Money Moral Dilemma: Is it OK to use other people's leftover parking time?

nczm

That's almost the point isn't it. Assuming you give your ticket to someone else to use in a full car park, technically that's depriving the car park of another full paying customer. The same with the restaurant scenario, if someone has finished their meal (regardless if they ate it all or not) you would want to prepare the table for the next paying customer - not have someone freeload your space.
Personally I would always try and share a ticket with more than half hour left on it. Those type of pay and display tend to be much much more expensive than pay when you finish carparks (my high street for example has free street parking and a pay and display car park which is capped at a minimum fee of £2 for 2 hours - not sure what you can do on a high street for 2 hours these days)

kboss2010

Saving4Jesus wrote: »

I don't do this because the tickets usually say on them they are non transferable.

Of course they say that! Unless it's got your reg number on it, there's nothing stopping you. I've been ripped off so many times by meters that don't give change and council car parks that charge ridiculous fees that I always leave my spare time tickets on the machine and have no qualms about taking someone else's.

forzaitalia

The time has been paid for so who has the ticket is irrelevant. I always give my leftover time to someone else and people have kindly given me their leftover ticket. Not immoral at all, the council are the winners every time!

anotheruser

stork wrote: »

In relation to rail fares at least, it's a criminal offence (under Byelaw 21 of the Railway Byelaws) to transfer or receive a non-transferable ticket, whether for money or not. Rail operators can and do prosecute where they detect the offence being committed, and the maximum fine is level 3 (currently £1000, proposed to increase to £4000).

Yep, and the majority of those byelaws are outdated.
Another says you must not defy an official railway sign. So if a railworker wrote a sign saying "no white people allowed to board this door", then any white person doing so is breaking the law.

Also, if you paid by cash, threw away the receipt, short of looking at CCTV, there's nothing anyone can do to prove/dis-prove.

fatpiggy

Urrgh, council parking charges! The other day I'd done a click and collect froma local shop in town, the combined items being pretty heavy. Normally I walk the mile each way to do a spot of shopping. I drove down and despite it being a Sunday morning, the car parks nearest to the shop were full (other drivers were just driving round and round waiting for one to leave), so I found a spot on the street. Walked up to P&D machine - 90p for an hour - on a Sunday!!! I had a pound coin in my pocket, no other cash, and guess what? The machine didn't give change so that was a £1 for an hours parking. I was only away from the car for 15 minutes, and couldn't do any further shopping to use up the time as the items I'd bought were bulky and on the back seat in full view of any would-be thieves. So I paid £1 for 15 minutes parking and went home again. No wonder the shop owners complain about footfall. Of course the council rips them off as well. One local market town has hundreds of free parking spaces less than 5 minutes walk from the shops. That town is always busy and very few shops have gone to the wall in the last few years. Funny that.

nigelbb

Fergie76 wrote: »

And yet the Armed Forces also have their own independent Armed Forces Pay Review Body and they are restricted to giving a maximum of a 1% pay rise because that is what the Government has deemed that all public sector workers are entitled too, regardless if they think they should award more or not.

Likewise ignored were the recommendations of the independent review bodies for NHS pay for doctors, nurses etc

pennypinchUK

Tickets state they're non-transferable, but I'd be interested to see how that's enforced. If council staff or traffic wardens have cameras trained on parking ticket machines, watching eagle eyed for people furtively handing over a part-spent car park ticket, I think we'd have bigger problems than whether someone is carrying out a small act of kindness, whether it's formally allowed or not.

mr-mixalot

I always pass my ticket onto someone if possible, its just a nice and IMO right thing to do, pay it forward

On a seperate note where I live the council are not enforcing parking charges at present due to overcharging in previous months so an amnesty until christmas for all

Still you get some people putting money in the machine when they don't need to

BlaEm

Back when I was 17 and in sixth form my friends and I drove to town after college, as one of us wanted to pop to the music shop to pick up a guitar she'd bought (we were cool kids!).

For a small town, the parking spaces are few and extortionate, with a minimum of an hours stay. When we got to the car park, a kind gentleman who was leaving offered his parking ticket, with 30 minutes left on it.

We were (probably disproportionately) delighted by the gesture. On returning, with only 15 minutes left, we offered it to an older lady who had just arrived, just in case it was any good to her - she only needed to post a letter quickly, and again was thrilled!

It made me smile to wonder how many people had used the same ticket before the man before us moral of the story being, the Council didn't technically lose any revenue and at least three people made another person smile.

Agree with the earlier commenter that if you feel bad, perhaps give a pound to the charity shop, spend some cash in to your local independent shop, or seek any other way to support your local community. Ultimately this will go further for your local economy than the £2 you deprive your Council or Private Car Park company of!

suchgreatheights

Why shouldn't you take it?

The first person has paid for the space for 3 hours, if your car occupies the space instead of theirs for some of that time, the council has not lost any money.

In fact, if you buy your own ticket instead of taking theirs, the council is actually double-charging for the space.

The introduction of numberplate-specific tickets is, IMHO, a cynical and mean-spirited move by councils and car park owners.