Warning to shoppers parking at Sainsbury’s Forest Hill

How on earth then are people meant to pay?
Not the customers fault and ticket inspectors should also check again to report it to busy to write a ticket out works both ways. What a drama these stupid things cause? Why charge in first place the 1st hours maybe… should be free or something???

I got a ticket recently (Bellingham Leisure centre) despite the machine being out of order. I appealed and was told that I should have either used the telephone pay service or just not parked there.

You have to use the Pay By Phone app, which is great if you have a smart phone and it works, but isn’t everyone.

I was at Beckenham Place Park at the weekend where they now charge £2 / hour with the same app. Except the app had decided the weekend was free parking and so was giving people until 8am on the Monday for free.

On Monday at 8am the app notified me that my parking had expired. I’ve taken pictures and screenshots in case a parking ticket comes along in the post. Not a great feeling.

Aren’t you supposed to pay with the Ringo app now - agreed that’s a massive PITA especially if you’re paying ‘zero’ for 2 hours - does that even work?

IIRC it does, but you have to pay the admin fee of 20pish

The East Dulwich one has number plate recognition (on a sign that says ‘hello < your numberplate >’ then I presume if you park longer than the allowed time they automagically issue you a ticket. Fully automated and easier for everyone.

Sainsbury’s and Beckenham Place Park are both Pay By Phone at present. I have Ringo installed too which looks to be used more in Beckenham / Bromley.

The apps are easy to use, and it’s nice that you can extend your parking, so no quibble with that myself. The apps should know the parking rate, so you dial in the price and location code and it tells you how much it will charge (even if it is 0p) and that’s it done.

I suspect these apps are a lot cheaper to deploy and run than ANPR systems.

When my son went to gymnastics there pre lockdown, that machine was out of order more than it was working. The staff advised to take a photo of the machine not working in case but maybe things have changed now.

Same experience. As part of the appeal they told me I could have paid at ‘the station office’. I’m fairly sure no such thing exists.

If both machines are out of order you’re supposed to ring a number, I’ve never been in that situation

Is the car park no longer free for the first hour like it used to be? I know you had to get a ticket so they knew how long you’d been there but it was still free.

Yes, it is still free for two hours at Sainsbury’s Forest Hill and comes up with 0p on the App.

I believe Sainsbury’s East Dulwich own the car park, Lewisham council own the car park next to Forest Hill Sainsbury’s.
I thought that the ticket enforcement had to take a ticket from the machine and put it next to the penalty notice to prove that the car was out of time and then photograph it because there were cases of enforcement changing the time stamps on their cameras to get extra tickets issued (not necessarily in Lewisham). I may be wrong.
Maybe it is now expected that everyone has a smartphone to use the pay by phone app.

Thank you!

I keep pen and paper in the car to write down date and time arrived and put it on the dashboard. They just need to know when you got there to know if you’ve been longer than two hours.

Further to the tweet that started this, now heard back from Lewisham Council and they say tough. You have to display a ticket. To the person who said Ringo will charge 0p, is that new? Because last time the machines were OOO in the same Sainsbury’s car park we did use Ringo and you had to pay minimum £4. My bigger issue, as someone has said on this thread, is there is no incentive for the private contractor to maintain these machines. That’s probably what it is all about. That - and the fact that is assumes you have a mobile phone, which not everyone has. So is discriminatory policy. To quote directly from the NSL letter on behalf of the council you need ‘a pay and display ticket or a PayByPhone session before leaving the car unattended’. So, let’s say you are my parents, no mobile phone, can only make irregular trips to shop due to frailties, machine OOO, can’t pay - can’t park somewhere too far from store as can’t walk too far - then no can do. All because a machine to give you a FREE ticket is not maintained.

This is interesting. Obviously not having a mobile phone is not a protected characteristic, but perhaps this could be judged as ageism by the back door. I wonder if there is precedent

Some car park attendants used to alter the time on their machines. This allowed them to charge the customer for an extra hour that they had not used and pocket the extra charge. Always check the time on a ticket when you collect it.

Would be interesting to know this though expect no precedent. Assumption that everyone has a mobile phone or has to park elsewhere (where is free parking in FH by the way?) - given the current debate over digital poverty this seems somewhat tone deaf from Lewisham council.

I haven’t seen a traffic warden on our street since lockdown. I even forgot to renew my permit for a couple of months and didn’t get a ticket despite being in a CPZ