MoneySavingExpert.com Team Blog

We all hate parking tickets but they leave an incredibly sour taste in the mouth when councils do all they can to get you to pay up when they know they’re in the wrong.

I received notification last night I had won an appeal at the independent parking tribunal against a ticket issued by Westminster council in London.

Not because I’d come up with some slick legal argument but because the council didn’t bother to contest it at the final appeal stage.

Yet it previously rejected two appeals I’d made directly to it with detailed replies setting out why I had to pay up.

So why adopt this tactic of defending yourself when you are judge and jury but not bother at the independent arbitration?

I can only conclude that it was trying its luck, hoping I’d back down so it could collect a £130 fine, but then surrendered because it knew it was fighting a losing battle once no longer calling the shots.

Wasting our time

This makes a farce of the appeals system.

It’s great we have this opportunity to appeal when ticketed by a council as those issued with tickets by private parking firms are in the land of the cowboys. What’s more, the vast majority who appeal to the independent tribunal win their case.

We can appeal once or twice (depending on the ‘offence’) to the council then, if rejected, we can go to an arbitrator.

But councils that reject appeals only to give up later are wasting everyone’s time.

It’s a hassle writing numerous letters, finding photos as evidence, collecting your thoughts and then appealing. We are not paid for our time, we just have to put up with it.

And when councils don’t show up at the final appeal stage the relief at winning is mixed with frustration as to why we had to waste our time in the first place.

In this case, I’d stopped a car-length from a sign that permitted loading, so I collected the items I was loading and five minutes later I returned to a white envelope slapped on my windscreen. 

On the first appeal the council claimed the sign didn’t apply where I was stopped. On the second appeal, it used a different argument: that I was not loading.

The change made me wonder what the traffic warden really issued the ticket for.

Not the first time

The thing is I knew this would happen as I’ve been here before with Westminster council.

A few years ago, I returned home late at night, parked and thought all was fine.

The next day when I got back from work there was a ticket on my car. At that point, in broad daylight, I could see the bay I was in had a ’suspended bay’ sign close to it. I did not see the notice at night, probably because it was a fair distance from my car.

On inspection of the notice, I found the council mistakenly wrote that it applied to a different road to the one I was parked on. So I knew immediately it couldn’t be enforced as the sign was wrong.

So I appealed twice stating just that. I didn’t state that I couldn’t see the sign as I thought I could beat them on the technicality.

I was rejected twice and then Westminster didn’t bother to contest the final appeal.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Have you had a similar experience with a council? Let us know in the parking ticket appeals forum discussion thread.

It’s horrible when your card is declined but you feel like even more of a plonker when it’s your own fault.

And even worse when you’ve already been involved in publishing a MoneySavingExpert.com story explaining this will happen.

I’ve got an Egg Money card in my wallet but all Egg cards were deactivated today as they have been replaced with Barclaycards.

I was sent a new Barclaycard a few weeks ago but forgot to pack it in my wallet this morning.

This was despite working with Helen Knapman on her story last week explaining this would happen today (here’s the story).

I couldn’t understand for the life of me at first why my plastic was declined when buying my lunch – until I realised my own stupidity. Luckily, I had a back-up card.

I just hope those who read the story last week had a better memory than I did.

Oh well, goes to show we don’t always remember to practise what we preach.

Any other Egg cardholders made the same mistake? Let us know in the Egg cards scrapped forum thread.

“Must find chest of drawers …”

I’ve been seeking a chest of drawers to fit in a small, 85cm wide alcove in my flat. The quest sent me into a zombie-like trance, scanning eBay at midnight, murmuring: “chest of drawers, chest of drawers …”

The trouble’s the chest can’t be wider than 85cm and an eBay search for ‘chest of drawers’ throws up 10,000s results, of which only one in every 35 is slim enough.

How to steer eBay’s results

Then a new eBay search trick saved my sanity. When sellers could describe an item in several ways, you can make eBay search for several terms at once by placing (( at the beginning and entering different phrases in quotation marks, followed by a commas.

So for example

(( “chest of drawers”, “drawer chest”, “dressing table”

brings up all the listings that contain the phrases chest of drawers, drawer chest or dressing table.

