Those bureaucratic, money-grabbing halfwits have missed the point again and have started making excuses.
For those who haven’t read my Too Conscious of Colour? rant, I visited my home town back at the beginning of April and got lumbered with a parking ticket. Nobody likes getting fined for stuff, but this was ridiculous. Sunday evening in a car park that’s always been free in the evenings with no apparent signage to tell me otherwise. I went back the next day after being told there was a blatant sign and found a small, white sign on the corner by the car park entrance.
The council have written back to me saying that the “small sign [I] refer to is in fact 1200mm x 1200mm and 2100mm high facing the entrance road in yellow, blue and orange. It is not insignificant and is a permanent fixture.” Well, that’s nice, but I was talking about the small sign and not the 2-metre-high sign. The sign that they’re on about doesn’t even mention the evening charges, so I guess I should be let off?
*thunk* Ouch!
They also mention that the lighting in the car park meets with BSI standards, which is nice. However, you still don’t see the sign which tells you about the car park charges do you?
Anyway, I’m fed up with the bureaucracy and the excuses. Maybe it’s time to let this one go.
Update, 11.07.2005
I ended up writing back to these people and made a further complaint to the council about the guy who I was handling my complaints. I received a letter back saying that they believed the signs were visible and adequate and that I was not entitled to my money back.
However, they were in agreement that the language and tone of the correspondence I received was inappropriate and not up to standard. I got a written apology and was told that a series of professional training programs had been propsed to improve correspondence skills. Whether this training will ever happen or not, I guess I’ll never know.
13 Responses to “Car Park Fine Update”
No, don’t let it lie because if they are referring to the yellow compliant sign then quite clearly they are talking about something else and not the reason for your parking ticket.
Thus you may like at ask them whether they have had a Ishihara colour-blindness test recently?
If they are referring to the permanent sign (and if it doesn’t mention the appropriate details) or is less than the 2100mm off the ground they have just dug themselves into a very-deep hole.
Well, Robert. You’ll be pleased to know that I have just written to the council again telling them that they are confused and I questioned the relevence of the larger sign. I sent them some more photos too, just to make sure they get what I’m writing about.
You mean you still have managed to drag this out without coughing up the fine; this is cool, which sign has preference? Surely the old one needed the irrelevant phrases editing/covering like they do with traffic lights when they are malfunctioning.
I suspect they’ll accuse you of Photoshop editing next just tell them you Legal Adviser Uncle Bob is on your side.
Well, I’ve just received another letter from the council – a rather offensive one this time.
Their car parks manager says that he thinks my “mental approach” to the matter indicates that I’m naturally unobservant. He also says that we are not going to agree about the adequacy of the signs and is now threatening me with court action (costing me a further £80 fee).
Yet again, I don’t think he’s actually read what I said. This letter doesn’t even try to make a case against me and ignores that I was arguing that his last letter was somewhat confused about the matter.
I’m thoroughly pissed off now. He is “not prepared to carry on [the] correspondence” and mentions that the council “do not have a formal dispute resolution precedure”. Well, why the hell not?!
I don’t really know what to say to this one because obviously it would probably be worth going to on to court on principle for several reasons.
Albeit (s)he won’t be paying; it will come out of tax-payers money and not theirs plus the odds are you will end-up footing the bill (though they do expect you’ll chicken-out first using bullyboy tactics).
However, it really makes me wonder if (s)he is “purposely discriminating” regarding your state of mind to me it sounds like they are implying you are in someway mentally unstable or ‘disabled’.
Surely if they have come to that opinion and have still not give a valid reason as to whether the new sign was adequate and superseded the previous sign they are at fault.
As they have failed to provide an adequate public service or deal with the complaint in a civilised manner (perhaps you can ask for a assistive interpreter if they think you have some mind-set issues).
So next step, put your complaint to the Director of the Service and if they don’t give the answer complain to the “Local Government Ombudsman”.
We need a “SAVE OUR .j” fund, maybe they’ll accept 10p per week instalments.
Actually, the guy mentioned disabled drivers who had also complained, tying them in with the criticism to observe “obvious” signs… he can’t have been to the same car park, as the words “Including Disabled” are partly obscured on the sign notifying drivers of the evening charges as they enter the car park in question.
In fact, his whole wording is pompous and offensive, in my opinion. I wonder if the fact that the elections are now over, and the Lib Dem MP won in that area (the council’s Lib Dem, too), has caused his obnoxious attitude.
Ooh, “Save Our .j” – I’m with you on that! 😀
I hearby pledge 10$ of my next weeks Adsense earnings to the save .j fund (assuming it hits that target and I still feel like donating 😉 )
Go on… get them to take you to court. It’d be funny. See if you can break the record for how long it takes a case to be thrown out.
Thus concluding a signification amount of disabled people have complained. Though nobody has had the bottle to actually stand-up to possibility getting it thrown out.
The stupid thing is that they don’t actually have a formal dispute resolution precedure, so what was the point in telling me that I could contest the fine at all?!
The guy that’s been writing to me is threatening me with having to pay the fine in full plus interest and legal fees. It’s that or pay the sodding fine. It’s not fair and the guy has a serious attitude problem, but it just ain’t worth the money or the hassle. I’m not giving up though…
The funny thing is that I’ve found the council’s online complaints form and it gives you nine categories to tick. I could get away with ticking most of them. So, next phase is to escalate the matter (without incurring the substantial financial situation of a legal battle).
Yes money sodding talks can you get “financial aid” contact the independent: “Local Government Ombudsman” watchdog.
As we all know you failed to read the sign for whatever reason, so did several other ‘less-abled’ people who thought the sign was obscured.
The problem is they’ll most likely win and you’ll get financially crippled though they are being less the useful with clearly stating why you have been issued the ticket without plastering prejudice to your civil enquiries.
Ask for a formal meeting in person with either them or your local MP they’ll reject obviously though it is probably worth a try. Shame you cannot offer to take them to court before they manage to take you.
You’ve done the local newspaper haven’t you?
One of the local newspapers printed my letter in full this week (I’ll link to the online version when it goes up). This last week has been busy, so I’ve only got around to writing a couple of letters today, one of which is to the guy who doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. =)
Well, the letter I wrote that got printed in the local paper is no longer available online it seems – no permanent archive? But on the front page of this last week’s North Devon Journal, the headline:
“Scrap the evening car park charges”:
It reports that between January and May this year, the evening charges from local town centre car parks brought in £19,000 from ticket sales and £36,000 from fines!
Now, local councillors are worried about the increasing number of people parking their cars in residential areas and local businesses are expressing concerns about the impact it has had on their trade.
So, that’s the beef around here at the moment. Car parking charges and wind farms.
So, the council finally decided that the evening car park charges had made enough money and annoyed enough people. One of the local newspapers ran an article a couple of weeks back reporting that the evening charges will finally be scrapped!
“Parking policy reviewed”: