$22 an hour! Is this Aotearoa's most expensive carpark?

When Paula* took her friend out for lunch in Tāmaki Makaurau's CBD earlier this year, she needed somewhere to park her car for a couple of hours.

Circling around Britomart, she found a carpark on Fort Street that offered exactly what she needed: an easily accessible park within walking distance of her destination.

She pulled into the small yard, parked her car and found the rates on a nearby machine: $22 an hour.

Paula paid $28, an amount she believed would cover her for the time it would take the pair to enjoy their lunch.

This happened 7 months ago.

Back then, Paula didn't know she was using one of Aotearoa's most expensive, and most contentious, carparks.

But she knows now.

What happened next

Paula’s lunch date took a little longer than she expected.

She'd paid for parking until 2.01pm, but by the time she returned to her car, it was 2.57pm.

"I couldn’t figure out how to top up the parking at the machine in the carpark before leaving," Paula says. "So, I left."

A few days later, she opened her mail to find a “breach bill” from Wilson Parking. The invoice charged her $85 to cover those extra 56 minutes.

She complained and offered to pay for another hour of parking to cover the extra time she'd stayed in the carpark.

While she waited to hear back, her bill increased another $35 to $120.

By then, Paula just wanted the issue resolved.

"They refused to accept anything else," Paula says. "Any further time arguing the amount would only increase the amount owed since they take so long to reply."

So, she gave in and paid the fine.

All up, including the breach bill, Paula’s carpark for her lunch date cost her $148 for 2.5 hours of parking.

That's nearly $1 per minute.

How does that compare to other carparks?

According to a Consumer NZ survey of carparks nationwide, Wilson Parking’s Fort Street carpark is among the most expensive in Aotearoa for its hourly rate.

To find this out, we canvassed city centres, airports, carparking buildings, on-street and off-street carparks, hospitals, stadiums and privately owned carparks, using council information and websites like Parkopedia to find their hourly rates.

Tāmaki Makaurau

If you park in the few remaining on-street parks operated by Auckland Council in Tāmaki Makaurau’s CBD, you'll pay up to $6 an hour for the first 2 hours, and up to $11 an hour if you're longer than that.

The most expensive council carpark building Consumer could find was the Downtown carpark, which costs $5.50 an hour, with a maximum daily charge of $24.

Nearby, the privately owned Sky City carpark charges $16 for the first hour and $8 for every hour after, or a maximum daily charge of $48 a day.

But even that’s not enough to top Wilson Parking’s Fort Street facility, which, at $22 an hour (or $16 when using the company's Parkmate app), is the company’s most expensive carpark in Tāmaki Makaurau we could find.

Pōneke

In Pōneke, street parks operated by Wellington Council cost $5 an hour on weekdays, and $3 an hour on weekends. The most expensive private carpark we could find was Wilson Parking’s Victoria Street parking centre at $12 an hour.

Ōtautahi

In Ōtautahi, council-operated street parks cost $4.80 an hour Monday to Friday. At $9 an hour, Christchurch Airport was the most expensive private carpark we could find.

The verdict

So, at $22 an hour, all signs point towards Wilson Parking’s carpark on Fort Street, Auckland being the most expensive carpark, by hourly rate, in Aotearoa.

Add in Paula’s $85 fine, and the cost becomes astronomical.

The question is, how unique was Paula's experience?

What people say about Wilson Parking’s Fort Street car park

According to Google reviews, many Wilsons customers have been caught out by the exact same $85 fee that Paula received.

Consumer went through every single review that had been posted in the past 6 years.

Out of 85, six said they had received a breach bill on top of their carparking fee. The average review rating was two stars, among the lowest of the carparks surveyed by Consumer.

“This carpark doesn’t even deserve 1 [star]. Do not park here,” warned one reviewer. “Worst carpark in New Zealand. Absolute scam artists,” wrote a second. “Absolute price gouging little Gollums!” claimed a third.

In a statement, Wilson Parking said its Fort Street facility was “very popular”, and that it received a small percentage of complaints “when viewed against the number of vehicles that use the carpark annually”.

It said it was well within its rights to issue breach bills for customers who refused to pay to use its carparks. It said 75% of all breach notices were issued to customers who hadn’t paid at all, “or, in other words, theft”.

It denied issuing instant breach bills as soon as customers’ time had run out. “We adopt above industry standard grace periods to allow customers fair periods of time to make payments before notices are issued.”

Complaints mount about Wilson Parking

Wilson Parking’s Fort Street carpark isn’t the only facility it operates that customers have complained about recently.

Earlier this year, Stuff reported a woman visiting the Westgate Mall claimed she’d parked her car in an unused gravel carpark, only to return and find a carpark had been set up by Wilson Parking. She received the $85 fine. When she complained, Wilson Parking said the carpark had been set up more than a week earlier, but she said her dashcam footage proved otherwise.

