A clever tip to prove you didn’t ‘double dip’

From: Darren

Hi,

I notice that you have some bits on your site about “Double Dipping” and some advise that might help people who have had this scam tried.

I recently was double dipped in Sainsbury’s in Kidderminster. I went to get some sweets before going to see a show in Brierley Hill.

Later on I returned to Sainsbury’s (totally after the “no return period”) to do some food shopping.

I then received a parking ticket claiming I’d been in their parking bay for 3 1/2 hours (even when the show I was in 9 miles away was on – interesting concept).

Initially I thought to myself well how on earth do I prove it – I went to a show and when I went to the show I didn’t stand outside taking pictures of my car because I didn’t anticipate Sainsbury’s trying to make out my car was still parked on their car park as that hadn’t entered my head.

Then I suddenly thought about a clever tool – I remember reading somewhere that if you have an android phone it monitors your location constantly and builds a map of where you’ve been.

Luckily I did have an android phone – and I found out that if you go to google.com/maps/timeline it shows you exactly where your phone went.

Really handy – from that I could get the time I arrived in the car park (which matched their time entrance time), and the time I left the first time and the time I went back and the time I left the second time (which matched their exit time).

I then found out that you can print this by pressing Ctrl+P and export it to a PDF – great now just forward it to both Sainsbury’s and the Horizon parking – two days later Horizon dropped the case.

It’s handy to look at if you think you haven’t got any proof you’ve made two visits to the same shop.

I just thought I’d share this with you so you can share this with other people using this site who may be in a similar position.

Hi Darren, thanks for writing in with this tip. The legal standard for deciding such cases in the county court is on the balance of probabilities. If you presented your evidence, and the parking company could not offer any further evidence, then on the balance of probabilites your defence should be upheld.