Matalan Luton Parking Fine

bazster

NotBothered wrote: »

What I am saying is WHY should they pay for a barrier method and how do they enforce it? You cannot hold people in your car park even though you KNOW they have done the wrong thing!

Actually you can. Or rather, you can hold their car, the occupants are welcome to alight and leave the car park on foot. Have you seriously never encountered an automated, barrier-controlled car park where, if you haven't paid, the barrier will simply not open? Plenty of them in my neighbourhood, it's all perfectly legal.

NotBothered

Perhaps I didnt explain myself. I know that I am not supposed to leave my car there and go somewhere else, after all the car park is for the sole use of the shop customers. It says so on the very visible signs. I go off into town, have my hair cut, visit the dentist, stop off fo a coffee and some lunch and lo and behold 5 hours have passed.

Meantime, the shop has got really busy and people are quening for space to do their weeky shop - around £120 (thats around the cost of mine, but I dont like to shop at this particular place - they dont have the bread I like). Some people get fed up and dont bother to wait and leave to spend their money elsewhere.

I come back to my car and realise that I cant get out because of the barrier system - but look - if I go and buy a few snacks for a fiver, they have no choice but to lift that barrier. They didnt want me there, I was NOT a genuine customer for the time I was in town and I just got 5 hours of free parking - yes free, because I got goods that I will enjoy for my £5. And the shop potentially LOST £200 wort of customers THAT day through the misuse of the one parking space I was in. Not to mention that the customers lost may never go back because parking is such a hassle!

Its not about law its about integrity. If everybody did the right thing and parked where and how they were supposed to then barrier systems would be required. And again, I state. I think the charges are high, but something has to be done to make sure that the few who think they can park on somebody elses property with no respect for their "rules" and "wishes" and then create merry hell over the charges levied do not continue to get away with it. And yes I refer to the few braggers on here who proudly state how many "charges" they have fought and won. Perhaps if you went out of your way to avoid getting one you could find a nicer hobby that gets you out of the house once in a while.

By all means help those who truly have received a charge when they shouldnt have done, but the advice on here never seems to take into consideration that the motorist has sometimes BLATANTLY done the wrong thing and you still want to go out of your way to say the the Parking Companies are scum! Park sensibly and witin the rules and you wont have to come to sites like this.

And nope - I dont live on Planet Perfect, but I CAN read signs as well as internet forums. Bizarre, the text on here is a LOT smaller than on those signs! Oh - and I'm partially sighted!

bazster

The supermarket I referred to allows you (IIRC) 1.5 hours' parking for your £5 spend in the shop (might be longer, or shorter, but you get the general idea). If you exceed that you pay for your parking at the full daily rate (£12 IIRC). No question, no quibble, those are the terms of your parking, it's a contract - and the barrier means you must adhere to it.

All seems fair enough to me. Works well.

I repeat (since you are obviously not listening), no-one here condones not paying for parking when you should, nor abusing landowners' rights. However, we despise profiteering, parasitical private parking companies so much that yes, we will help anyone to not pay them £100. If the parking companies were reasonable and decent and weren't such dishonest, bottom-feeding bloodsuckers then we might advise people to pay some reasonable charge as demanded and then be more careful in future, but while they continue to lie, cheat, entrap, harass, bully and extort the priority is to put the scum out of business, which means keeping money from them wherever we are able to.

If you look around here a bit more carefully you will see that our assistance in not paying a charge is often caveated with advice to obey the landowners' rules in future, or park elsewhere. You don't see that on this thread because the OP wasn't dishonest, he simply made a mistake (which may or may not have been encouraged by PPC entrapment techniques, impossible to say without visiting the car park) which I'm sure he will not repeat.

I too can easily read the text on this forum. I'm sitting about 50cm from the screen. I defy anyone to read everything on a ParkingEye sign in its typical location of 9 feet up a pole (and it typically being 9 feet up a pole means that a lot of people will not even notice its existence; entrapment, you see).

fisherjim

Park sensibly and witin (sic) the rules and you wont have to come to sites like this.

If only it were that simple!

bazster

fisherjim wrote: »

Park sensibly and witin (sic) the rules and you wont have to come to sites like this.

If only it were that simple!

Indeed. Remember the geezer who got a ParkingEye ticket for overstaying? On his motorcycle? One slight problem: motorcycles only have a number plate at the back, so how could a ParkingEye camera have picked it up both entering and leaving?

