The President of UOKiK imposed a fine of over PLN 820,000. PLN for APCOA Parking Polska and requested explanations from ATPark and Europark.
APCOA Parking Polska is the operator of car parks at hospitals, office buildings, hotels and shopping centers throughout the country. The Office of Competition and Consumer Protection received numerous complaints about the practices used by the entrepreneur.
UOKiK: Unfair complaint rules
APCOA Parking Polska limited the methods of submitting complaints to consumers, allowing only two types of notifications: via a form on the website or by post to the address of the registered office. Meanwhile, it should also include those submitted in a different form, e.g. by e-mail or in person, argues UOKiK.
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The Office adds that the company informed that the deadline for considering complaints may be longer than 30 days. This is against the Consumer Rights Actwhich indicates that it is not possible to extend the time of responding to the complaint on your own. Until January 1, 2023, if the entrepreneur did not respond within 30 days of receiving the notification, the complaint was accepted. New regulations related to the implementation of the Omnibus Directive have shortened this time to 14 days.
A complaint may not limit the rights of consumers
Some consumers who complained about the “additional fee request” for the use of APCOA car parks found out that if they did not pay the indicated amount, they would incur the costs of debt collection and enforcement proceedings. The company’s claim sounded categorical and indicated the inevitability of these events.
“The purpose of such transfer was to cause unjustified fear and could have influenced the decision to pay the fees requested by the company. Meanwhile, APCOA would first have to take the case to court, and then to the enforcement authority, e.g. a bailiff. With each of these stages, consumers could be relieved of additional costs.
The complaint procedure may not limit the rights of consumers. They, and not the entrepreneur, should be able to choose the preferred method of submitting a complaint. Moreover, the information provided by the company should be true and complete. If consumers had not been misled, they could decide whether to pursue their rights further or defend themselves in court, says Tomasz Chróstny, President of UOKiK.
Car parks under the scrutiny of UOKiK
These are not the only activities of the Office towards car park managers. Calls to change practices and provisions that may infringe collective consumer interests were received by ATPark from Jaworze and Europark from Warsaw, operating throughout the country. Both entrepreneurs limit the ways of submitting complaints and provide information about the need to incur additional costs in connection with non-payment of the requested fees, informs UOKiK.
The President of UOKiK has been looking at car parks for a long time and questioning the unfair practices used by their managers. Recent decisions concerned car parks at supermarkets and a car park at the oncology hospital in Wrocław.
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