Wilson Parking Australia Issues

Twice in October I pre-booked a parking space at a Wilson car park using its Book A Bay service. On both ocassions the car park was full when I entered. On the first ocassion Wilson told me that it would honour my booking at another of its car parks, 700 metres away. On entering the second car park I found that it too had no available bays. I was 20 minutes late for my meeting that day. I didn’t attempt to find a park at an alternative Wilson location on the second ocassion.
On exiting the full car parks I contacted Wilson and was provided instuctions on how to claim refunds for each un-honoured booking. I followed those instructions to the letter, providing receipts, entry times, exit times and an account of what had happened by email. The first refund was requested nearly 8 weeks ago but none has been provided. I have sent 14 emails on the subject of the two bookings to the email address provided on the company’s website but have never received a reply beyond the automated replies I received when opening each case. Telephone calls used to be answered and I twice received the response that I would receive the refunds “by the end of the week” but that was not true. For the last few weeks I have been unable to contact the company by telephone - right at this moment I am listening to background music having been on hold for 1 hour and 40 minutes.
How can I secure a refund from a company that is not contactable? I know the $ amount is relatively small, but it’s the principle.

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Welcome to the .community and sorry to hear about your bad experience with Wilson. I was unaware Wilson is based in HK until just now, however they have offices in each capital city listed on their web page. If convenient you could drop in for a chat, with copies of your correspondence :wink:

You could read up on the Australian Consumer Law and send a Letter of Complaint to the Wilson office in your capital city. You can email it if you can get a return receipt they received or read it, automated or not. Otherwise it needs to go registered/tracked real mail. If they do not respond you can then take it to your state fair trading office. For the amount you are probably due be realistic about how much interest the agencies may have assisting, vis a vis the queues of complaints in their inbox.

Honest companies will usually respond once a complaint is made formal (following legal protocols, wording, and processes so they know you are following the ACL) rather than informal (ie ‘unstructured’ communications between you and them).

Good luck and please let us know how you go.

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In addition to the above, if you are a Choice member, there is also

which can also assist.

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Hi Trumble I sincerely sympathise with you and your horrible dilemma with Wilson and its Book A Bay service. I completely agree with all of the excellent advice that TheBBG has offered, and I hope that you can follow it to the letter and get a Full Refund plus some other compensation for wasting so much of your time.

I am actually posting merely to thank you for joining the Forum and alerting all Members to your situation, and the neglectful and disrespectful manner in which you are being treated by Wilson - Forewarned is Forearmed

I rarely travel into the City, but I have considered using Wilson Book A Bay on the occasions that I do.
After having learned of the neglectful and inappropriate treatment you have received from this company, I will NEVER park my Car again with Wilson, and I certainly will not bother to Book A Bay!

Thanks again for sharing, and I truly hope you get the fair and decent attention, Refund and some sort of compensation that you should have received from Wilson in the very first instance.
Best of luck in your endeavours.

Cheers Natalie :wink:

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Thanks TheBBG for your really useful comments and advice. I’m pretty persistent when it comes to these things, so I’ll certainly follow the courses of action that you’ve recommended. I’ll post back here on whether I get a satisfactory resolution or not.

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Thanks Natalie for being sympathetic and taking the time to respond. I’ll certainly follow TheBBG’s advice, and in the meantime I, like you, have voted with my feet and now use a different company’s car park. In fact, most of my colleagues who are casual parkers have had the same experience at Wilson and, while they’ve given up on pursuing a refund (they’re not as dogged as I am when it comes to consumer rights), they too have taken their business elsewhere.

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Welcome to the ‘community’ Andy. I agree on going for it on principle.

Not a help to you, but an observation: I went to have a look at the process for claiming back your refund from Wilson’s Parking, and I am redirected to a map of parking stations in Sydney CBD. It turns out that none of the tabs work in Chrome. It does work in Edge.

To add to what has already been said; you have probably got this information, but just in case: The head office of the Wilson’s Group Australia is Perth. The contact details are found at https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=23929183

The contact numbers for Wilson Parking Customer Service can be found at: http://customercarecontacts.com/contact-of-wilson-parking-customer-service-phone-email/

As a general comment, the Wilson’s Group’s two billionaire brother owners, Thomas and Raymond Kwokowners don’t seem too troubled by legalities: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-04/australian-company-wilson-linked-to-hong-kong-corruption-scandal/7291178

Good luck with getting your refunds.

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Hi meltam, that’s some great detective work there, I appreciate it.

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Well, lo-and-behold, two days after posting here I received an email from Wilson informing me that my two refunds had been processed, and providing me with a voucher for one free park.

I put it down to the power of the Choice forums!

