Think before you pay up
Tuesday 21st July 2009, 3:00PM BST.
From Michael de Petrovsky.
ON the subject of wheel clamping, your readers may have read recently (JEP, 10 July) that my vehicle was wheel clamped at the Elizabeth Marina after 6 pm on a Saturday evening, having been called there to pick up a boat owner and his crew.
Subsequent investigation revealed that WEB were responsible for employing the wheel clamper.
As the wheel clamper’s signs were so situated as to be obscured or non observable to a driver looking ahead in a normal driving position, I informed Jason McDonald, the WEB employee responsible for engaging the clampers, that if my £75 was not refunded I would take those responsible to court on charges of trespassing on my vehicle, obtaining money by extortion and with obtaining money with menaces. Mr McDonald was, I must say, very polite and promised to negotiate.
Soon afterwards, I obtained an offer of a refund of £50, as reported in your newspaper. I rejected the offer, saying ‘all or nothing’, and confirmed my intention of taking the clamper to court. Last week I collected my £75.
It has come to my notice that the clampers, and that faction of States Members who place their relationships with the land owners who employ clampers above any moral principles, all wish to retain the status quo.
Consequently, they do not want a court case to reach a position wherein clamping will have to be judged legal or illegal in this Island. Sadly, it would seem, the moral fibre of many of our politicians is as elastic as a gob of bubblegum.
David Schofield (JEP, 16 July) equates clamping with highway robbery and so it seems to those afflicted by it. Were it not a barbaric method of extorting money from the helpless, it would not be banned in more advanced societies than that in which we currently appear to reside.
I, too, sympathise with the renter of a parking place that finds it frequently obstructed by illegal parkers. However, there are many ways of ensuring that place is kept vacant. For example, it can be chained off or protected by hinged steel pillars, as are used in some of the town multi-storey car parks. The problem is not insurmountable.
Would you really like your wife or teenage daughter, late at night, to be forced to ride with a strange man, in an unmarked van, to a cash point because she hasn’t sufficient money in her purse to fork out £75+ and desperately needs her car back in order to take the children to school the next day or to get to work?
There have been cases of offers of release for sexual favours, and mugging is always a risk, perhaps not in Jersey as yet, but certainly in the UK.
These clampers operate in unmarked vehicles, produce bills devoid of addresses or named proprietors, and provide no traceable invoices.
One does wonder whether their ill-gotten gains are declared to the Comptroller of Income Tax and, were all those who have been clamped in the last couple of years to amalgamate their fines and present the total figure to the tax authorities, there might be a repetition of Al Capone’s final downfall.
Finally, I should like to say that if you get clamped, don’t pay up, if at all possible, until you’ve had time to think it out.
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If you are parking in a legal area you won’t get clamped. If you park where you shouldn’t tough you pay up when you get caught.
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While I agree that one should not park in somone’s private space for which they have paid rent, there is no justification for WEB to have the whole area of the waterfront littered with thouse threatening signs. I believe the following warning notice displyed in one’s windscreen would have the desired effect :-
Persons adding attachements to this vehicle, including devices to deter the theft of this vehicle, do so on the basis that ownership of said device, once attached passes to the owner of said vehicle, who may employ any means of his chosing to remove such device, which may include the destruction of such device rendering it useless for further use.
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Whilst obviously not advocating people parking where they shouldn’t,I do wonder what impression the appearance of lots of threatening notices, wheel clamps and exorbitant fines has on the much desired visitor or tourist whom we are trying to attract as a prospective customer for our already hard pressed tourist industry and our retailers in St Helier?
I personally feel that the level of these fines is almost userous at £75 and that £25-£30 is enough of a first offence deterrent.
In fact on a first offence it would be more appropriate to issue a polite warning notice, placed on the windscreen, asking for the car to be moved and pointing out the consequences of returning. Such action is more than adequate to deter most inadvertant offenders who might not have seen, or in the case of some visiting foreign nationals, might not have understood a “No parking” notice.
Failure to comply with that request then would make the persistant offender subject to a clamp with a rising scale of charge up to an officially agreed maximum of say £200.
That means that clampers, who should be checked out and licenced before being allowed to operate,would merely on a first offence at a particular site issue a warning and take a note of the car registration.Then if the vehicle returns they have a logged note that it is a re-offence at that site and can act accordingly as above.
On the subject of these practices in general at no point should we allow schemes such as are found in some parts of the UK where fines compound up to several thousand pounds as the fine goes beyond the level the car owner can afford to pay!These exorbitant fine levels originated in London in the 1980′s when some people were feeling so flush they were ignoring fines set at punitive but realistic levels.This had the highly undesireable effect of becoming a catch all scenario and it became seen as a way to make money even from people who through ignorance or oversight had made a genuine one-off mistake.
More alarmingly, when the economy went into recession at the end of the 1980′s the exorbitant level of these fines was not adjusted down to allow for people being in general,less flush.
Obviously if a car is left in a dangerous or blatantly obstructive way then it should be towed and the full cost of that should be recovered.
But to those who feel it is open season on parking offenders with regard to levels of fines imposed,I believe that it might just be the case that under Jersey law there is legislation specifically aimed at usuary that differs from accepted UK practice, although I am open to correction by any lawyers out there?
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I have just walked past the Royal Yacht hotel, and there are signs by the Museum and the central area that say unathorised vehicles may be clamped but there is no number to call ! One might as well put up signs saying cars may be vandalised if parked, or people stabbed if walking through the area.
Not very welcoming at all !
What is this facination of making life so threatening for people who chose to travel by car ?
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If it helps any, a WEB employee had their own vehicle clamped recently for parking in an area they had constantly moaned about others parking!
Kate, #1, that won’t last long. People will obey the rules and clampers will start bending the law to get their income, it happens elsewhere, it would be naive to think it won’t happen in Jersey.
Warren, I honestly don’t know! But, if the States want to ensure that more business is given to online companies elsewhere than to Jersey shops then the building on existing parking sites and the constant targetting of the car owner is the way to go. I have a St Helier parking space but I’m thinking of moving away from St Helier and if I do I suspect I’ll just buy more online to avoid the parking hassle.
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Leah, interesting response my coment. Basicaly, the powers that be have decided to make St Helier a car free zone, by widening most of the pavements, and displacing many on street parking spaces. This is having an effect on business, to a point that the majority of essential items can be bought out of town, leaving the town centre retail sites for speciality shops. Unfortuately, the level of rents in St Helier demand a high turnover / high profit margin level of sales, and guess what, this requires transport in of stock, and parking facilities for those wishing to buy goods.
I basicaly will not frequent a retailer where I run the risk of a parking ticket, clamp or worse, so I shop out of town.
Likewise, my reference to the signs by the Royal Yacht – This does not encorage me to take my wife for a romantic night to this hotel, when I can go to the Atlantic or Greenhills, and park my car with no risk to clamps or vandals.
As I have mentioned before, draconian parking restrictions are the death of many retail town centers, and even the corner shop, where one could at one time stop outside and pop in for a couple of items.
Do thouse in authority see the point ? No, because they have ample parking provision.
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Has anyone actually checked that htis practice is legal in Jersey? I would doubt it, it is illegal in Scotland, so why not press the issue and refuese to pay,that or carry a drill in your car to machine the clamps off.
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