Taxi Driver Online

The thread title does just about make sense, provided you know your abbreviations

And amazed all that fitted into the character limit for thread titles

Anyway, chapter and verse here, and same old, same old


Birmingham Airport NCP took £1,955 from taxi driver Ian Cook’s account in an instant over parking charge error

https://www.stratford-herald.com/news/t ... t-9455364/

Disbelief turned to fury for a Quinton taxi driver when an automated parking system swiped almost £2,000 from his bank account - and the company who runs it refused a refund until it had carried out a possibly lengthy ‘investigation’.

Private hire taxi driver Ian Cook, 56, had made two drop offs at Birmingham Airport’s Premium Set Down Car Park.

But while NCP’s number-plate recognition system had clocked him in on the first visit it had not registered his departure, meaning that when he revisited three days later and exited again, the system decided he had been there for the whole duration and charged him an eyewatering £1,955, clearing out his bank account.

Still in shock at how such a catastrophic mistake can be made, Ian, whose business is called Call Cookie, told the Herald:

“I drop off and pick up my clients at Birmingham Airport well over 100 times a year using the Premium Set Down Car Park, for this reason I have set up an automatic payment account with the car park operators NCP.

“Usually their ANPR cameras clock me going in and out of the Premium Set Down drop off and they automatically take the fee (currently £6 per 15 minutes) and send me an invoice via email.

On Monday, 16th February I dropped off my clients around 12.30pm and was in and out in minutes as normal. I went back around 9pm on Thursday, 19th February and again drove in and out in minutes.

“The next day I got an email invoice as usual but to my horror I had been charged £1,955 and they had already taken that money from my account. Apparently, I had parked in the Premium Set Down for three days, seven hours 45 minutes and 41 seconds!”

At this point Ian optimistically assumed he’d talk to a human and the error would be obvious and the money quickly returned. Alas that was not to be.

“I just thought it was just a mistake, and expected it to be rectified straight away,” said Ian. “I contacted NCP immediately. Their ANPR cameras obviously didn't clock me leaving on Monday the 16th and cameras didn't pick me up again until the 19th. It would be ludicrous to assume I’d stayed in Premium Set Down all that time, and I thought NCP would see this was a system error and automatically refund me my £1,955 immediately, but that is not the case.”

Talking to the Herald on Monday, Ian explained: “I spent most of the day on Friday on the phone to NCP customer services and each time being told somebody would call me back within 10 minutes, these calls never materialised.

“No one was helpful or seemed to care. Eventually I got told ‘You'll have to wait until we've done an investigation, and we'll get back to you with our findings.’ There was no indication of how long this would be.

I said, ‘You know, it's not 50 quid you've taken, you've taken nearly two grand!’

“But there was no reaction or care, it’s like they’re reading off a script. The NCP staff that dealt with me don’t seem to be the full ticket,” added Ian.

He added: “If they had said ‘There was a camera on the blink, we'll get that money sent to you straight away’ and said sorry, I would have been understanding.”

Frustratingly for Ian, he’s off on holiday to Tenerife with his wife Terry on Friday, but instead of looking forward to a nice relaxing time, he says he’s spent the build-up banging his against the brick wall of NCP customer services.

“I work hard and was looking forward to a break, but my whole week’s been ruined.

“It is disgraceful and not acceptable, I’m not even sure it's lawful,” fumed Ian. “Their attitude is disgusting.”

Ever-escalating car park charges are a frustration for Ian - and he thinks this latest incident is just another example of greed over customer service.

“Everyone is just trying to make money out of parking, it’s greed,” said Ian. “It's like an extra tax. When I first started my private hire business almost 10 years ago, it was a pound to drop off at Birmingham airport, and it just keeps going up.

“Heathrow have just put theirs up so Birmingham will usually copy.

“When my charges go up I have to offset the costs, so I have to pass that on to my customers.

“Last year I did 127 trips to Birmingham Airport, so it adds up.”

It is perhaps no wonder that the post-war founders of the NCP chain of car parks became millionaires - with one of them bought a grand house near Chipping Campden. Ian says he regularly drives by it as he works…. He won’t be knocking on the door asking for his money back though, the owner has long since died and the house sold to multimillionaire DJ Calvin Harris.

And besides that, after Ian angrily contacted Birmingham Airport itself and the Herald got onto NCP on his behalf, the company agreed to refund Ian this week.

