I'm on Quora and practically every third posting is some kind of 'how do I get very very rich very quickly with no money'. Sigh. If it were only that easy...
Oh, I'm also getting 'can you answer this question?' which is usually writing based and would be answered by even the most cursory glance at Google. I'm not entirely sure that the whole of Quora isn't some kind of scam actually.
Speak to the police.
Scams have been reported recently over the whole issue of only being able to pay car park charges by a code. In particular elderly drivers used to paying cash are getting to be victims of car park scams. I'm sure I will fall victim to something like this eventually.
I've spoken to management and they say that there's not much we can do - the gentleman has agency, is committing no crime and is perfectly free to spend his money as he wishes. But I might have a word with the next policeman who comes in to buy his lunch, just to get some advice. It's hard because I don't know where this man lives, or his name.
There was a You and Yours programme on Radio 4 the other day, talking about private parking charges and scams etc (I only heard a part of it) and it sounded like a nightmare. I parked in Thirsk Railway Station in the summer to pick up my brother from the train and there was only an app for parking. I couldn't get it to install on my (quite elderly and quite full) phone, so I just had to chance it. It was a Sunday, there were no staff about to ask, and there was only a few minutes before the train so I couldn't keep trying.
Plus- wouldn't a Sunday have been free not so long ago?
Not in a station car park. If it had been an ordinary car park, probably (still is, at the market place in Thirsk), but people catch trains and go away every day of the week, so it's a terrific earning stream. Oh, the market place is about a two mile walk from the station and my brother has a disability, which is why I didn't just park there for free and walk!
I spotted this loophole years ago. There's nothing to stop anyone from sticking a fake sticker over a legit QR code. The stupid "app" doesn't say "this URL will take you to https://scammyscammers.org/scams, are you sure?" - it just goes there.
Right.
I'm always thinking 'I need to get those' when I wake up on a Sunday morning. Got a growing pile of them in the bedroom, never used.
I get them for Swifty.
What did I do there? As it turns out, absolutely nothing...
I strongly suspect it's a way of collecting huge "fines". I regard them as such and not "charges". How these companies get away with it is beyond belief having regard to UK consumer protection law which clearly states that consumers are only required to pay a reasonable cost for goods and services, and what is reasonable "is a matter of fact". I doubt that anyone would regard a charge of £60/£90 for say overstaying by half an hour etc as reasonable. One motorist challenged this in the High Court but lost one of the reasons given was that parking companies should be allowed to make a profit out of these contracts. Bout time it was stopped.
Apparently there are changes afoot for parking companies, whereby fines will be pegged to those given by the local council for similar parking overstays, to prevent private companies from making huge profits. Although this could just mean that local councils put up THEIR parking fines...
This is pretty much what the You and Yours programme was saying - that any paperwork sent from a private company could be ignored, basically, although there was one poor man who was being hassled with letters from bailiffs regarding a parking fine (apparently completely illegally, according to the bloke who was the 'expert'). I guess they just make your life so unpleasant that you pay up.
This was the gist of the experts comment - that using bailiffs was illegal if the case hadn't been through the courts. The person had no way of knowing whether the letters he was getting really were from bailiffs, of course, or just letters written on headed paper that purported to be from bailiffs.
