The Commerce Commission – the Government’s fair trading watchdog – says it wants to hear from anyone who has received a parking ticket in error due to problems with number plate recognition technology.
Stuff has revealed how people from all over the country have been getting “breach notices” from parking enforcement companies falsely accusing them of over-staying time limits in shopping centre car parks or even, in some cases, using McDonald’s drive-thrus.
In every case the person had used the car parks more than once on the same day, but the cameras had failed to pick up subsequent entries and treated it as one long stay.
Nelson woman Jill Gardiner described how she had to use her phone’s Google maps history to prove she wasn’t there; several other people said they’d done the same thing or provided CCTV images from elsewhere.
One man told Stuff he was so frustrated by being wrongly billed that he sent the company involved his own invoice, demanding $1200 for the three hours he’d spent investigating and gathering information.
He threatened “prosecution and further action” if his bill wasn’t paid on time.
Christchurch woman Rosalind Terry complained to the Commerce Commission after she received a notice from Parking Enforcement Services, Wilson Parking’s enforcement arm, demanding $65 for supposedly overstaying the four-hour limit at Northlands mall last year.
The notice was cancelled when she provided her GPS history, but she was concerned others might be receiving the notices and not know what to do.
Vanessa Horne, the commission’s general manager of competition, fair trading and credit, said the commission had opted not to take further action on Terry’s complaint, but that wasn’t the end of the matter.
“The Commission … is closely monitoring the use of licence plate image recognition technology in the parking industry, and its impact on consumers,” she said.
“If this identifies problematic systemic conduct rather than an isolated technical issue, we will consider investigating that conduct.”
She urged consumers who believed they had wrongly been issued infringement notices “due to issues with these technologies” to report a concern on the commission’s website, and provide supporting evidence.
“While we cannot investigate every concern, each one is logged and assessed, and provides useful market intelligence,” Horne said.
She said the commission had received 120 reported concerns about Parking Enforcement Services and Wilson Parking since April last year.
A Wilson Parking spokesperson said that was in the context of around eight million parking transactions per year.
She said the company took customer feedback seriously, and “actively engages with the Commerce Commission, and other industry stakeholders, to identify opportunities for improvement to customer experience”.