Tom Wood
A man is outraged after he was fined £100 for visiting McDonald’s twice in the same day.
Spencer Barclay says he first went to the Metro Retail Park in Gateshead for a coffee in the morning, but headed back there after work to get a Happy Meal for his six-year-old son.
Despite there being a decent length of time between the visits – a full workday – he was still sent a parking fine by UKPC, which claimed he’d been parked there for nearly nine hours.
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In truth, he’d been parked in the free car park at Metropolitan House, where he works.
The 52-year-old software consultant told Chronicle Live: "It's absolutely disgusting, it's just blatantly designed to try and get money out of people – it's extortion!
“This can clearly happen to anybody."
"I think they have got a camera that photographs you, but the camera is a snapshot in time. “It photographs you coming in and leaving and that's fine but what if you visit twice?
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“If you visit McDonald's twice in a day you can get £100 fine – that can't be right! How many other people have been unfairly treated for going for a happy meal?"
So, the first visit was at 8.25am on June 24, at which time Spencer bought a coffee and was in the car park while he drank some of it.
Then, he was off to work, and didn’t return until just after 5.00pm when he turned up to grab a treat for his son.
On July 2 he received the fine in the post, which included pictures of his car captured at 8.25am and 5.09pm.
Clearly, it’s a mistake. It seemed to imply that he’d simply left his car there the whole day, when he’d left to go to work. It’s easy to see how it could happen.
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On his fine letter, it states that Spencer can pay 50 percent of the fine within 14 days in order to get an ‘early pay discount’. After that date passes, he’ll have to pay the full £100.
As you might imagine, he’s challenging it. He continued: "It's absolutely infuriating. They have got the photograph of me in the morning and at night but nothing in between.
“I want to see the video evidence to show I was in that car park for the whole of the day."
"The first thing I said was 'the information is wrong, I arrived at that time and I left at that time but you've got to be a complete moron if you park in that car park and walk to work where there's a free car park'.
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“I have said to them to take me to court.
"My first thought was how can I prove it. We have got to put in a system that's fair – this isn't fair, it's total extortion."
A spokesperson for McDonald’s said: "We are sorry to hear about this customer’s experience.
“The car park at our Metro Retail Park restaurant is run by a third party provider and we have made them aware of this issue.
"We understand that if the customer contacts the provider directly, their case will be considered under the appeals process."
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LADbible has contacted UKPC for a comment.