Pay & Display Stealing Money

HarryV

ajaxgeezer wrote: »

... the product on sale is a half-hour parking slot. The charge is £1.80 for a half hour parking slot, so have £1.80 ready. If you choose not to, don't call it theft. It's not theft.

I really can't see what the issue is.

Actually it's £1.80 per hour. You would know that if you read my original post. Mind you if it was difficult to read, and you found it boring, you might have missed it. Shame you lost your concentration within the first eight words. :rotfl:

cavycrazy_2

I haven't read the entire thread after the train wreck started, but to "steal" implies to take without the owner's consent. Am I right in thinking you willingly and freely place your coins in the machine?

uktim29

cavycrazy wrote: »

I haven't read the entire thread after the train wreck started, but to "steal" implies to take without the owner's consent. Am I right in thinking you willingly and freely place your coins in the machine?

It would appear some people when complaining find it compulsory to use exaggeratory words to get their point across. Everyone knows when people do this and it then halves any meaning the complaint originally had but this is just the way some people are.

HarryV

cavycrazy wrote: »

I haven't read the entire thread after the train wreck started, but to "steal" implies to take without the owner's consent. Am I right in thinking you willingly and freely place your coins in the machine?

It seems that you, too, are stuck on the use of the word "steal" but let me try and humour you.

Imagine you arrive somwhere and want to park, perhaps you don't know the rate applicable in the zone you wish to park in. Sure you might have carried out research by ringing the council or looking in their website prior to setting of on your journey. But life's too short isn't it.

So you arrive and find a space, in which you park. You get out of your car and look for the pay and display machine. On arriving there you see the rate being charged and the time intervals it is being sold in. You look in your pocket and discover that you happen not to have the exact coins that make up this particular council's charging tariff. What do you do?

1. Go back home and start again?
2. Go to a nearby shop and buy somethingyou don't really want or need just to generate some change? Not forgetting of course that some smartarses here have commented that shops are under no obligation to give change. So if you have a Fiver and buy some chewing gum in order to break it, they could refuse to serve you anyway.
3. Go to a bank, queue up, and ask the cashier to give you some change.

By this time the Council's private parking enforcement officers have spotted your car, without a pay and display in the windscreen, and issued you a nice penalty charge notice.

Or perhaps you just reluctantly put in the coins you have and accept the time you bought being rounded down to the nearest half hour.

So in answer to your question about the definition of stealing - yes I do consider that the machine took my money and didn't give me the appropriate or fair amount of parking time. It did this without my consent, approval or blessing.

No I DID NOT put the coins in "willingly and freely" as you suggest, I put them in reluctantly, sad in the knowledge that I would not receive what I had paid for, but I had no choice.

The point of course is that thousands of normal people are subjected to this every day and the council rakes in the millions* in extra cash.

DISCLAIMER
* Please note I do not have proof that it is millions, I merely used this as a turn of phrase, if you can't get over it then get a life! :rotfl:

HarryV

uktim29 wrote: »

It would appear some people when complaining find it compulsory to use exaggeratory words to get their point across. Everyone knows when people do this and it then halves any meaning the complaint originally had but this is just the way some people are.

OK perhaps you might suggest a more appropriate word. I'll give you the phrase I used with a blank space to help you:

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 [insert word here] people's money unless they have the correct change.

Looking forward to hearing your suggestions. Hey perhaps I might even press the "Thank you" button if you come up with something useful! :rotfl:

uktim29

Hows this for a suggestion, try carrying change if you know your going to use a car park pay machine or a bridge toll.

Hopefully you'll find that far more useful as I wouldn't have inserted a word but reworded it to somehow include "everyone knows most roadside pay machines don't give change".

cavycrazy_2

I'm not stuck on the word steal, I'm just big on facts.

No I DID NOT put the coins in "willingly and freely" as you suggest, I put them in reluctantly, sad in the knowledge that I would not receive what I had paid for, but I had no choice.

Damn. I had envisioned a little old man in Council uniform holding a sub-machine gun to your head, or better yet, the parking machine screaming coin-related obscenities in a voice reminiscent of Terminator and threatening to spray your car with watered down strawberry jam if you did not hand over all your coins.

Seriously. As for the main point, yes, it's wrong that they do this, but each time you choose to park there, you have several choices.
a) Take the correct change.
b) Park somewhere else.
c) Pay with whatever coins you have and accept that it's a fact of life that the machine has been calibrated by the half-hour and not the second.
d) Pay with whatever coins you have and then complain about it.

You're not being forced to park there, you agree to park there and each time you do so, you accept the offer that the Council have made ie: Pay the charge we say or park somewhere else. Unless you write to your local paper, get a petition going, get lots of locals to complain about it, I can't see anything changing. Is there a number/owner/manufacturer/repairs line on the machine? That would be your first point of call if you are really determined to do something about it. Ascertain if the machine CAN be set to reflect minutes, not 20 minute blocks.

Then print off a few flyers. Stick them under windscreen wipers on the relevant carpark with your phone number/email/address of online petitions/plea to bombard your local paper/MP.

Or you can do as I do and ride a motorbike. They haven't found a way to charge us parking fees yet in the majority of places.

uktim29

HarryV wrote: »

I put them in reluctantly, sad in the knowledge that I would not receive what I had paid for, but I had no choice.

:rotfl:

You'd normally only ever read something worded so melodramatically in a book. But somebody has infact really written this about a parking meter!

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

HarryV

uktim29 wrote: »

:rotfl:

You'd normally only ever read something worded so melodramatically in a book. But somebody has infact really written this about a parking meter!

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

QED - try reading the posts. It was actually about a pay and display not a parking meter. :j

uktim29 wrote: »

Hows this for a suggestion, try carrying change if you know your going to use a car park pay machine or a bridge toll.

Hopefully you'll find that far more useful as I wouldn't have inserted a word but reworded it to somehow include "everyone knows most roadside pay machines don't give change".

PMSL once again ukDIM. It's not about change.


What a disappointment you really are - just a troll.

uktim29

HarryV wrote: »

What a disappointment you really are - just a troll.

HarryV wrote: »

PMSL once again ukDIM.

Note your classic intellectual responce quoted!

HarryV wrote: »

It was actually about a pay and display not a parking meter.

I know, the difference is staggering!