Wilson Parking

[James]

If you think Parkwise is bad, try using Wilson Parking. These guys are truly in league with Satan. Check this out.

A few months ago I parked at a Wilson Parking lot. I put the weekly ticket I purchased on the dash.

When I got back to the parking lot, later that night my car had been towed. I went to the tow yard ('Harbour City Tow & Salvage') ready to kill someone as I knew I had put the ticket on the dash. When I checked the car I found the ticket under the front seat. The guys at the tow yard saw this and said, oh it was probably blown under there when you closed the door. They siad it happens a lot but they checked the car and couldn't find the ticket so towed me (funny that considering I managed to find it so easily). They said I had to pay the $160 for towage. Which I said I wouldn't pay. They told me if I payed them then told Wilson Parking about what happened and they'll reimburse me. This sounded fair enough, though in hind-sight I should have just headbutted the guy and run him over.

So I paid them and contacted Wilson Parking the next day as they aren't contactable at night - I can only assume because they are either:
a) Conducting a seance in order to speak with their boss - Lucifer, or
b) Feeding on the blood of the innocent in the nightly flight of vampires.
Upon contacting them, they said that they wouldn't refund me. They said they clearly state that ticket should be displayed on the dash. They also said they were not responsible for the fact that Harbour City Tow & Salvage had told me that Wilson Parking would refund me.

I said to them that the ticket had been on the dash when I left and that I have proof that I have a weekly ticket. I said I would accept paying $60 for the towage from the parking lot (as the ticket must have been blown off the dash) but to pay an extra $100 for the penalty of not having a ticket when I had actually purchase one was ludicrous. The guy who responded basically told me I'd have to take them to court. Something I haven't got time for. To make matters worse they are an Australian company so most of the revenue you pay goes to bloody Aussies.

[Guest]

Tournament Parking is no better - both them and Wilson's are connected through shareholdings in Harbour City Salvage so its not suprosing they work in collaboration together, though I am not sure about the other Tow comapny's.
The best solution is when leaveing, put a coin coated with glue in the ticket issuing machine - it stuffs the machine up for ages and is costly to repair

[hadyn]

oohh a conspiracy theory, Tournament and Wilsons have no shareholding in Harbour City Tow and Salvage. I can assure you of this, Harbour City are a completely separate entity from these companies.

[Jarrod Coburn]

Haydyn is correct, so far as the Companies Office has records to show, there is no ownership link between Wilson Parking and Harbour City Tow & Salvage.

Wilsons is Auckland-based and owned by Gary Koch, HCT&S by Vivienne and Stephen Okeby in Wellington.

[Simmering]

I just had exactly the same experience as James, except with Tournament Parking in Wellington.

I don't think it's the fault of the parking people at all, although I'm not saying that Wilsons Parking don't feed on the blood of the innocent (I'm sure they do... they are the worst of the worst when it comes to parking people, but that's a whole other gripe).

I paid my ticket, put it on the dash and carefully closed the door as I alsways do. When I got back sure enough it had been towed for failing to clearly display a ticket. When I finally managed to get to the tow yard, I opened the car and clearly pointed out the ticket which had fallen down into the footwell, but still clearly visible to anyone breaking into my car to let off the hand-brake.

The end result was that they just didn't want to know, didn't care, didn't need to. They just hide inside their bullet-proof room and wait for you to pay them... if you ever want to see your car again you really have no choice. So eventually after trying to carefully explain my rights in this matter and having them explain that they don't know anything about that they 'just truck drivers'. I caved and payed them.

From what I can find on the web it looks like other countries have introduced legislation to control these guys, but NZ has not. The information I've seen suggests that there is no limit on what they can charge you and they can pretty much tow you anytime they feel like it as long as they have a piece of paper stating they can do it... but even then I'm quite sure they tow without it.

Here is a perfectly plausible scenario - an underpaid ticket officer strikes a deal with a tow company and agrees to split the profit of a tow. He writes out a ticket for failing to display a ticket and picks a car at random. The tow company, comes along, breaks into the vehicle, moves or just removes the ticket from the dash, photographs the dash to prove it wasn't there and then tows the car. Under New Zealand law, there's no checks or balances against this happened and there's absolutely nothing you can do to prove it happened and that you're not at fault.

What we have is a legal loophole you could drive a Boeing 747 through. If you could get away with this as a towie wouldn't you? There's virtually zero risk of getting caught and it's a license to print money.

I had another issue with Harbour City a year ago where they towed me from a WCC carpark they didn't have tow rights to. They claimed it was parked in a nearby park they did have rights to. We spent an hour on the phone with them trying to talk to a manager or someone in authority and they resused to pass the call along to their manager also. By complete coincidence we happened to have the Wellington City Council Parking Coordinator with us who also tried talking to them, explaining who he was and asking to talk to the manager, still to no avail. Needless to say he ended up yelling at them over the phone and threatening their entire WCC contract but got nothing from them. I think this clearly illustrates the kind of people we're dealing with here... although I'd prefer not to use the word 'people' because that implies I share the same genetics, which is an insult to the species as a whole.

Is there anything that can be done to stop this legalised thugery?