Parkingeye - possible fraud

SANDLMAR

Via Pay-by-Phone I paid £4 (+40 pence for admin) to park at Barnet Hospital for up to four hours parking.  The payment was recorded by Pay-by-Phone as one cash transaction, of which I have a record.  I left after 2 hours 20 minutes however was issued with a parking contravention by Parkingeye.  When I looked at my bank statement, it appeared that Parkingeye, the operator of the car park surveillance, had extracted the money in two transactions of £2.20 each instead of the full £4.40 to cover four hours (£2.20 covers only 2 hours).  It looks like they are alleging I only paid for two hours, which is not the case.  If this was a genuine one-off error by Parkingeye, then I will point out their error and resolve the issue.  However if the splitting of the payments was a deliberate act by Parkingeye or is part of a similar pattern of behaviour with other customers, then it appears to be some kind of fraud or theft, for which they should be reported to the police.  Has anyone had any experience of this kind of conduct by Parkingeye?

Grizebeck

Forget it being some sort of fraud..that is just so wildly inaccurate 

Umkomaas

Contact PE in writing, explaining the situation, and sending them redacted copies of your bank statement and anything shown in your Pay-by-Phone app.  While PE are no one's favourite cup of tea here, unlike most other parking firms, they will listen to some well argued reason. But there's no fraud, otherwise we would have seen many, many more cases here on the forum, than what seems an isolated incident. 

Please keep us posted. 

Reed_Richards

I am convinced that Parkingeye makes its money mostly from the fines it imposes.  One way it does this is to make legitimate users jump through a lot of hoops to complete a payment and then fine the ones who don't quite make it.  I know of several users in one carpark that were fined for not getting the phone system to work and that is in a single carpark that a group I belong to used once a month.  

Umkomaas

Reed_Richards said:

I am convinced that Parkingeye makes its money mostly from the fines it imposes.  One way it does this is to make legitimate users jump through a lot of hoops to complete a payment and then fine the ones who don't quite make it.  I know of several users in one carpark that were fined for not getting the phone system to work and that is in a single carpark that a group I belong to used once a month.  

They have no other income stream of any value as far as I'm aware. By the way, they don't impose  fines.

Coupon-mad

Does the app show the right car numberplate?  Make a complaint to PALS and the NHS Trust CEO.

UncleThomasCobley

Reed_Richards said:

I am convinced that Parkingeye makes its money mostly from the fines it imposes.  One way it does this is to make legitimate users jump through a lot of hoops to complete a payment and then fine the ones who don't quite make it.  I know of several users in one carpark that were fined for not getting the phone system to work and that is in a single carpark that a group I belong to used once a month.  

Parking Eye have never, ever, issued a "parking fine". I bet you £100 that you don't know any users of any car park that were "fined" by PE.

What makes you think that Parking Eye are some sort of "authority" that have power to impose "fines" on anyone?

SANDLMAR

Umkomaas said:

Contact PE in writing, explaining the situation, and sending them redacted copies of your bank statement and anything shown in your Pay-by-Phone app.  While PE are no one's favourite cup of tea here, unlike most other parking firms, they will listen to some well argued reason. But there's no fraud, otherwise we would have seen many, many more cases here on the forum, than what seems an isolated incident. 

Please keep us posted. 

Thanks for all your responses.  The reason for my original post was to check whether anyone has had a similar experience of Parking Eye splitting the parking payment into two and alleging that the customer hadn't paid for long enough.  It seems like a devious way of extracting "penalties" from customers

fisherjim

Pay by Phone collect the parking money on behalf of Barnet Hospital, Parking Eye monitor the time on site there is no other connection.

Coupon-mad

SANDLMAR said:

Umkomaas said:

Contact PE in writing, explaining the situation, and sending them redacted copies of your bank statement and anything shown in your Pay-by-Phone app.  While PE are no one's favourite cup of tea here, unlike most other parking firms, they will listen to some well argued reason. But there's no fraud, otherwise we would have seen many, many more cases here on the forum, than what seems an isolated incident. 

Please keep us posted. 

Thanks for all your responses.  The reason for my original post was to check whether anyone has had a similar experience of Parking Eye splitting the parking payment into two and alleging that the customer hadn't paid for long enough.  It seems like a devious way of extracting "penalties" from customers

I don't think they have.

I suspect a typo on the VRM or paying for the wrong car.  Please check?