If your ticket was issued by the government (Auckland Transport, Wellington City Council, etc), this is a local authority traffic ticket which can cover a broad range of traffic offences. You'll need to contact the ticket issuer to either pay the money owed or challenge the reason for the ticket - this guide is not for you.

If you have parked in a private car park and received a ticket, you will see it is issued by an institution other than the government (for example Vehicle Enforcement Services). Our guide gives you the power to challenge such tickets and fight back with confidence.

Parking laws are designed to keep the roads safe; parking over a zebra crossing, clearway or driveway and blocking traffic flows is a danger and nuisance. This guide is about keeping money in your wallet when a private parking enforcement company hits you with a hefty ticket for overstaying or similar. Due to the misinformation about these tickets, we want readers to know their rights and have the option of following a course of action that stands up to the scaremongering of faceless corporations.

Paying a parking ticket right away is a big no-no - you are admitting liability and if you later want to appeal, the company has no incentive to listen to you. Once it has your money, it loses interest in you and getting back anything is near-impossible. That said, not paying it is going to lead to problems that are easily avoided.

The general public knows little about the laws which govern parking companies, and this works in favour of anyone who operates a car park. There are extensive reports in the media involving parking companies issuing "accidental" tickets by mistake as well as infringement notices for vehicles in areas outside of their control. Parking companies know that most recipients don't want the hassle of a fight, inconvenience and the risk of a bigger penalty, and opt to pay the money demanded to solve a problem.

As it stands, parking companies have all the cards - little or no competition, general misinformation about the enforceability of their tickets, and thousands of potential revenue-generating cars entering their premises every week. $65+ additional revenue per car is very persuasive to a business which can ultimately lead to behaviour that puts profits before accuracy. 

We believe that if there were a law forcing car parking companies to repay incorrectly ticketed customers double or triple the dollar value of the original ticket, the staff giving out such infringement notices would be trained to triple-check every offending vehicle before issuing any parking ticket. ​

If you want to stop a car parking company from sending an infringement notice to your home, you can revoke access to your personal details with the help of the New Zealand Transport Authority. This prohibits third-party companies like Wilson Parking, Care Park and similar operators from accessing your vehicle's owner details. To make things clear, if you've revoked access, the car parking company cannot find out your address to chase you for payment.

What to know

• Revoking access is free to do, takes less than five minutes; you'll need your vehicle registration plate number and a proof of ID.
• Click on the NZTA's Personal Information link
• Once you opt out, you are still liable to parking infringements, but the operator will need to prove you've failed to comply with its parking rules. This includes taking as many photos as necessary to prove the breach, including the number plate, a view of the entire dashboard,  the vehicle's position including a detailed view of the background and any other relevant details such as chalk markings and signage.
• If you see a notice of an infringement on your vehicle, you are entitled under the Code of Parking for Enforcement on Private Land to ask for photo evidence.
• If there isn't any such photo evidence, any infringement is unenforceable and must be waived.
• If there is photo evidence, it's possible some of the photos show empty parks surrounding your vehicle. If this is the case, the car parking company's claim that the extra time in the car park caused a financial loss is even weaker.
• Opting out doesn't give you the right to be inconsiderate and never pay for parking; if you are in the wrong, the best option is to pay for the time you overstayed. 

If a council can charge a 'reasonable' $10 to $15 for "overstaying" at a paid car park (or $40 for not paying at all), then clearly a $65 infringement for private parking where you have already paid for parking can be seen as unreasonable. If a private company claims they need the $65 infringements to "cover their costs", then this would suggest their business model is not profitable. Financial statements filed with the Companies Office showed one notable car park operator posted a $12.5m after-tax profit in the year ended 30 June 2018.​

The best approach is to send our template letter to the parking company. The worst thing to do is to do nothing. This puts you at the mercy of the parking company's tactics, which can get awfully scary, very quickly.

By acting quickly, you can make it clear that you believe the parking company's claim is unreasonable and that you are offering to pay for the extra parking used at the company's standard rates. You should also state that further correspondence will be referred to the Commerce Commission and the Privacy Commissioner. 

To summarise:

The parking company's legal claim:

• There has been a contract between you and the parking company, and that the ticket represents a fair estimate of the actual loss to the parking company. 

Your legal claim:

• No such legal contract exists between you and the parking company, and even if it did, the parking ticket (which is often $50-$65) exceeds a fair estimate for any loss.
• You are offering to pay for the extra time in the carpark, at the standard hourly rates. This is a 'pro rate' rate. For example, if you overstayed 30 minutes and the hourly fee is $8.00, you could offer $4.00 for the proportion of an hour you used and didn't pay for. 

Debt Collection agencies

• Our guide to credit scores and reporting is clear - parking tickets, generally, do not appear on your credit history. However, if Baycorp or another legitimate debt collection company contacts you, the debt is different. We suggest contacting Baycorp (or whatever debt collector it is) to tell them the debt is in dispute, and get confirmation of your notification in writing.
• Generally, one-off parking tickets are not elevated to Debt collectors. If you do find your credit history affected by a parking ticket, we suggest contacting the credit scoring company and informing them that the debt is in dispute, and for it to be removed from your records. 

Car parking companies love credit card payments. They don't want to invest in team members to explain and justify their pricey tickets to complaining customers. Instead, they prefer to make money by making the payment process easy.

Our view is that ALL online payments and online appeal portals are best avoided - sending our template letter is a preferred option to establish communication. ​​