Lichfield’s Three Spires Car Parks Excel’s latest Scam exposed.

Beaudelicious

I like to bring you good news and you may already know that Excel were given 30 days notice to quit this small group of car parks on Friday 10 June 2022. The reason being they had come up with a new ruse to cheat 100s perhaps 1000s of people with unwarranted PCNs. The trick was to configure the IPS meters NOT to issue paper receipts and call it an eco friendly system. This then allowed them to issue a forest worth of PCNs for “Parking without payment…..for Vehicle Registration Mark on site” very likely for keying errors or machine faults. The driver has no proof of payment to fight these pcns. The promised online receipt system only works for card payments and often the card payment was rejected with no warning. I believe Excel has plumbed new depths in this form of extortion. It’s very likely their idea to get around keying error cancellation in the new code of practice. So going forward watch out for ‘ticketless’ parking meters, they are the work of the devil!  

PS, by Sunday the same machine were printing tickets with the VRM on thanks to the new owners of Three Spires Shopping Centres’ insistence. 

Snakes_Belly

As a frequent vistor to Lichfield who has been on the receiving end of this aggressive ex-clamper I am so glad that they have been thrown out of our beautiful city.

Thank you to all the people who have made this happen.   

Umkomaas

I'm sure that @Coupon-mad will find this potential Code of Practice dodge to be of interest in the context of the DLUHC Steering Group.  Thanks for the heads up @Beaudelicious 👍 

95Rollers

Excel have recently taken over a carpark I previously used which is round the back of a bar and shopping area I USED to visit.
I went in on foot once I'd saw their signs after driving out sharpish!  I examined the large 1mx1.2m  sign. I timed myself reading it (I only read it in my head) and it took 4 and a half minutes! Had I drove my car in there, found a space, parked on the opposite end to the lone machine - I'd have gone over irrespective of whether I finishing reading the sign and decided to stay or go. There was lots of other little hacks loaded in to waste your time such as other signs to read, a sign saying use if machine doesn't work - use another machine when there are none plus various phone numbers etc!

I put up a review with the location  postcode on Trustpilot to warn motorists and visitors to the area which instantly shows up on Google.  I would advise you to expose this Scam yourself via Trustpilot and Google Reviews @Beaudelicious

Coupon-mad

Umkomaas said:

I'm sure that @Coupon-mad will find this potential Code of Practice dodge to be of interest in the context of the DLUHC Steering Group.  Thanks for the heads up @Beaudelicious 👍 

I do indeed.  

The DLUHC get shown a lot of evidence by me and that includes a certain two MSE threads today.

Snakes_Belly

There are shades of the Ambler case regarding some of the issues. 

There are numerous PCN's issued for the REG number not matching their records. No tickets so the driver cannot prove that they bought a ticket.

Another strange thing is that the charges start from 7.30 am and finish at 18.30 pm.  A driver ventured on at 6.30 am and could not get a ticket then saw that charges started at 7.30 am and left the car park but unfortunately they had gone over 10 mins and has received a PCN yet it was not in the charging period. 

This is a city centre car park quite near to the Station and the Theatre. If they did not want people to park at certain times they should have a barrier and close it off. The sign gives the impression that it is free between 18.30 pm and 7.30am. 

Snakes_Belly

When these claims start hitting the courts I can see some costs for unreasonable behaviour being allowed. 

Beaudelicious

Coupon-mad said:

Umkomaas said:

I'm sure that @Coupon-mad will find this potential Code of Practice dodge to be of interest in the context of the DLUHC Steering Group.  Thanks for the heads up @Beaudelicious 👍 

I do indeed.  

The DLUHC get shown a lot of evidence by me and that includes a certain two MSE threads today.

I have long condemned those free to park tablets common at Pubs, Hospitals & Gyms, to name a few examples. They give no receipts either. I did suggest they were forced to offer a physical or electronic receipt when I completed the DLUHC consultation so perhaps its time to revisit that one for all types of parking, paid or free. I have never come across a Ticketless Pay metre before. Does anyone else know of this practice spreading?

ParkingMad

A similar practice is being used by One Parking Solution. They have replaced the JustPark app with their own in-house app called PopPay.

https://www.poppay.co.uk/

Several reviews on Trustpilot say that the PopPay app took longer than 5 minutes to install, or that their payment wasn't processed, so they received a PCN despite having paid for parking. 

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.oneparkingsolution.co.uk

ParkingMad

The added £70 is described on the sign as a collection fee 

95Rollers

These companies need to keep coming up with new convoluted scams. I recently attended both a country pub and conference centre with CEL tablets. In all fairness both sites were well signed and the instructions/ T&Cs were clear, but because I don't trust them (based on accounts I've read here) and videod myself inputting my reg into the machine and getting an "OK" off the system because there is no receipt and what if it crashes or malfunctions and doesn't marry up with the ANPR!? I also videod my arrival and departure.  I rarely use PPC sites, but if needs must then I leave nothing to chance as I know first hand how devious and sneaky they are in their quest to squeeze cash from people and (mis)handle our data!