parking cowboys invited round to my place

[Raify]

I live in a block of flats, one of 4 blocks on (mostly) private land.

Parking is not really a problem, busy sometimes but always possible. It's got busier recently as older people 'move out' and are replaced by couples with 2+ cars.

So, one of the residents has engaged the services of www.parkforce.com and erected these signs:


small text on sign: this land is strictly for the parking of motor vehicles when complying with the terms and conditions as indicated below...PERMIT HOLDERS ONLY
If you park on this land contravening the above terms and conditions you are contractually agreeing to pay a parking charge to the sum of £60 within 14 days. You will incur additional charges resulting in further action being taken against you if the fee remains unpaid

Apart from my inherent distrust of these companies I am annoyed because:

1. No one was consulted
2. There isn't really a parking problem.
3. No-one has been given parking permits yet, so in theory everyone could get ticketed (although their website seems to suggest that the residents do the ticketing)
4. What are you supposed to do about visitors?
5. Some of the road leading to the parking, is owned by the council. Well they re-lay the surface at least.
6. According to parkforce.com, the 'concerned resident' who goes round ticketing cars, get's £10 + vat a pop.


I wonder if anyone here has experience of parkforce.com, or similar systems, or any advice on the situation. I intend to have a chat with our concerned resident this week...

TIA

Nathan



>> Edited by Raify on Monday 5th September 15:44

[Raify]

thanks for the replies! I especially like the crowbar + bin suggestion. I am seriously tempted to rip them off the walls and bin them.

Interesting point, dvd, about only the land owner being able to invoke such a system. That means that the company ****** Properties Ltd (to whom we pay the ground rent) are the only people who could do this.

Is there a paragraph stating this law, which I can stick over the offending signs?

Cheers,

Nathan

[Raify]

superlightr said:

Cowboys ? are you sure? Whats happened to naming and shaming rules? Sounds like you need to gather your facts before you start to call companies 'cowboys'. Have you spoken with the managing agents? Perhaps a director has authorised this? Unfair to slag a company off for doing what they have been asked to do. Are you sure they clamp cars?

Apologies then, I'm sure they're very nice people, only interested in keeping traffic moving / easing parking for the greater good.

Oh wait, they don't keep traffic moving. They just take £60 from people, give £8 to the DVLA, £10+ vat to the concerned landowner. I'm sure they give the rest to charity, or to help fund public transport or something.

I wasn't trying to 'slag off' this company (I couldn't resist the profit making tw@ts jibe). I was bemoaning the fact that someone has engaged their services without consulting anybody.

And I have never said they clamp cars, read the post (and their website) properly. Sounds like you need to gather your facts too.

[Raify]

As far as I can tell (the signs only just went up, and I've only had a chance to speak to the resident's assoc. chairman) Parkforce have been invited by a private resident in one of the other blocks.

**No, I haven't had a chance to speak to the Land owning company**

From what I understand about this system (from the website) our concerned resident will be the one to slap the tickets on the cars. He sends the details off and gets £10+vat back for his trouble. The managing agents do not control it.

There isn't a real problem with parking. Even when it's busy, there's somewhere to park and this is with 95% of the garages being used to store cardboard
The residents assoc chairman did mention our concerned residents annoyance with a guy trading cars, who sometimes has 3 cars at a time. To be honest, even with that many, there still isn't a problem, and at least he uses one of the garages for a car! We're too far away from the station to get commmuters, and too well hidden to attract town centre shoppers.

I see your point about having a go at companies with no facts, but IMHO, these sort of companies have no "good name" to protect.

[Raify]

ashes said:

Parking has never been a problem before or since, but it seems increasingly that its here's a solution, where's the problem

The problem was "How can we make money from doing virtually nothing?"

This is the solution.

[Raify]

why didn't you say that in the first place? I was asking for people's experiences of this company, and clearly you have a positive one.

Thanks for offering a "light at the end of the tunnel" If what you say is true, it seems that they are the exception that proves the rule in the 'parking enforcement industry'

Perhaps some friendly mod could change the thread title to "Parking company invited round to my place"

[Raify]

You're absolutely right, sending a letter advising what they were planning to do was the least they should have done. The first I knew about it was arriving home late one evening to be confronted by dozens of signs. As far as I knew that evening, I'd just agreed to pay £60 for a parking fine at home.

And you're right about the thread title, it was a bit previous on my part. Can a mod change it please?? I'd hate to break the rules.

[Raify]

I've been so lazy, but I've got a letter almost written (in my head mostly) to send to this numpty concerned resident. We'll see where that leads us.

In the meantime, we can attach a contractual agreement of our own to your car, along the lines I suggested above...

Or we could just get loaded on friday evening and rip all the signs down...

[Raify]

Thanks! Another good point that I shall be adding to my letter.

[Raify]

I agree. I can understand superlightr's point of view about a company's reputation, but do they have one to protect in the first place?

reminds me of Sadam Hussein suing the Sun...

I'm joking of course, all usual disclaimers apply