On Christmas eve, I was given a parking ticket demanding payment for inconsiderate parking in a supermaket car park. I happened to park on the end of a row of cars and left plenty of room for vehicles to pass. I didn't notice that I wasn't parked on a marked bay.Outside the supermarket itself people park in two rows, none of them marked. Only the largest part of the car park has marked bays. I do not agree that I was inconsiderately parked and wonder if the ticket can be legally enforced. There was only one sign in the park,right down the other end stating terms and conditions.
Happy new year everyone.
Regards,Mike.
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They'd have clamped you if they wanted your money. Your case sounds pretty reasonable. As an aside, the people who park in disabled bays at supermarkets and saunter off arrogantly really get my goat. As do those who park in mother and child bays, then unload a bored 14 year old....Grrrr
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shouldnt that be 'parent and toddler' seeing as alot of men now do the shopping with the kids, i just think 'mother and baby' is wrong.
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Yes,yes, whatever. Excuse me for the non PC comment. I hate supermarket shopping, anyhow. Quite relieved to leave this to mum with three under 6's. Credit due, but what can you do to these selfish idiots who bag premiers spots under false pretentions? Muttered comments on walking past seem quite inadequate.
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I've recently had this problem - took junior (20months) with me to buy Xmas goodies and something for SWMBO.
Parked in the bay, (The alternative was parking about 200 yards away, and controlling an excited toddler in the busy carpark...) got back, and found I'd been clamped.
Spoke to the clamper, who pointed out it said "Mothers with small children"...
Spoke to the shopping centre manager, explained the position, and was grudgingly released.
Jobsworth W***ers!
(as an aside, I have been a bad man all my life, and will surely go to hell. Hell will be a shopping mall which extends through all eternity, full of Xmas shoppers...)
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i always thought that hell would be the M25 at rush hour.
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hell as an Endless trip round the M25, THEN an eternity in the shopping mall.... Time for me to get back to church! :)
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What can you do? Report them to the manager immediately and make sure he/she acts on the information.
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You send your money in their shop, they give you parking free. The hell with having to pay. All we do is have the till receipt validated and hand it in as we leave along with the parking ticket. Jesus if they could find a way to charge you for the air you breathe in Britain they would.
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Growler, they do - after a fashion.
How much is it to use the air pump to fill your tyres these days, lads? :)
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Tesco car park spaces are very cramped: I have a friend who complains: he drives a Micra!
Thank goodness for home delivery.
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If you weren't clamped and drove away I should ignore it and perhaps don't shop there for a while. There was an earlier thread re zebra crossings in supermarket car parks - do they have legal validity etc? A search for that thread might give you some ideas. Good Luck
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Need more details - give me the exact wording on the ticket. Will advise you but before you act on it get face to face advice off a brief. I need to know in addition the design of the bit of car park you were on and also what it said on their tiny sign.
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Mike,
If the car park is owned by the supermarket/s I would ignore it.
However in my town they are owned by the local council and the ticket is from them. If thats the case I imagine its similar to if you were outside in the road.
If thats the case go to the local council office and plead your case.Sometimes it works.....
Alvin
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I recd a ticket for parking over two bays (just) in multilevel carpark in Bognor Regis. I wrote a very nice letter to the council, they responded with a slap wrist and no fine, however, looking back the offence was written on the ticket ie not one of the standard offences that are just ticked, I dont believe parking in two bays in my case was an offence as no notice to warn against was displayed.
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> I dont believe parking in two bays in my case was an offence as no notice to warn against was displayed
You shouldn't need a notice to warn you that parking across two bays is selfish - common courtesy should tell you that. How long would it have taken you to tidy up your parking and free up one of the bays for someone else? 10 seconds??
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Easy comment Ian and up to a point true. But who sets the standard for manouevering space in car parks and specifies the bay sizes. I have a xantia, not the longest or widest car in the world, hell's delight to get into spaces at the local Somerfield and always overhangs at one end or the other.
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Fair point Simon, although Richard makes no claim that it was actually impossible to fit his car in a single bay - he just implies he took up two bays because there was no notice telling him not to do so. I share Andy's irritation at people who do this, especially in already crowded car parks.
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simon, you should fell sorry for people like me, i have a car with NO power steering.
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Richard
You were lucky! My wife was booked recently in the local Council car park for 'not parking in a marked bay'.
She actually had two wheels just over the line (it was the end bay), because when she arrived the adjacent bay was filled with a car parked over the line - gone when she got back of course.
She was really annoyed as the real illegal parking (single yellows, pavement, double parking) in the town is pretty well ignored, but they have time to book people for this sort of thing. Snotty letter to the Council got nowhere, despite pointing out just how much their jobsworths were annoying those who actually used the car park and paid for it, whilst ignoring the real problem.
