- cross-posted to:
- bbc@rss.ponder.cat
- cross-posted to:
- bbc@rss.ponder.cat
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Car parking companies in the UK are close to being sanctioned theft.
Remember: If they can use ANPR to send you a large fine, they could just use it to charge you for the parking in the first place. The only reason they don’t is corporate greed.
The best thing is that in Northern Ireland, their fines aren’t legally enforceable. All they can do is send you angry letters.
To be fair it’s not for off in the UK, the rules are so flimsy that the chance of you actually being taken to court is almost zero. So instead you just have to put the angry letters in the bin until they finally get bored.
To be fair it’s not for off in the UK,
Northern Ireland is in the UK. I just specified this as the courts might work differently here. I know England has bailiffs and such. And for all we know, unless you’ve lived in or are familiar with Wales and Scotland, it could be the same situation there, too.
England ≠ The UK
Sorry, amateur mistake, I meant Britain.
Anybody who’s ever dealt with these companies knows exactly how scummy they are.
Pervious governments kept saying they’d do something about it, even announcing price caps (I think to £70 but I can’t remember), but it would always be silently scrapped after all the positive headlines of the brave Tories sticking it to private parking companies had done their job.
I suppose the good part of having a Labour government is that if they were to announce this and scrap it, it would be in headlines for a week, so they’d be a lot less likely to do it.
Here in Germany, 5 minutes of leaving your car would not count as “parking”. It’d still be in the realm of just “stopping” your car. If you walk away from your car like the defendant did, then it can be viewed differently, but in practice, it still means that no one’s mad enough to try to fine you in that time.
It’s not mentioned in the article, but how on earth did they cite her for 2000 in fingers in 5 minutes?
Hopefully any judge who saw that would dismiss it as unreasonable
In Australia with similar parking companies they have to prove that the losses incurred would amount to what they are trying to invoice.
That is, the invoiced amount can’t be a penalty, it can only be up to the amount required to recoup the financial loss they would incur from being unable to rent out that spot for the duration under their usual rates. This is the basic “making them whole again” principle of compensation that applies in the legal system when parties are injured.
The “penalty” amount that they attempt to invoice is thus pretty difficult for them to justify, seeing that all day parking can usually be had for $20 or so.
It says the £2000 were accumulated over 10 different events. So, it’s more like £200 fine for 5 minutes - which still seems ridiculous.
And that’s why I shouldn’t read at 3am
That’s still crazy, I agree
