Unreliability of car park ticket machines

[JoeGJ1984]

I regularly use a car park where it takes several attempts to get a coin recognised. It costs £1 to park all day, and I've often hand to try several £1 coins, and the same coins more than once, to get it to accept the coin (otherwise it goes through to the rejected coins slot).

Do these machines just go by the size and thickness of coins? I've heard that a few years ago there were a lot of counterfeit £1 coins around (which apparently vending machines are good at rejecting - I don't see how they could detect them though!), so could that be the cause of the problem (but I have had other denominations of coins rejected so not the only cause)?

I once had only a few silvers and a large number of 5p coins with me. I tried those and had lots of trouble, as the coins would often get rejected, and if you took too long, it would just chuck out all the coins that have been accepted and you have to start again. Other people helped out by changing my 5p coins up to larger coins.

It says to use another machine if it is not working, but there is no other machine in the car park! (Obviously just standard wording). I wonder if you left without displaying a ticket because you couldn't get the machine to work what your rights would be and would the council have any sympathy.

Has anyone else come across car park ticket machines that keep rejecting coins? Is it worth contacting the council?

 

[harry42]

Edale station...£2 in...accepts it...I press the green button..."Rejected."...No £2 back...Oh well it's only 2 quid...do it again (£2)...press green button...rejected...lost 4 quid...don't pay...get back...got a notice...£70...appealed...got £4 back and didn't have to pay £70...so technichally parked for free

Council might do something, but TOC's normally do especially if you threaten them with your MP!

 

[Oswyntail]

I'm surprised it costs a round figure. Most car parks I come across charge something like £3.38, and must make a good profit from not giving change. Why do we accept such piracy?

 

[MCR247]

I've never seen a machine that doesn't give change and asks for awkward amounts, but then again I've not been to too many station car parks!

 

[Mojo]

There are still lots of counterfeit £1 coins about. I probably see more now than I did a few years ago.

I very infrequently have issues with machines of any types taking a coin, and where they do then I just scratch the coin on the metal face of the machine and it usually goes through a second time. I'd say it's probably an issue with the machine!

 

[Ben.A.98]

I went to a ticket machine once and started to feed it with 5p coins. The fare was £3 and by this time a queue was forming, I got to £2.25 and then the machine stopped accepting the money, I had to reject the money and go back to the car for higher value coins. People waiting behind me didn't look very happy.

 

[jon0844]

Most coin validators work on an electrical 'signature' but also need regular cleaning. If trying to avoid counterfeit coins, the tolerance can be tightened which means more genuine coins are rejected.

And as there's only so much room to hold coins before they drop to the cash box never to return (hence no change given) you can't use too many coins. It's not a time thing.

 

[Tomonthetrain]

I regularly use a car park where it takes several attempts to get a coin recognised. It costs £1 to park all day, and I've often hand to try several £1 coins, and the same coins more than once, to get it to accept the coin (otherwise it goes through to the rejected coins slot).

Do these machines just go by the size and thickness of coins? I've heard that a few years ago there were a lot of counterfeit £1 coins around (which apparently vending machines are good at rejecting - I don't see how they could detect them though!), so could that be the cause of the problem (but I have had other denominations of coins rejected so not the only cause)?

I once had only a few silvers and a large number of 5p coins with me. I tried those and had lots of trouble, as the coins would often get rejected, and if you took too long, it would just chuck out all the coins that have been accepted and you have to start again. Other people helped out by changing my 5p coins up to larger coins.

It says to use another machine if it is not working, but there is no other machine in the car park! (Obviously just standard wording). I wonder if you left without displaying a ticket because you couldn't get the machine to work what your rights would be and would the council have any sympathy.

Has anyone else come across car park ticket machines that keep rejecting coins? Is it worth contacting the council?

Which council?

 

[deltic1989]

I had a interesting encounter with a pay and display machine about 4 years ago.

Parked and asked the (now ex) mrs to go and get the ticket while I removed the pram from the boot.
She returned saying the machine had eaten the pound and not given a ticket.
Already a bit stressed I went to the machine and inserted a pound with the same measure of success. I then punched the machine out of anger, received my £2 back plus another tenner in pound coins, a ticket and 2 broken knuckles.

