I saw an article headline today on the heraldsun.com.au site on something to do with the timing discrepancies by the underground sensors that Melbourne City Council use. I didn’t get to read the article itself because I’m not a subscriber and can’t read the “premium content”.
It did get me thinking though… the rule is you can only occupy the parking spot for up to the amount of time specified by the signage, regardless of the time your ticket expires.
Where a ticket is issued based on the sensors’ timing rather than the expiry time in the ticket, has anyone thought of asking the council to refund the portion of the ticket that is unused?
For example, if you arrive in a “1P” parking spot at 3:00pm and you pay for your ticket at 3:15pm (could be due to unloading your child and prams or for whatever reason for the 15 minutes), the sensor will trigger some sort of notification to the parking guy at 4:00pm, who will in turn issue a fine (let’s just say that he was super efficient and issued the ticket at exactly 4:00pm). In this case, there is 15 minutes remaining on the ticket that cannot be used.
If I look at it from a service point of view, no service is being provided for those 15 minutes that have already been paid for and the parking fine shows the exact time that the ticket has became invalid.
The other dodgey thing I think is, the parking meters that accept money regardless of the time and signs - even during free parking periods. With most things, if someone accepted payment, I would assume that a product/service will be provided or a refund is due. Why does this not apply to councils?
on the other hand, if you parked there and the sensor was broken. You'd be pretty frustrated if the machine refused to take your money and you had to repark. I suppose it's also "future proofing" if in case they have "happy hours" of free parking.
this should be the case, it's free money so i doubt they ever will though