off road parking

[rickyd]

I realise this may be unusual and not often seen in these hallowed pages but we have a problem with unauthorised parkers using our parking spaces. As expected, the local police have confirmed they are powerless to stop this happening as "its not a public highway" and as the Scottish Courts have outlawed clamping in Scotland, we can't use that tactic either.

 

We are becoming quietly demented by a combination of things: not being able to use the designated parking space we paid handsomely to buy and continue to pay both maintenance and council tax on and not being able to do much about it.

 

The problem is magnified by the inertia of our property factors whose stock answer is to contact DVLA to get the owners details and then write asking them to desist from parking inside our security controlled, locked garage area.

 

Whilst we suspect that they may be ex-property owners who kept hold of their garage entry "plips", or friends of same, it doesn't alter the fact that they shouldn't be in there.

 

Any ideas anyone?

[crem]

Park behind them so they can't get their car out,

[lamma]

" security controlled, locked garage area"

 

details please. how do they get in ? !!!!

[rickyd]

helpful and entertaining idea but it would inconvenience those neighbours who legitimately use their own spaces.

 

The local police suggested we install bollard in each space but we already have an electric roller door (maintained at great expense) and pay for insurance, lighting and general maintenance proportionate to how many spaces we own.

 

My logic was that is as wrong as if someone had parked in own driveway or garage so surely I should be able to do something?

[rickyd]

The roller door is controlled by remote controlled plips which we bought at the same time as buying the flat. There is a delay when leaving and my neighbours tell me that there are a number of chancers who sit in the lane near the garage waiting for us to leave and then quickly drive in before the door closes. Others simply retained their plip when they sold the flat and the new owners bought replacements from the building's factors.

[Lula]

I dont understand how these things work, but is there anyway that they can all be re programmed along with the baseon the door itself, so that only property owners can use them?

[WelshMam2009]

Would it be possible to change the frequency of the plips which would make any old ones redundant?? Perhaps if enough residents complained to the property factor then they may be willing to do it??

 

Otherwise, I would be inclined to wait until the garage door closed behind me before moving off. A lockable/collapsable bollard is again an option, as suggested by the Police.

[rickyd]

unbelievable! Whilst we've been discussing this my wife has come back to find a car in our space and another parked just inside the garage door partially obscuring the access and making it extremely difficult to get in and out of the garage! I'm sorely tempted to go down there with a hammer, but realise this won't help our case at all......

[lamma]

get the door to 'close on command' then when driving out people can close it without waiting.

[BoardinBob]

Let the tires down on the offending cars. All four of the tires. I had this problem in the past with a stupid woman parking in my space. I left notes on her windscreen and confronted her in person but she continued to park there.

 

Consistently letting her tires down every night for a week or so soon sorted the situation out.

[rickyd]

Now that's what I call a good idea!

 

Its non damaging but incredibly time consuming for the miscreant. Lets hope they don't take it out on my car! Maybe I should buy a compressor to inflate my tyres?

[buzby]

We had this in an u/g car park in central Glasgow, primarily previous owners who retained their remotes and used any old space. Bollards are not a solution as they're a pain, but you will already have adequate access control, you just need to tighten it up!

 

Our access was controlled by a 'rolling code' receiver that opened the shutter to let the cars in, exiting was automatic. The agents (bless 'em) were technically illiterate and simply 'cloned' a new transmitter from an adjacent one and passed it on to the owner.

 

By reading the manual of the device, we discovered there were 4 individually addressable buttons authorised to use the roller, with the last one supporting 218 cloned key fobs. (This, in a development of just 80 parking spaces!).

 

The solution was to knock out Keyfob 4, which took out all the 218 clones. Owners had already been told of coding changes and asked to leave their fob (which was then explicitly enabled, rather than cloned) this got around 50 done, then the cloned codes were deleted. They mayhem in the street as cars who had no right to be there were trying to get their fobs to work was a sheer joy.

 

The agents then blocked the system from accepting cloned fobs - it cost £180 to get the machine that codes the fobs, but each flat only gets the same number of fobs, they have parking spaces, and if the fob is lost, it is disabled and a fresh one coded.

 

Solved the probem, and apart from some folk parking in the wrong bays, at least they're all owners, than the free for all you appear to be suffering!

[rickyd]

wow that's a real result! I don't suppose your agents are Peverel by any chance?

 

I can't believe we could be that lucky to have a rolling code, but its worth a try. We've a committee meeting coming up so that would be the ideal time to discuss this. Our idea was similar, with all existing fobs deleted from the system and each owner visiting the concierge to get theirs coded with the new code. One of our issues is that the concierge may be part of the problem as we suspect he may be assisting people with "spare" spaces but haven't been able to prove anything

[Guest lipupfatty]

perhaps you could clamp the offending vehicles but no charge a release fee, release the vehicles at your own leisure

[rickyd]

nice thought, but one of our wonderful sheriffs set a legal precedent making it illegal to clamp anywhere in scotland and classifying clamping as depriving the owner of the use of his/her vehicle punishable by a hefty fine if the victim decides to press charges - crazy isn't it? How about depriving the use of my parking space?

[buzby]

Ah - but what would you prefer...? The same anarchy that exists in England?

 

Our agents were Ross+Liddle, but it's easy to tell if your fob is rolling code or not - open it up, if there is a row of switches, then it isn't - all it takes is is to find the right combo, and they'll all work when switched to it. Even if you need to switch to a new receiver system, it'll cost only £80 for the receiver and £20 for each fob, but this is assuming your own system doesn't has the intelligence already built into it - just that they're not using it!