Initial Parking scam at Slate Quay car park thwarted

Vic20

Visited Caernarfon Harbour recently and parked in Slate Quay car park which has several pay and display machines that take money and cards.

Inserted money in the machine and it was rejected. Tried again and spat out once more. Changed coins and switched to the other machines but it didn't want my hard earned money.

Whipped out my card and used that instead. Here's where the Initial Parking scam began.

When paying by card, it accepted the PIN / contactless, flashed something very briefly on the screen, which couldn't be read, followed by "Transaction Finished". However, no paper ticket was dispensed. I thought maybe the transaction had failed so tried again and it did the same thing. Switched to a different card and again, it looked like it went through and ended up with the screen saying "Transaction Finished" but no paper ticket.

Still had no idea whether or not I'd paid so I checked my online banking accounts and could see that all transactions had been registered in a pending state. In short, Initial Parking had initiated multiple payments for each time one of their shoddy ticket machines had failed to dispense a paper ticket.

Took screen shots of all transactions from my online banking (made copies, laminated them, sent them offsite to cold storage) and called up one of the banks to explain what happened. The bank advised that if there were multiple payments in a pending state, it's likely that all but one would eventually be cancelled as duplicate payments. If not, the bank would be happy to do claw it back as needed given they could see it was multiple payments for the same amount for the same company, one after another.

I was dubious and with good reason; these parking companies never err on the side of common sense.

Worth also mentioning that there were several other people at the car park at the same time as us, who all had the exact same issue with both coins and cards.

And so it was that a week later, I received a NTK from Initial Parking with clear timestamped pictures of the car entering and leaving the car park saying I hadn't paid for parking. Checking my online banking once more, I could see that all of the pending transactions had been cancelled so no payment had been made.

Not my fault as I tried.

Rather than waste time with Initial Parking, I did a bit of digging and found out that Slate Quay car park is owned by Caenarfon Harbour (who also have an onsite office there) so I contacted them directly explaining that I'd attempted to pay several times which had appeared to have gone through only to have later been cancelled; by whom, I've no idea. Also shared copies taken of the multiple transactions made on the day and pointed out signage was inadequate (it was; tiny font which you can barely read, unlit and only presented once inside the car park so contract is unfair).

Caenarfon Harbour were most sympathetic and helped get the NTK cancelled within days. Email received from both the landowner and the spivs at Initial Parking confirming it had been cancelled.

Result!

As mentioned many times on these forums, Plan A is the one to follow in the first instance.

Have added this to the successful complaints thread here.

Coupon-mad

Nicely done and thanks for a great example on how to collect evidence on the day, then use it to support a direct complaint to the landowner.

We've seen this 'pending transactions later cancelled' scam before (with NCP) and it must be stamped out. How would anyone appeal without the evidence & screenshots you kept?

Vic20

Sadly, you wouldn't be able to appeal without evidence as pending transactions vanish once they are cleared. Not even the bank can show them on a statement or provide a paper trail as evidence they once existed since no money has changed hands so they literally just drop out of the payment queue.

Coupon-mad

Vic20 said:

Sadly, you wouldn't be able to appeal without evidence as pending transactions vanish once they are cleared. Not even the bank can show them on a statement or provide a paper trail as evidence they once existed since no money has changed hands so they literally just drop out of the payment queue.

I seem to recall with the NCP cases we had, that a bank could see the ghost pending transactions.

Vic20

The bank might be able to see the ghost pending transactions as part of an audit trail on their core banking systems but they wouldn't be able to provide this in a paper format or any format that could be used as hard evidence.