How a quick drink stop saw man face $340 parking fee

Emerson Adriano says he didn't see the "No Parking" sign when he ran into a lunch bar for a Coke Zero. That mistake would add hundreds of dollars to the $2.50 he paid for his fizzy drink.

"I need to pay $95 for [the] breaching notice," the scaffold rigger told Fair Go, holding the first notice that came in the post after his visit to the Sandwich Factory in Rosedale, Auckland.

The park belonged to another business on the same lot, whose owners had enlisted the aid of Jake Thomas and his business, Parking Services Ltd, to stop people parking in their space.

"This is creating huge costs for business owners and private owners of these car parks. I got sick of it, so this is why I started Parking Services," Thomas told Fair Go.

Parking Services Ltd supplies carefully-worded signs and a connection to an app. It allows parking space owners to send a photo when someone parks there without their permission.

"On the photos comes metadata, the time of the shot, GPS location – all the information we need to put on to a breach notice. We send that out to the person that parked there and enforce it," Thomas explained.

The charges escalated quickly for Adriano and with no regard for appeals he emailed.

Adriano had flown back to the Philippines just after the parking stop. He was reuniting with his family after more than three years apart and returning to New Zealand with his wife and son.

The breach notice was posted to a flat he'd just left and before anyone passed that on to Adriano, the reminder arrived there also. By the time he landed back in Auckland, Parking Services Ltd said Adriano owed $170; the original fee, plus a $75 reminder.

Adriano paid the $95 fee but with the reminder unpaid, the bill went up another $75 two weeks later. The wording of that made him think he still owed $245 in total, so he paid that in full.

Fair Go got involved to query that. Parking Services had made no reply to any of the appeals, but explained to Fair Go that "there was a lot of confusion there".

"Emerson's English isn't very good – we have got to the bottom of that. He was overcharged $95 in the end and we have returned that to him," Thomas said.

With the reminders coming even after Adriano made the initial payment and amid warnings it would go to debt collection, Adriano felt he'd had no option but to pay.

These are not parking fines, they're someone asserting breach of a contract. They're not even a penalty. They are a claim for liquidated damages.

Lawyer Joanna Pidgeon broke that down for Fair Go into plainer English.

"What has it cost them to enforce it? What is the loss that has been suffered? If you feel that the charge is unreasonable given the circumstances of the length of time you were there, the harm suffered, the cost of enforcing, you do have the ability to dispute that charge," she said.

Pidgeon suggests people start by writing back if a charge seems unreasonable and state in writing that they are disputing the charge.

If that doesn't resolve the dispute, the person facing the charge would probably need to take it to the Disputes Tribunal. It can decide disputes worth up to $30,000, including issuing an order that someone does not owe a debt.

It would have cost Adriano $45 to file, but that's $200 less than he had been charged and nearly $300 less than he had paid.

As well as deciding if charges are reasonable, the Disputes Tribunal can also determine whether they're valid under the contract created by parking in a private car space, where contract terms should be laid out clearly and unambiguously on a sign.

Parking Service Ltd signs do state a $95 breach fee will apply, but don't specify that the fee must be paid within 21 days. The level and frequency of the reminder fees is also missing. The sign points online to more details.

"I'm not sure that actually having a link to a website is providing enough information. For example, my mother doesn't use a cellphone and wouldn't be able to log on and check what those additional terms are," Pidgeon told Fair Go.

Thomas said the firm had done research which indicated people don't read long-winded notices.

Nevertheless, it had left that information off the sign, so could that leave those reminder notices open to challenge?

"We're happy for the challenge," Thomas said.

Adriano could have laid down that challenge at the Disputes Tribunal, but instead he paid up.

Pidgeon said that made it harder to argue the case now, but points out that if a debt is in dispute, that stops the matter being passed to debt collection.

Adriano wishes he'd known his rights; he's wiser now, at a high price.

"It's a very expensive drink."