Don't know if anyone else has come across this, but I had a meeting at (of all places) a McDonalds the other week - not my preferred choice, but where the customer wanted to meet.

Anyway, having arrived ahead of him, I went in and had a coffee. He then arrived and I bought more coffees while we had our meeting. All in all I was there just over an hour and a half.

Ten days or so on I have now received a notice for a Parking Charge of £100 (generously reduced to £50 if I pay in 14 days!) from MET Parking Services. Having now done a bit of an internet trawl it seems they are fining McDonalds customers all over the country for having the temerity to dine in their 'restaurants.' I certainly didn't see any warning signs, but I wasn't expecting any. You'd also think it reasonable for McDonalds to have signs inside to warn it's customers not to outstay their welcome!

Given that this is a private invoice and not a penalty or fine, I'm minded to simply ignore it and tough out the inevitable threatening letters. Having said that I think the rules were changed in October 2012 and these companies may now have a better legal footing than they did before - I gather it all links to Section 4 of The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012!

Does anyone else have any experience of these? Better still, are there any traffic law legal brains out there with any experience/ practical advice on these?

They seem to have it covered on DISCO 3.

http://www.disco3.co.uk/forum/topic77816.h...ty+notices

Just ignore it. I had similar with parking eye. Ended up with 3 letters all getting slightly more aggressive. They eventually took the hint and off. [img]http://www.fuelly.com/driver/rob2529/range-rover[img/]
04, 4.4V8, Vogue Oslo Blue with LPG.
"You can sleep in your car, BUT you can't race your house!!!!"

If something can't be fixed with a hammer....... You have yourself an electrical fault!

I've ignored a few of these in my time, in every case I think I had right on my side and so long as you don't blink and give in the increasingly aggressive letters - usually from Bailiffs or debt collectors will stop.

You can't ignore the ones from the Police or the Local Council - you need to pay up or appeal properly.

Obviously you have to look at it from the car park owners point of view, are you abusing their hospitality, my local Tesco was full of cars left for the day, who's owners joined a colleague and took off for the day in another car. Tesco paid for the car park, paid for it to be surfaced, paid for it to have white lines : in fact made it a nice, safe place for their customers to park whilst they did their shopping. They have introduced signs, a three hour limit and some cameras - huge hoo ha in the local paper but now when SWMBO goes shopping she can park more easily. BTW if you need more that 3 hours, why I don't know, but you can sort it out in store - again FOC if you're a customer.

As has been said many times on this forum there are at least two sides to every issue  Geoff

Do people not shop online these days or is that just a sensible man thing?? FFRR MY06 facelift With TDV8 Alloys Zeros/ATR's
Mantec Sump Guard, Rigid Load liner, MY10 BT upgrade.

Sensible man thing - SWMBO always like to visit Tesco and never likes to use the self service tills, doesn't own or use a computer. My tickets have always been boozy nights out in Manchester, visiting daughter in Leeds or even once (back in the day) visiting a Computer Fair. Geoff