No problem for ParkingEye: they claimed that the daylight 'photo was the entrance photo, and the infra-red 'photo (in which only the number plate is visible) was the exit 'photo, even though both photos were taken when entering!

Naive people like NotBothered simply don't appreciate what scum these companies are.

ManxRed

NotBothered wrote: »

Park sensibly and witin the rules and you wont have to come to sites like this.

Pretty much EVERY week or so, someone comes on and pontificates about how much drivers themselves are to blame for getting tickets, and how poor landowners and PPCs get a tough time of it on here because people on these forums know legal loopholes that will get evil and stupid motorists off the hook.

If you ever read online newspaper articles about hearses being ticketed outside churches during funeral services, or disabled people being ticketed outside hospitals during medical emergencies, and the like, someone will almost certainly have posted the above oft-quoted comment above somewhere underneath the article.

"Hey, if you don't want a fine, then don't park illegally" or something similar.

To people who genuinely believe that if you park properly and abide by all the conditions on the signs that are (sometimes but not always) on prominent display, why not read some more threads on here, maybe ones relating to incidences where:

1. Two visits in one day resulting in a parking ticket for one long stay because the PPC has somehow 'lost' the first exit and second entry photos.

2. An overstay of just a few minutes which doesn't take account of the time it took to find a space or leave the car park afterwards

3. An overstay which was as a result of being held up in the store, such as long queues at the checkout.

4. Misleading signage, for example where there are multiple signs with conflicting terms and conditions on them (you'd be surprised by how often this happens).

5. Parking in your own space at a block of flats, where parking companies don't even have the legal right to operate in the first place, but do because a greedy or mistaken management company have told them to.

6. Parking in a disabled bay, when the person driving, or a passenger in the vehicle doesn't have a blue badge, but are legally entitled to park there by virtue of having a characteristic covered by the 2010 Equality Act.

7. The driver was invited to the premises on business (e.g. a plumber, electrician) by the landowner/retail shop manager and stayed longer than the permitted time because that's how long it took to complete the work.

8. When they've actually complied with all the terms on the signs but get a ticket anyway, for no explicable reason.

There are hundreds and hundreds of threads on here relating to circumstances similar to the ones above (and more besides). All of them followed the rules.

So your comment that if you park sensibly and within the rules then you won't ever need to come to sites like this is wrong. By a country mile.

In fact, the rantings in your last post about going off site, then coming back and then spending money in a store to legitimately get out of a barrier controlled car park is so far removed from the original poster's actual scenario, that I cannot possibly see what benefit you are offering to this thread, other than to try and pontificate a 'holier-than-thou' message to all the imperfect and unfortunate mistake-makers that clearly make up the rest of the people on this forum.

Coupon-mad

Appealing a Smart ticket a anything other than the 'keeper' would be daft so I hope you were careful with your first appeal wording. You don't need to talk about what happened/buying trousers.

Just search the forum for 'Smart POPLA' and copy a version others have used, making sure it includes a section pointing out why the NTK is incapable of keeper liability. The keeper can't lose because their NTKs are not compliant.

neil.net

NotBothered wrote: »

If everybody did the right thing...no respect...

These actions and characteristics apply to the PPCs, not drivers!

NotBothered

# 1 q2uantum Old 20-01-2015, 7:05 PM
MoneySaving Convert


Join Date: Sep 2012
Posts: 20
Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
Default PCN with an none completed Date on it
Hi All,

I have read the newbie posts on this, but want to run this past a few of you forum members with knowledge in this field.

I recently had a PCN attached to my windscreen for parking in my sisters works car park space (on private land and rented at £20 a month to my sister via her company) with out a permit. Stupid I know but it was a Saturday afternoon and they only work Mon-Fri, and have parked there many times before with no issue.

So where exactly have you told this poster that he/she shouldnt have parked thereand shouldnt do it again? He/she has gotten away with it alot apparently, but apparently the parking company is just scum trying to scam money out of him/her?

There are loads of posters on here like this. You broke the rules, you got caught.

ManxRed

What's this got to do with the Original Poster's problem at Matalan?

You're on a crusade, and you won't let it drop, even though when you signed up for this forum there would have been a condition that you agree not to hijack other people's threads.

See, even someone as perfect as you can break rules now and again.