Wilson and the parkers’ lot
Car-park operators are not much loved. But Wilson Parking’s attempt to fine a driver for parking on land the company doesn’t even own has taken the parking wars to a whole new level.
The same company is already in bad odour with drivers following other bad ticketing decisions this year. Wilson Parking is starting to become the company we hate to park with.
The company handed out two tickets this year to a campervan in a tiny car park on Wellington’s Karo Drive. This patch of land, which is directly in front of a Wilson Parking lot, is a once-secret and now famous parking oasis cherished by the harried Wellington driver.
The company doesn’t own the land and so has no authority to issue tickets. Shane Leach got his first $114 ticket from Wilson Parking for parking there in February, and he complained. The company withdrew the notice.
Then he got another ticket in April, which he also disputed, but was told his argument was invalid and the fine would go to a debt collector. When journalists contacted the company, it backed off. Wilson has since admitted to other ‘‘incorrectly breached notices’’.
In April, Wilson Parking apologised after incorrectly issuing five tickets in one day at the Johnsonville shopping mall. The tickets were given for breaking a two-hour time limit at the shopping centre. But the centre’s parks all allow for three-hour parking.
About the same time, shoppers at Coastlands Mall in Paraparaumu got $65 parking fines for returning too quickly between visits. The ticket said they had breached the four-hour parking limit.
This led to another uproar and eventually the company backed down.
In the meantime, Christchurch drivers are complaining about car parks that one of the company’s executives himself described as ‘‘bomb sites’’.
Wilson Parking has become unpopular in the city since Wellington suffered its terrible earthquakes. It adds insult to injury when you’re expected to pay for parking in potholed, muddy, often poorly lit and sometimes even flooded car parks.
Wilson Parking, you might say, has a PR problem. It doesn’t help at all that the company is a multinational whose directors have included tycoons with colourful pasts.
The Kwok brothers from Hong Kong, for instance, used to be directors of a British Virgin Islands company that owned Wilson Parking Holdings. The Kwoks, according to the Panama Papers, had assistance from the controversial Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca to help hide their control of the company.
Wilson Parking dominates the New Zealand parking sector. It reportedly has hundreds of staff and parks tens of thousands of cars each day.
Now it might perhaps be true that New Zealand drivers assume that a free car park is part of the average Kiwi’s birthright, and that anyone charging for this service is an enemy of the people.
This is wrong both in law and in ethics, but carparking operators should tread carefully with their customers. Charging for parks they don’t own, or issuing tickets without justification, is dumb and counterproductive.
Wilson Parking dominates the New Zealand parking sector.