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Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Tuesday, May 09, 2006 5:16 pm by Cristina   No comments
At least not according to this article:

It has been dubbed the Dick Turpin of the car clamping world.
And now the notorious clamping firm in Haworth, which infamously immobilised a car while the driver slept inside, has struck again.
A group of pensioners had their visit to Haworth ruined by a parking attendant who hit them with a £50 fine after they were "too slow" to get their car parking ticket from the machine.
Michael Flanagan and his disabled wife Margaret, from Leeds, were treating relatives to a day out in Bronte Country when they decided to park in the Changegate car park, run by Car Stoppers.
But their day turned sour when Mr Flanagan, 66, went to get change for the parking machine and came back to his car to find a fixed penalty notice on his windscreen for failing to display a valid ticket.
Mr Flanagan said: "I couldn't believe it. My wife and her sister stood at the end of the car park while I went to get change but when I got back five minutes later I had a ticket."
To make matters worse, Mr Flanagan said the attendant told him he had to pay the £50 fine before he would be allowed out of the car park, even though the ticket clearly states the fine can be paid within 14 days.
By then, he said, the day had been spoiled. "It seems as though they prey on pensioners who are slower at getting their tickets, which isn't fair. I spoke to the attendant as we came into the car park and I thought he was watching me as I went to get change."
Gareth Evans, who owns Car Stoppers, insisted the pensioners were gone longer than five minutes before the ticket was issued. He said: "One of the rules is we don't allow time to go and get change for the machine. If they had told us they needed to get change then we would have given them extra time but they didn't and they were too slow."
Mr Evans also denied that Mr Flanagan was forced to pay the fine there and then.
In 2003 the RAC Foundation named Car Stoppers the UK's worst clamper. It became the first recipient of an award for the modern-day equivalent of the highway robber.


We have also heard of cars being broken into so our advice is to leave the car at home if possible and get there by public transport, which is not bad at all :)

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