Bloomin Parking Ticket

[Sp!ke]

Maybe Robert can share his wisdom on this one because as far as I am concerned I think I am being fleeced.

I park at 17:24 in a pay and display car park. The cost to park is £1:20 per hour up to 18:30 at which point there is a flat £1 fee to park for the entire evening.

So I pay £2.40 thinking this means that I'm covered for the night.

£1.20/hr = 2p per minute
17:24 to 18:30 = 66 minutes = £1.32

This means that for my parking post 18:30 I had paid £1.08 which is more than the required amount for the entire evening.

Return to the car and at 19:41 I have been issued a £60 ticket for parking after the expiry of time paid (contravention code 82)

How have I done wrong here?

Grrr

 

[wemorgan]

Is there a limit of a maximum stay of 2 hrs?

or

should it have been something crazy like:

£2.40 to park from 17:24 to 18:30 (rounding up to two hours)
then an additional
£1 for the rest of the evening

?????

 

[Sp!ke]

Not as far as I am aware, especially as you can park for the entire evening after 18:30 for £1.

 

[WLeg]

Can you grab a pic of the published times, and fees ? - would help...(not that I know what I'm talking about.....)

 

[renault12ts]

Actually stupid as it seems Wemorgan is probably correct. However appeal it and common sense will maybe come into play.

 

[Sp!ke]

The rounding up bit I'm not sure would prevail since you dont have to pay for full hour slots... 60p would allow 30 mins parking for instance.

I'll take a picture of it in a moment. Gotto go grab a chinese.

 

[renault12ts]

In that case it would cost £1.80 to 6-30. Then £1 from then. You only paid 60p. It isn't logical, but it's probably true. Appeal it.

 

[robert.saunders]

As WLeg says, a pic of the tariff sign will help here

 

[The G.F.P]

lay an egg in the envelope and send that back to them

 

[Ronnie]

Seems fairly straight-forward to me, but parking attendants and Councils are not common sense people......could appeal but prepare for a long slog....

 

[robert.saunders]

... Councils are not common sense people...

I am

 

[The G.F.P]

Seems fairly straight-forward to me, but parking attendants and Councils are not common sense people......could appeal but prepare for a long slog....

if it was simple then they would not make money

taxes & death

sums life up

 

[Sp!ke]

Still cant see where I went wrong unless they impose some weird calculations and even if that is the case, it would seem that they are very unclear or even misleading charges.

 

[stevesey]

it does say £1.20 per hour and nothing about part hours, so you may have been expected to pay 2*£1.20+£1.00.

Is it one of those machine that calculates the end time as you insert the money (and prints the end time on the ticket - if so what did it say).

 

[flango]

Still cant see where I went wrong unless they impose some weird calculations and even if that is the case, it would seem that they are very unclear or even misleading charges.

I actually interpret that different and if I were parking the first £1.20 would have covered you until 18:24 This leaves 6 minutes until the £1 flat fee kicks in so for those 6 minutes you would have to pay another £1.20 then the flat rate would kick in so that would be another £1 Therefore total cost would be £3.40

You tried to pay the £1 flat rate 6 minutes before it actually started,I would still appeal it though.

 

[Sp!ke]

That may be the case, although it does accept money in increments rather than being in whole hour chunks, in which case it works the parking in minutes at 2p per minute.

Even if that was the case, I'm not after change or anything and my £1.32 would have taken me up to 18:30 and my 1.08 extra would have covered the futher £1 fee.

I think I am going to appeal it on the basis that there was no contravention.

If they want to try and say that they use some other method of calculating the charges then at the very least, this should be made clear.

It seems to me like they want it both ways. The machine gives no change and seemingly the suggestion is I should have paid for a whole hour for my 6 extra minutes rather than accounting for that 6 minutes out of the further £1.20 that I paid (20P more than the necessary £1 to cover the evening.

Deliberately misleading? I wonder how many others get caught by this.

Common sence would say that I paid over the required amount until 18:30 and then I correctly paid the further £1 thereafter.

 

[del320]

Conditions of use no 3:

" - a vehicle remains parked after the expiry time shown on the ticket."

As stevesey has already asked, what was that time?

Simple as...

 

[nigel cross]

I expect that its £1.20 an hour minimum charge for even part of that hour, so it should be £3.40.

But who knows these local councils seem to be a rule to themselves.

 

[andy_k]

First of all, did you check the expiry time on the ticket? My guess is (if it's anything like the ones down here) that your ticket would have expired at the end of the time you paid on the daytime tariff as that is when you parked the car.

The evening tariff starts when you park after 18.30

I don't believe that you can buy a ticket which crosses two tariffs

 

[Sp!ke]

You may well be right... the expiry time on my ticket says 19:24. However, if I parked after 18:30 and put in a pound, who'se to say thet the expiry time on the ticket will be any later bearing in mind the machine works out the times at £1.20 per hour.

Had the signage adequately made that clear, I would have paid the extra and saved myself £59 out of the £60 fine.

Simple mathematics shows that I paid for my time parked. If the council want to make up other conditions of parking then this should be made clear or the contract I entered into to park the car was unfair.