Regards
john
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One of my pet gripes is those people who either park 'off centre' in the bay, narrowing the adjacent bay, or those who just swing their car in and leave it at an angle. It only takes half a minute to straighten up!
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No disagreement at all with most of what is said above, eg misuse of priority spaces, bad parking, small bays etc.
There is a big debate in a nearby town about a shopping centre, or should I say big steel shed park, issuing tickets if folks have parked longer than two hours.
The problem is that it is placed near enough to the town centre to park and walk in; consequently the free parking is abused and at busy times spaces can be difficult to find. Most irritating when all you really want to do is go to Halfords for that shiny chrome exhaust trim and price up a set of illuminated washer jets.
Talking about the above debate there was one amusing letter to the local rag by someone who had been fined and complained that the 6 foot high signs were difficult to read by someone with poor sight. Durrrr! What's someone with eyesight that dodgy doing driving in the first place! But that's another thread!
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Hi Mike,
Was this carpark owned and operated by the supermarket concerned, and not a public one ?
If so, they have a legal obligation to publish their conditions where all users are able to view them-as a rule of thumb here,' the reasonable man' rule is applied in law. ie, would a reasonable person using their carpark in every day use be able to view their signs, are they lit when dark ?
It is likely, if the carpark is owned by the supermarket, that they would be unlikely to pursue the matter due to cost. If it was me, i would make notes of the circumstances at the time, and wait for them to contact me
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A few weeks back, there were two threads:
Are garages getting smaller?, and
Are cars getting bigger?
Maybe one of the backroomers can let us know if there is a minimum size for carpark spaces?
I know here that some designers shoehorn as many spaces into a carpark as possible. If we all drove fiat 500's, it wouldn't be a problem...
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Ian
Size does matter. Recently the local council employed a firm of contractors to repaint the diagonally arranged parking bays in the centre of the High Street, specifying a bay width of 2.7m (I think).
The contractors dutifully measured out 2.7m gaps along the row of bays, laid out the angle and painted the lines. Big error. In the process it wasn't spotted that the angle of the lines reduced the width between them to well under the required size.
Result - you could get the car in the gaps but couldn't open the doors. Much confusion, photos in the local paper, followed by a hasty repaint job.
Did the council specify the job correctly, or did the contractor get it wrong - I don't know, but it did provide some amusement.
Regards
john
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According the the squaw on the hippopotamus, a 45 degree angled bay would then be only 7 foot and change wide. OOPs!
Don't they teach sums at school no more?
Like the City council which built a multi-million pound 50 meter Olympic Swimming pool, only to find they'd done their calculations wrong, from metric to imperial, and ended up with a 49.91m pool....
Oops again!
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When I wer a lad a car parking space was 8' by 16', and the width of the access roads were (I think) 20', or 14' for diagonal bays.
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have a read of
groups.yahoo.com/group/parkingticket/
the contacts given may be useful
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The Real Bogush wrote
I bet you could drive down the access road at 90mph and handbrake turn into the space without speedbumps, cameras, yellow lines or **** coppers to interfere with your freedom. Those were the days eh.
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The Unreal Bogush wrote>
T
>
I quite agree, competitive autotests on supermarket car parks do allow you to fling the car around with complete abandon plus get a measure of how good you really are, or maybe are not.
It was proper organised motorsport you "were" talking about then was it not????
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In Germany a local firm built a British Army Sgt's Mess with a purpose built snooker room for a full size table. They left about a 3ft space each side of the table and several pillars that jutted into that space.
How long is a snooker cue?
Table changed for a 3/4 size and 'sawn off' 2ft cues used where pillars got in the way.
Building designed by a British firm - oops.
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Architect designed a new accommodation block for a university. Then it was realised that the space available was actually smaller than he'd been told. So they reduced the scale of his design and built it anyway. Boy were those rooms cramped!
(Uni in question used to run a course in Environmental Psychology. In the first week the students were taken round the campus and shown all the 'bloopers': as well as the above there was also the main admin building with its main entrance facing the wrong way, and a 'glass bridge' which had been specified so that a view of the Cathedral was not obstructed. Only place you could see the Cathedral through this building was from the car park. Don't remember the other glories.)
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Okay, why are parking spaces in supermarket car parks always at ninety degrees to the access road? Why can't they be at fourty-five degrees? If they were, the access roads could be much narrower and getting into and out of the spaces would be much easier. All a planner has to do is look at the cars parked in right angled bays and see that half of them are parked at forty five degrees in the ninety degree spaces anyway.
HJ
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