 

[Eagle]

Regarding the 5p and 10p coins. Since last year they are now minted in nickel-plated steel, instead of cupronickel as they had been before. This makes them slightly thicker, and also magnetic, which means that a lot of vending and payment machines will reject the new coins unless their software has been updated.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

It must be the case sometimes when the machine's cash storage area is full and is still awaiting someone to empty it, effectively causing the machine to refuse all monetary transactions. This has been the case many times when parking at the large car park at Wilmslow leisure centre, where the car park machine is the responsibility of Cheshire East council.

 

[JoeGJ1984]

The machine I'm talking about is for a town car park (not a railway station).

Re using lots of 5ps, the machine I use has a limit of 20 coins, and as it only needs £1, it can't be exceeded (though this may not be the case elsewhere).

Incidentally (not condoning this but purely asking out of interest), if one were to make a piece of metal the same shape, size and thickness of a coin would there be a good chance of it being accepted by a vending machine? (I doubt one could economically save money by doing this even if it was possible).

 

[maniacmartin]

There's all sorts of techniques that different vending machines use to detect fake coins, which I'm told include

• How it looks - using webcams
• Weight of coin
• Speed at which coin rolls a certain distance
• Size/Shape
• Magnetic properties
• Electrical resistance

I don't think your fake coin will be accepted by any half decent vending machine, unless you make it from the same alloys as a real coin.

 

[jon0844]

As I said, the validator will look for an electrical signature (harder to fake as you'd need to use the right materials in the right amounts).

The problem with many vending machines, especially those in public places, is the risk of using fake coins - hence the tolerances being set so a lot of legit coins get rejected.

Sadly, I can't see a way around that - and would expect the better solution (and better for cash handling and security) is to take credit/debit cards and have a paywave pad for people to use a contactless card to pay quickly.

That or have more apps that let you pay by mobile, with the added benefit of not having a ticket on display to let criminals know you're likely to be away for some time.

I guess councils and the like love handling coins though, especially when the tariffs are often set at something like £1.10 or 80p, knowing full well that a sizeable number of people will overpay (but of course they didn't HAVE to). It's even more obvious when machines don't even add more time pro-rata when you overpay.

 

[table38]

I'm surprised it costs a round figure. Most car parks I come across charge something like £3.38, and must make a good profit from not giving change. Why do we accept such piracy?

Manchester City Council charge £1.35 for 30 mins, so you might assume if you put £2 in, you'd get 44.444 minutes but you'd be wrong as you haven't reached the £2.70 threshold for two hours. It just "eats" your extra 65p.

 

[Qwerty133]

the car park next to my local station is/was £3.75 a day which is excessive considering it is always empty and everyone parks on the roads!

 

[JoeGJ1984]

Used an online form to mention the machine which seems to have a high rate of rejecting coins to Shropshire Council, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[jon0844]

They don't want dodgy coins so have little incentive to do anything to help you, which then affects them.

 

[Eagle]

The problem with many vending machines, especially those in public places, is the risk of using fake coins - hence the tolerances being set so a lot of legit coins get rejected.

Even if, as I mentioned earlier, the Royal Mint changes the makeup of their coins. But such is apathy.

 

[jon0844]

That makes it worse, as you need to update the signatures.

In the EU I believe there are additional problems with coins varying from one member stage to another.

When I had my own fruit machine, I recall there was a way to learn a new coin but I needed some form of adapter. My memory is rather ropey as it was over ten years ago. It basically meant inserting the new coin you wanted to accept, possibly a few times.
The new ones could quite possibly be updated 'over the air'.

 

[Manchester77]

The one at the maternity car park at Wythenshawe Hospital is awful. Visiting times nearly over by the time you used every coin in existence to pay the £3 for the 2 hour allocation of the F wards round there. God help if you need to buy the £10 3 day pass in change as it spits out every coin that isn't a £1 coin minted in 1993

 

[jon0844]

Don't get me started on hospital parking. Ironically, our hospital does a great monthly rate but you can't use it like a season ticket if you're visiting someone every day (or more often) as there's a gate and so you need to buy a new ticket (token) every time.

And the hourly rates are extortionate.

 

[Manchester77]

Wythenshawes weird because the first 20 minutes are free (generous :roll: ) and then it's like up to two hours are £3 and it goes up until 6 hours when you have to buy the number £10 3 day ticket. But then at the barrier car parks it's £11 for 6 exits or something.

The other thing is when we tried to buy a 3 day thing when my gran was in hospital for the last time it must have a limit on how many coins you put in so when we were like woo let's off load change we'd get to £9.40 and it'd all come out