery shop and then called me to pick her up.

I drive up to the store and park immediately outside it on a strip of yellow blocked tarmac (part of which is coned off for emergency vehicle use) and the remainder of which has the word 'Taxi' painted on it (it is a drop off point for taxis). I don't actually wait there - I only pull up when my wife is waiting with the full trolley of shopping. I then load the shopping into the boot and drive off.

Last week, I presume a TCP operative came up to me and said I couldn't park there as I wasn't a taxi and he would have to issue me with a ticket if I did it again.

Having been an avid reader of this forum and over at Pepipoo, I wasn't overly worried and told him to go ahead if he felt the need. It was all perfectly polite and in the end he didn't provide me with any replacement toilet paper and I drove off.

I guess I'm just after reassurance that were any 'ticket' to be forthcoming it would be unenforceable and that me being told if I parked there again a 'ticket' would be raised against me doesn't change anything?

Thank you all

Redx

if you park on private land in a restricted area then you are subject to a parking charge notice, as you will have breached the rules and signs

have your wife push the trolley to a proper "pickup zone" where presumably you can do all this with no hassle

its private land so do not presume anything at all, try to comply with the signage as much as possible , to avoid confrontation and problems

the sticky threads at the top of the forum will help you with this

but "prevention is better than cure" , especially in england and wales due to the new rules

Coupon-mad

Just to tell you that - unless you are in Scotland or NI - the advice changed last year as we win at POPLA every time, so we always say 'appeal' if you get one. It costs PPCs money, we always win at POPLA and it stops the litigious ones from suing people because that has been an issue in 2013. And TCP are now called 'Smart Parking' but by all accounts they are not very Smart - certainly easy to beat at POPLA!

Come back if you do ever get a ticket as the registered keeper has to respond to the first letter (NOT the driver, not to the windscreen ticket). Read the 'Newbies read this first' sticky as and when you collect one of these fake PCNs.

TrickyDicky101

Thank you both.

Redx the place I stop (or at least used to stop) is the only 'pick up' zone of any description before the car park proper begins. Point taken about avoiding unnecessary confrontation though

Redx

if you look at the PDF posted on here a few days ago about the VCS vs Ibbotson case, read the transcript (like I did) you will notice the comments by the judge that a parking attendant has the legal duty to inform a customer if they are about to break the "rules" and be in breach with a possible parking ticket

it appears to me that this attendant did his job , both legally and morally, in warning you about it, so although you may be miffed at being spoken to, its clear that for once they did as they should be doing

if you are unhappy with the car park signs and wish to have a valid "pickup point" marked out , in order to avoid this in the future , then complain to the landowner themselves and get it changed if that is possible , or come to some agreement with them and their PPC about this aspect

but prevention will always be better than cure, I believe you got off lightly in this case, yet I was amazed in the fact that a parking attendant actually had done what I had just been reading about in the VCS vs Ibbotson case

Umkomaas

He was managing the car park, the very thing we accuse PPCs of not doing. OP, I do think the attendant actually helped you there (blessing in disguise), if he'd ticketed you you'd have to be going through the !!!! most of our newbies are experiencing every day on here.

TrickyDicky101

Fair enough