In April, The Press reported Canterbury businessman Sir Gil Simpson took Wilson Parking to the disputes tribunal to fight an $85 breach bill. Wilson Parking had refused to waive it, despite him proving he had paid for his park, but had entered an incorrect registration number into the parking machine. Simpson won.

Last year, a Consumer NZ staff member was issued a $65 fine, plus a $20 penalty for late payment, for overstaying 45 minutes in a free supermarket carpark in Pōneke.

At the time, Wilson Parking told Consumer the $85 fine covered “staff wages, training, uniforms, vehicle maintenance and fuel, signage, health and safety equipment, field supervision and back-end administration such as call centre staff, appeals processing and our enforcement management software system”.

The Commerce Commission has received 134 complaints about Wilson Parking in the year to 7 August 2024.

Vanessa Horne, general manager of fair trading at the Commission says the Commission recently sent educational letters to carpark operators , including Wilson Parking, to ensure they were sticking to Fair Trading Act rules around “surcharges, fees, fine print and pricing generally”.

What Wilson Parking says

When asked for comment, Wilson Parking said it issued breach fees because it didn’t want to enforce alternative options like towing or wheel clamping. “Like many things in life, including public transport or using Afterpay, there are consequences when we choose not to pay for a service or product,” a spokesperson said.

Breach fees, the spokesperson said, acted as a deterrent for customers who didn’t want to pay for using their carpark. “This breach fee deters customers’ from breaching the contract, protects Wilson’s interests and covers the administrative and labour costs associated with enforcing our terms and conditions.”

The spokesperson claimed Wilson’s terms and conditions were displayed in all its parking facilities. “This includes clear signage and QR codes that direct customers to the terms and conditions, in addition to multiple signs reminding customers of their obligations to pay for the time they use our facilities.”

Do people understand those terms and conditions?

Paula told Consumer she had no idea she was liable for an $85 fine for overstaying when she used the Fort Street carpark.

But do others know? Consumer wanted to test Wilson Parking’s claim that customers understood the terms and conditions of using their carparks.

So, we visited its Fort Street carpark and spoke to users there, after they’d parked their cars and had approached the pay-and-display machine. Next to the machine a QR code, which, once scanned, linked users to Wilson Parking’s terms and conditions, could be found at the bottom of a sign, just a few inches off the ground.

Consumer spoke to three customers who pulled in to use the carpark during an hour-long period around midday.

The first balked at the hourly rates and admitted he had no idea about the potential for a breach fee if he overstayed. He asked Consumer where he could find a carpark with more reasonable rates, returned to his car, and left.

The second said they were only using the carpark for an hour and were happy to pay $22 an hour to do so.

The third said he’d used the park before and didn’t mind the $22 and hour fee because he was a tradesman and his company would cover the bill. When asked if he knew about the breach fees, he shook his head. “You’d think $22 an hour would be enough, eh?”

None of the customers bent down to scan the QR code and read the carpark’s terms and conditions. We did – a 14-point document that doesn’t mention the $85 breach fee until well down the page.

When asked if it was fair that the breach fee was only revealed if customers scanned a QR code placed close to the ground, Wilson Parking’s spokesperson said it was “common knowledge” that penalties could be issued in cases where expired payment or non-payment was identified.

“If a first-time customer to Wilson did not understand this, and appealed their notice, then their circumstances would be taken into consideration on appeal.”

How to deal with unreasonable private parking fines

Consumer believes Wilson Parking is hiding its terms and conditions behind a hard-to-find QR code that only a small percentage of its customers would scan and read before using their carparks. Anyone using the park without a smartphone wouldn’t be able to read them at all.

Terms and conditions should be easily accessible for anyone entering a private carpark, not just those with a smartphone. If they’re not adequately displayed, like in this case, they’re open to challenge. However, we recommend checking signs in a carpark before you use it, so you know what fines you might be liable for. Carpark operators can only charge what is reasonable to cover their loss, and a reasonable sum to deter a breach.

If you’re unhappy with a fine, you can appeal it to the carpark owner, lodge a complaint with the Commerce Commission, or the Disputes Tribunal.

Be aware that the government has increased public parking infringement rates from 1 October 2024, with inflation-adjusted fines rising by up to 70%. That includes the fine for parking in a disabled spot, which will increase from $150 to $700.

Of course, there’s always another approach: leave your car at home and cycle or use public transport. Alternatively, find somewhere else to park or consider going somewhere entirely different.

That’s what Paula, who works in Newmarket, will be doing. She says she hasn't returned to the city centre since her lunch date, and she says she's unlikely to drive there again.

"I absolutely would never drive or park in the CBD again," she says. "There are so many options outside of the city for dining that it's easier to just write off the whole area."

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*Name changed to avoid identification.