Pay & Display Stealing Money

Iamthesmartestmanalive

Please tell me were the theft is?

Blacksheep1979

The reason they don't do it is because it would cost more to set up and they don't think people will go whingeing about 40p here and there - they could always put the price up to £1 per half hour would you be happy then?

C_Ronaldo

The ticket machines at the park and ride i use doesnt give change, i dont go on a rampage because the machine wont give me some change if i put a £2 coin in

mute_posting

I must say, I'm with OP here on the re-programming issue.

The machines could "easily" be re-programmed to pro-rata (at the minutes/pence of the preceeding limit) over-payments as extra parking time on a ticket.

I suspect the reason they don't is income generated by parking fines for overstaying your ticket.

I recall reading about some european country (or city?) where machines either must give change or accept all coinage (can't just remember exact details).

The latter is another gripe of mine - machines that won't accept 5p coins

MP

i_love_it

I didn't read all the posts, but i'm with you harryv, do they have a credit card facility if you do not have the correct change?
They should be able to offer card payment, correct change or change given, I agree

mute_posting

i_love_it wrote: »

I didn't read all the posts

You probably didn't miss much apart from a group of posters missing the title of the forum "The (Consumer) Vent Board"

MP

uktim29

HarryV wrote: »

This is TIME they are selling.

Good grief.

So if they're stealing why don't you phone the police?

trisontana

Many pay-and-display machines are quite old, very basic and low-tech and they don't have the facility to give change. I suppose the council could invest thousands of pounds in council-tax payer's money to buy new machines. But then there would be another outcry by people. As long as motorists are warned that the machines don't give change then I don't see the problem.

taxiphil

trisontana wrote: »

Many pay-and-display machines are quite old, very basic and low-tech and they don't have the facility to give change. I suppose the council could invest thousands of pounds in council-tax payer's money to buy new machines. But then there would be another outcry by people. As long as motorists are warned that the machines don't give change then I don't see the problem.

Have to disagree with that.

Firstly, the technology to give change is very simple indeed and has existed inside vending machines and fruit machines etc since the 1970s.

Secondly, most pay and display machines nowadays are fairly modern, and do have the function to give change, but this function is nearly always disabled by the council.

Anyway, the OP wasn't questioning the machines' ability to give change - he was asking why it can't calculate a pro-rata amount of time, rounded to the nearest minute, according to the amount of money inserted.

I think it's a perfectly valid question and the answer is that once again it's simply a revenue-raising scam. These councils have been growing relentlessly for decades - they are huge, uncontrolled and unaccountable monsters, always giving their staff above-inflation pay rises (and gold plated pensions). Just look in The Guardian jobs pages if you want to see the non-jobs dreamed up every week so they can justify expanding their workforces ever further and taking even more of our money to pay for it.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at some of the "accept everything, question nothing" responses on this thread.

mute_posting

trisontana wrote: »

Many pay-and-display machines are quite old, very basic and low-tech and they don't have the facility to give change.

I've never seen any low-tech ones, for the past 15+ years the ones where I live have had digital displays which in itself suggests that they have sufficient intelligence to do as suggested. (pro-rata'd time for money inserted)

Further, all the ones around here have the "facility" to give change, it is just disabled.

MP