By CASEY NEILL
DANDENONG Plaza is unfairly fining shoppers, claiming they’ve overstayed in time-restricted parking zones.
Loraine Doran parked on level one in the Clow Street car park shortly after 9am on 4 December.
“I was there under an hour, then went off, had lunch.” she said.
Ms Doran returned about 3pm to pick up her daughter, parked on the same level but in a different bay, and returned to her vehicle to find a $66 Traffic Monitoring Services (TMS) fine for failing to comply with the five-hour parking restriction.
“I phoned TMS who weren’t interested, told me to email them and hung up on me,” she said.
“It was too bad if I didn’t have internet.”
She emailed TMS an objection to the fine complete with statutory declaration.
“The onus was on me. I had to do all the running around for something I didn’t even do,” she said.
“Luckily I could prove where I was.
“How many can’t prove it? The day it happened to me I might have just gone home.”
Ms Doran also called Plaza management and informed them of the issue.
She was advised that her fine would be waived and that management was “in the process of ensuring errors like yours do not happen in the future”.
“We will hopefully have the system fixed shortly,” an email to Ms Doran read.
But Ms Doran contacted the Journal when her friend found herself in the same situation last week.
“They are fully aware of the system fault but continue to raise these fines, getting undue financial gain,” she said.
“I can see this driving people away from our superb city. I certainly will think twice about Dandenong Plaza parking for the future.”
Ms Doran said parking checks needed to include the vehicle’s precise position, not just which level it was parked on.
Dandenong Plaza centre manager Mark Tannahill said the car parking system was introduced last September to ensure the most convenient carparks were available to customers.
“It is rare for this to happen,” he said.
“If any customer has been wrongly fined they are able to speak with our information desk to have their fine waived.
“If someone does happen to park in the centre twice in one day, then we encourage them to park on a different level on the second occasion, so they are not registered as having parked there continuously.”