For my purposes, I needed to brainstorm all the ways people might describe a furniture width. I worked out all the possible dimensions that would fit the space and tapped out these searches:

• drawer chest (( “80 w”, “81 w”, “82 w”, “80 w”, “83 w” …
• drawer chest (( “width 80″, “width 81″, “width 82″, “width 80″, “width 83″ …
• drawer chest (( “80 wide”, “81 wide”, “82 wide”, “80 wide”, “83 wide” …
• drawer chest (( “w 80″, “w 81″, “w 82″, “w 80″, “w 83″ …

Obviously I ticked ‘include description’ in the search, because sellers rarely include measurements in titles.

How eBay favourite searches work

The next step was setting up an eBay search alert. I LOVE these. Instead of repeatedly searching for the same thing each day, click ’save search’ and eBay sends daily emails with new listings fitting your request.

Right now you may be thinking ‘this woman’s a Polo short of a packet’, but the results for a few minutes’ effort were stunning. Instead me of wading through 10,000s of listings, eBay emails 30 bespoke chest of drawers for my lil’ alcove each day. I’m sure you could adapt this for other hard-to-find items.

Comment and discuss: The little trick that saved me from eBay zombiedom

As you can imagine, at MSE Towers we get the odd one or two (hundred) press releases every week, with companies sending in their latest offers for consideration. The best make it into the weekly email, the worst into the spam folder. But every now and then there’s one that’s truly special.

An email about a well-known digital TV recorder brand plopped into my inbox, claiming buying one of its PVRs (personal video recorders) could save up to £870 a year. That’s quite a MoneySaving feat for any machine that costs over two hundred pounds, so I read on.

I was at very least expecting a money-making marvel that could turn old episodes of Don’t Tell The Bride into gold bullion, but sadly, the bottom of the email the small print explained the saving as:

“Based on the cost of 12 family tickets to a chain cinema, an annual subscription to a well-known cable or Satellite Company, and 20 DVDs based on an average cost of £10.99.”

Now I like a quiet night in with a pre-recorded show as much as the next girl. But I’m pretty sure that, deprived of the ability to watch last night’s TV in the privacy of my own home, I wouldn’t go out and buy a dozen family cinema tickets, a cable subscription and £220 of DVDs.

If you’ve come across any similarly ‘helpful’ MoneySaving price breakdowns, please do share them in the Can you afford not to? forum discussion.

MoneySaving and charity. One involves keeping cash in your pocket, the other involves giving it away. Yet these are surprisingly compatible – you can have your cake and eat it (or give it away if you prefer).

Gone are the days when you need to call a street urchin from your window and order a prize turkey to show you have a heart. There’s now a wealth of tricks to help your inner Scrooge pay less but give more to charity.

Whether you run a marathon, shave your head or bathe in Bovril, your sponsors can now find the fundraising site with the best rates to make your efforts that bit more worthwhile. Or if you’re less adventurous, make your donation work harder using tax loopholes like payroll giving and Gift Aid, or even donating old shares.

And if you’d rather keep your wallet closed, you can use your mouse to help end world hunger through sites like TheHungersite and, my personal fave, FreeRice.com. There’s one important aspect of charity giving that doesn’t have its own article on MSE yet, though – the ‘random acts of kindness’ guide.

Not long ago, whilst lunching with some fellow MSEers at GBK, we realised we had more restaurant vouchers than people. Spotting some kids about to order at the next table, we squirreled them the vouchers and they came back from the till with big grins – and extra pocket money.

The concept’s simple, adaptable and free. If you’ve got a lonely relative who’d love to have more visitors, go and see them. If you’re fed up of hearing about your great aunt struggling with the computer, help her use it. And if you’ve a MoneySaving tip of your own that could help a friend, relative or stranger save cash, pass it on.

Once you start looking, projects based on this principle are everywhere – the guerrilla gardeners are a group of anonymous vigilantes that use their own time to turn local wasteland into public gardens in the twilight hours, whilst giveaway sites like Freecycle effectively allow you to turn old junk into useful donations.

Skills swaps are another great way of giving for free; I know a resourceful Spanish teacher who’s been swapping her language skills for guitar lessons for years – without a penny ever changing hands.

With Christmas just around the corner and street fundraising pleas imminent, this concept is one charity donation that everyone can take part in, because it doesn’t cost a shilling.

I’m a firm believer that the best things in life are freebies – but there’s no reason why this shouldn’t extend to giving as well. In the words of closet MoneySaver Bill S. Preston, Esquire: ‘Be excellent to each other’.

Share your own random acts of kindness and MoneySaving charity donations in the forum discusson.