Appeal Accepted - Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) Cancelled

As per my previous blog post, on Saturday (despite paying for my parking using my mobile phone) I found a Penalty Charge Notice stuck on the window of my car.

It was the first (and last) time I had parked in the St Andrew's Parade car park in Kettering.

I'm please to say that the matter has now been resolved as I have received an email saying the Penalty Charge Notice has been cancelled and they apologised for any inconvenience and stress caused.  Although the charge has been dropped and the matter is closed, I wont be returning to this car park and I certainly wont be paying using my mobile phone as I can no longer trust this payment method.

St Andrews Parade Car Park - Kettering

DO NOT PARK HERE

If you ignore my warning then BEWARE - do not use your mobile phone to purchase a parking ticket as not only will you pay an extra 45p for doing so but (if like me) you will end up with a bill for £70.

This is a relatively new car park and up until now I've always driven past it.  Yesterday I decided to park my car in it as it was pretty much empty and to be honest I can now see why...

I didn't have any change on me at the time so I was pleased to see you could sign up to Dash Parking and pay using your mobile phone.

I downloaded the free iPhone App, registered and then paid for my ticket.

Halfway through shopping I decided to drop off the couple of carrier bags I had to my car before I continued what I was doing and to my horror when I returned to my car I had a £70 parking ticket stuck on my window.

I immediately called the number on the back of the ticket to explain their mistake but I was told they only collect payments at the weekend and I would have to call back on Monday!

I have an invoice in my email and a screen-shot of the text I received confirming that I have paid for my parking yet they still gave me a ticket - it seems they may have the technology to allow you to pay by phone but they don't seem to have the technology to check it.

NOT happy, NOT impressed and will NEVER park here again or use Dash Parking ever again as £70 to park is far too expensive.

:(

**UPDATE**

I've had a response from the company involved, you can read all about it by clicking this link:

St Andrew's Parade Update

LoveFilm 6 Month Subscription

The other day I came across a special offer on Amazon for a 6 Month Subscription to LoveFilm for around £35 which is an absolute bargain!

The subscription should be with me by the middle of the week so by the time I've created my LoveFilm account and selected items I want to rent I should be watching a couple of new DVDs by the weekend (hopefully).

LoveFilm have a reputation when it comes to their special offers.  If you are so much as 1 second late in cancelling then you have to pay full price for another month before they end the subscription.

The Internet is littered with tales of disgruntled customers, some fall foul of the notice period you need to give them to cancel and some mention shoddy salespeople not telling them the full story when they stop them in shopping centres.

They're now owned by Amazon so I would like to think that they have cleaned their act up now.  Needless to say when the paperwork arrives in the post I will be reading the terms and conditions very, very carefully and making a note of any important dates on my calendar.