The NCP told us on Tuesday: “We are sincerely sorry for the experience that Mr Cook had with us. This is an unusual situation, and we are currently investigating this to understand what happened to cause this.

In the meantime, we can arrange a same day refund and have reached out to him this morning to arrange that, and as soon as we hear back from him then the team can process the payment.”

However, Ian is still far from happy as NCP have not apologised to him, and the money had not actually appeared in his account as the Herald went to press.

He told us: “So I have been refunded, minus the £12 for parking. “No apology, no explanation as to what happened, no offer of compensation, just a ‘refund initiated’ receipt stating ‘please allow 10 days for your refund to be processed’.”

https://www.stratford-herald.com/_media ... M2WELN.jpg

https://www.stratford-herald.com/_media ... LLMMP1.jpg

https://www.stratford-herald.com/_media ... BQOE1U.jpg

Never been near BHX in my life, and I can go weeks without coming across any kind of parking charge of any kind

But even from 350 miles away I can work out what happened

Not that I can know with absolute certainty. But how long should it take these people to work it all out?

you haven't lived


Seriously though you used to have to pay to exit that car park usually by paying at in car park machines and then the barrier would recognise that you had paid and let you out (usually) Although in practice most exit lanes were blocked by cars which had not done so and expected to pay at the exit !

It sounds as though they are offering a system which speeds exit up with an automated payment system. This is always where these things go wrong because the technology often fails as witnessed by the many stories of people sent fpn's for supermarket car parks

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

I get that they shouldn't have charged the fella, but £1.955 for three days' parking is utter madness.

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IDFIMH

When I first read this I assumed it was maybe like Edinburgh and others, where it's £6/£8 or whatever for the first ten minutes, or whatever, then it's £1 per minute - remember the one reported from Edinburgh when the taxi driver was charged about £3k because of a similar glitch?


But that doesn't really equate to the figures in the article. But it does say this:


So I'd guess it means £6 per 15 minutes for the whole time you're there, and not a different charging level after the first £15 minutes.

But I make that maybe £1,920 based on the highlighted period above, so a tad short of the £1,955 actually charged.

But he also said this. Correct me if I'm wrong, but based on what's stated below, shouldn't the above read *eight* hours rather than *seven* hours?



So if the seven is changed to eight, then I make that £1,944, assuming it's £6 per 15 minutes, or part thereof

But it can't be a fixed £6 per 15 minute blocks, because £6 doesn't go into £1,955

But even assuming it's £6 per 15 minutes pro rata, it doesn't quite add up to £1,955. On the other hand, I'd guess there's a fixed minimum anyway, or you could end up paying just a couple of quid for the drop, which I doubt BHX/NCP would accommodate.

Anyway, whatever the fine detail, he was basically charged £6 for every 15 minutes between his first and second visit

(Can't be bothered checking all these figures again, but we're just provided with approximate timings anyway, so no point trying to reconcile the figures precisely. But they're obviously in the right ball park )

A few rehashes of that piece elsewhere. One on the Mirror's website. And *one* comment below that.

I mean, how utterly stupid on so many levels do you have to be to sound ostensibly switched on, but obviously not

Or maybe the usual dishonest gaslighting and demonisation thing...


Here's a couple of clues, but I'm sure people could make a whole list

1 He works, but doesn't have a lot of spare cash. In fact £2k in the bank in the first place might strike a lot of people as being quite a lot of cash

2 He doesn't keep a huge amount of cash in his current account. In fact, that might sound like a fairly typical sum, unless someone is really cutting it to the bone. But £2k would maybe pay for the direct debits etc, and maybe provide a cushion for unexpected withdrawals, such as from crazy car parking charge administrators (and that's the nice description...

Anyway, why am I even bothering typing this on here? It's just stating the absolute obvious

on a more serious note why did his bank allow the payment and not block it pending investigation ?

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Yes, Edders, the bank thing looks a bit odd, but maybe if he's done the signing up process and it's a legitimate source that's requesting the payment from his bank then they'll automatically process the payment if he has the available funds.

(And compare the other post about the card payment glitch in St Andrews, where the girl ended up having to renew her bank card etc...)

Not sure if it says so above, but the driver says in another source that he's changed his payment procedure from automatic to pay as you go.

But that's one reason I'm always wary about signing up for anything where they can effectively dip into your account, and you forget you've signed up to something, or if there's some sort of mega-glitch like here.