Thanks everyone for your great advice - I may not have needed it this time but it will come in useful if I find myself in a similar situation again.

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Great News! This is a wonderful result - so pleased that it all turned out well in the end! :wink:

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Good to hear you received a favourable result @trundle :+1:

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An article regarding Wilson Parking being exposed for ripping off consumers with their grubby parking scams.

What a bunch of charlatans.

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Had bought monthly parking in city for 420$/ month from June 2019. Debited money on 1st of June but didn’t sent the gate pass till 21st June . Had to make several calls to get the pass while i was daily paying from my pocket to park the car. Sent emails to my account manager with proof of receipts , followed by several calls and she confirmed that it will be credited to my final bill. Again to close my account in Sep, made another long list of calls and also to wilson complaint number since my account manager never picked up even after leaving several messages. Had to call from the exit gate to get their attention. Then she sent me an email that my account is closed and the credit will be adjusted to my account. This happened in Oct 2019 .This month Jun 2020, i received a bill for Oct 2019 along with the threat of going to collection. Have tried calling each number listed along with my old account manager’s. No response after leaving messages too. I do have all the evidence and bills . What should I do? Any guidance will be appreciated. Thanks

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Send Wilson a letter (registered post) that covers your complaint, attach copies (and only copies) of your evidence and advise that you want the bill removed. Also advise that they have a given period (eg 7 days) from receipt of the letter to respond and deal with your problem, if they don’t you will contact your Fair Trading Organisation. If they don’t respond in the given time contact Fair Trading and lodge your complaint. You can also lodge a case with your Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

The ACCC has a page about how to lodge a complaint and they have links to help you formulate a complaint letter and to various contacts eg State Fair Trading Offices.

CHOICE has a help service if you are a member that can give you information and advice about what steps to take, they also provide templates.

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Hello and welcome to the forum. Sorry to hear about your problems with Wilson. It doesn’t help, but you are not alone.

I have moved your post to an existing thread covering similar issues with Wilson Parking. If you look through the thread you will find more relevant information, including contact information for Wilson that you may not have on your correspondence.

Hope you get a win. Please let us know how you get on.

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Thanks a lot . Have sent the letter today. Will report the outcome here

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Thanks a lot for the advice, credit collectors from wilson parking emailed me a couple of days ago that I dont have to pay anything… Thank you so much for the help

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Great to know it helped. Just keep an eye on your Credit record in case they try to put something adverse on there.

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Hi everyone, I booked a bay in a Wilson car park in Brisbane CBD today, that listed the price to pay for 4 hours as $17. I paid the $17, parked, and then realised when I got home that they’ve debited $80 from my account. I had another look at my email confirmation and it says hourly rate. Are they allowed to debit my card when I haven’t given them permission to? I realise that this might be a stupid mistake on my part, but what chance do I have of getting a refund? I just feel like this was very misleading. Thanks for reading, any advise appreciated!

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Hi @Jadiki, welcome to the community. I have moved your post to any existing thread which contains information about issues community members have had with Wilson Parking Australia.

What did the ticket and the conditions of parking sign on entry to the carpark say in relation to charges?

Was $17 debited when you entered, or was this the minimum amount which they indicated would be charged?

You possibly have given them permission either through the conditions on the entry sign, what was displayed on the ticket console when entering or what was printed on the back of the ticket. Do you still have the parking ticket and is it possible for you to post photos of the front and back (as long as it doesn’t contain any personal information which may have been extracted from your credit card).

This indicates that you didn’t pay on exit?

Was the carpark one that you placed your credit card on entry, vehicle number plate scanned and then your vehicle number plate rescanned on entry to determine park time…and then your credit card is debited based in the time of stay?

Did the $80 represent the time the car was parked in the carpark (at $17/h, it indicates that you were there about 4.5 hours)?

Apologies for all the questions, but answering this may provide information to assess if you have a claim for refund.

In relation to Terms and Conditions, Wilson Parking has these online so one could assume that the same ones are available at entry to the carpark…

These T&Cs state:

4.3 Authorisation - when you give us your credit card or debit account details, you are authorising us to charge your credit card or debit account with the amount of the applicable fees, and you may not withdraw your authorisation until all fees have been paid.

If this is the case, unless you can prove that the T&Cs were not available on entry, then it may be very difficult to dispute the amount on your credit card, unless it didn’t represent the time you used the carpark. Something to note is that many of the T&Cs associated with carparks (free or paid) are very long and it isn’t possible to read them fully on entry when sitting in a car. I wonder if Wilson Parking gets around this by making the T&Cs available online and also possibly saying on entry that if you haven’t read or agree to the T&Cs, you have XYZ minutes to leave to avoid any parking fees.

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