Pay & Display Stealing Money

HarryV

So Hammersmith & Fulham charge £1.80 per hour sold in half-hour units and the machines don't give change. This means that if you don't have the correct change, the parking time will be rounded down to the previous half hour.

For example if I have £4 on me, which at £1.80 per hour, should buy 2 hr 36min. The machine will only sell 2 hours for £3.60 or 2.5 hours for £4.50. So I either have to find an extra 50p (in exact money) or put in the £4 and receive £3.60 worth of parking time. This is an overcharging of 11%.

It cannot be difficult to programme the machines to give out the right amount of parking time. If they cannot be programed easily then either the council bought the wrong type of machines or it intended from the ouset of these machines being installed that it would steal people's money unless they have the correct change.

Anyone else annoyed by this?

Freddie_Snowbits

One could always move to Eastbourne!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/09/npark109.xml

No, that does not solve the issue, but perhaps a two bob jar on the side may, if you put the 10p bits in there, they may abate paying over the odds

Iamthesmartestmanalive

HarryV wrote: »

So Hammersmith & Fulham charge £1.80 per hour sold in half-hour units and the machines don't give change. This means that if you don't have the correct change, the parking time will be rounded down to the previous half hour.

For example if I have £4 on me, which at £1.80 per hour, should buy 2 hr 36min. The machine will only sell 2 hours for £3.60 or 2.5 hours for £4.50. So I either have to find an extra 50p (in exact money) or put in the £4 and receive £3.60 worth of parking time. This is an overcharging of 11%.

It cannot be difficult to programme the machines to give out the right amount of parking time. If they cannot be programed easily then either the council bought the wrong type of machines or it intended from the ouset of these machines being installed that it would steal people's money unless they have the correct change.

Anyone else annoyed by this?

theres no legal right to be given change therefore its your responsibility to have the correct money

Nothing illegal or stealing here

vivatifosi

I would like to know where the money is going to. If it is going to my local council, and my extra 10p would help go towards building, say, an adventure playground, I would think that's great. If on the other hand the money goes to grease the palms of the contracted out parking people, I would be substantially less amused. Anyone know who gets the surplus?

HarryV

Iamthesmartestmanalive wrote: »

theres no legal right to be given change therefore its your responsibility to have the correct money

Nothing illegal or stealing here

Correct money for what? I have the correct money. I have £4 and I would like to buy £4 worth of parking not £3.60 worth.

I have no objection to it not giving me change. As I have explained above it should give you the correct amount of time for the money you put in. I can see no logic behind it rounding down the time to half-hour units. We are buying time printed on a ticket - what's the problem with the machine working out the correct time purchased?

HarryV

vivatifosi wrote: »

I would like to know where the money is going to. If it is going to my local council, and my extra 10p would help go towards building, say, an adventure playground, I would think that's great. If on the other hand the money goes to grease the palms of the contracted out parking people, I would be substantially less amused. Anyone know who gets the surplus?

It's not a surplus as such. All the money would go to the council as income from pay and display machines.

tomstickland

Vending machines can give change.
It's also possible for the machine to give a pro-rata length of stay based on how much money is paid in.

Hence, my opinion is that these machines are designed to extract the maximum amount of money.

Iamthesmartestmanalive

HarryV wrote: »

Correct money for what? I have the correct money. I have £4 and I would like to buy £4 worth of parking not £3.60 worth.

I have no objection to it not giving me change. As I have explained above it should give you the correct amount of time for the money you put in. I can see no logic behind it rounding down the time to half-hour units. We are buying time printed on a ticket - what's the problem with the machine working out the correct time purchased?

But they dont offer £4 of parking

They offer £3.60 of parking and there is no responsibility for them to give you change should you pay in excess of that

HarryV

Iamthesmartestmanalive wrote: »

But they dont offer £4 of parking

They offer £3.60 of parking and there is no responsibility for them to give you change should you pay in excess of that

Grrr please read carefully. I KNOW they don't give change. I don't want change all I want is £4 worth or parking. There is no reason (other than blatant money extraction) for the machines not to give the pro-rata TIME for the money paid.

It's not like a vending maching where you have to buy a whole can and if you pay a little extra you can't expect a whole can plus an extra dribble! This is TIME they are selling.

Good grief.

Iamthesmartestmanalive

HarryV wrote: »

Grrr please read carefully. I KNOW they don't give change. I don't want change all I want is £4 worth or parking. There is no reason (other than blatant money extraction) for the machines not to give the pro-rata TIME for the money paid.

It's not like a vending maching where you have to buy a whole can and if you pay a little extra you can't expect a whole can plus an extra dribble! This is TIME they are selling.

Good grief.

But they dont offer that

Its clear what they offer, i.e such and such at a prescribed rate, it is up to you to decide whether to accept that and in what quantity and pay the correct money, the decision to give change or pro rata time is entirely at the discretion of the operator

there reasons for not doing so are irrelevent

There is no theft and your post amounts to libel, it amazes me how often this forum is used by people who dont understand the law and how the mods let it go

If someone came on and accused you of being a thief when you werent they would act so why is it you can accuse people of theft

But finally for you again, you chose to contract on their terms, its not their responsibility that you didnt have the correct change to pay at the contracted terms

HarryV

I know they don't offer that.

My original post was to ask WHY they can't programme the machines to offer correct time.

Their reasons for doing that ARE relevant to my post because that is what I am curious about in the first place.

I do understand the law, this has nothing to do with the law, it has to do with why the council won't give you the correct amount of time for the money you put in.

For the final time this is not about change and it never was. !!!!!!.