More than 400 complaints about parking fines have reached the Commerce Commission so far this year, according to 1News, up from just 151 in 2022. For drivers that is a grievance. For the retailers, supermarkets and shopping centre landlords whose car parks generate those tickets, it is becoming a regulatory exposure they have outsourced but not offloaded.
The regulator has stopped just counting
The Commission’s own figures show a steady climb. An April 2026 OIA response recorded 1,107 car parking concerns since January 2023, rising from 255 in 2023 to 387 in 2024 and 465 in 2025. Case-by-case action was thin. Five traders received reminders of their legal obligations and one complaint fed into an ongoing investigation. But the same response flagged an industry-wide car parking compliance project to identify trends and engage with traders where non-compliance risk turns up.
That is the shift that matters. Named operators have been on the Commission’s radar for years. It released complaint information on Parking Services Ltd in May 2025, yet that never became a formal programme. Now a sector sweep is on the table, and the Commission has told The Post it has started updating its car-parking guidance. That is a quiet admission the existing advice has not kept pace with how enforcement has scaled.
Parking is not signing a contract
The legal problem is basic. In a non-fee car park there is no contract between driver and operator. Trespass law applies, and it entitles the landowner to reasonable compensation, not an open-ended fee schedule. The Disputes Tribunal keeps rejecting car park managers’ claims that drivers entered a binding contract simply by parking.
The Commission was blunt about where that leads. Companies “risk misleading consumers if they do not provide complete, clear, and accurate information on signage. This risks breaching the Fair Trading Act.”
That signage is bolted to your property. Often it carries your brand. A business that hired the contractor and approved the sign will struggle to argue the legal claims on it are someone else’s concern.
How a $95 ticket became $527
The fee structures are just as exposed. In one tribunal case, a woman was charged $527.45 for parking 20 minutes outside business hours: a $95 breach notice, three $75 reminder fees, $140.99 in debt collection costs and $66.46 in penalty interest. Referee JP Smith called the reminder fees “unusual and onerous”, labelled the second and third “exorbitant” and cut her liability to $170. He noted breach fees in other recent claims ranged from $35 to $85, with reminder fees between $0 and $20. That is as close to an industry benchmark for “reasonable” as exists.
Nobody knows how often these disputes reach the tribunal. In December 2025 the Ministry of Justice refused an OIA request for the numbers because it does not compile them centrally.
The cameras get it wrong
Mike Kelly, chief executive of the New Zealand Parking Association, concedes the industry “is tightening up” as number plate recognition cameras become standard. He also acknowledges a known flaw: systems reading only earliest entry and latest exit can merge two visits into one long overstay. Typical breach notices run $65 to $85, with fines up to $300 for things like disability park misuse.
The failures are not hypothetical. An Auckland shopper was wrongly issued a $55 notice for a six-hour overstay after visiting the same centre twice, which the operator put down to “human processing error”. A Rotorua Pak’nSave site had data from only one camera despite two entry points. Another driver was asked for proof of shopping in-store to appeal, flipping the burden of proof onto the customer.
The industry is not short of rules. The Parking Association finalised version 2.2 of its code of practice for enforcement on private land in July 2025. The gap between that document and what tribunals keep finding is the problem.
Audit it before the Christmas rush
None of this is an argument against private enforcement. Without it, prime car parks fill with commuters and the paying customers and tenants lose out. The argument is that enforcement has to stand on defensible ground.
For any business with a contracted car park, that means four checks now. Does the signage claim a contract the law does not recognise? Do reminder and collection fees sit anywhere near the $0 to $20 range the tribunal treats as reasonable? Does camera coverage match every entry and exit? And does the appeal process demand proof a genuine customer could not reasonably produce?
The timing is pointed. The Commission’s compliance project and guidance rewrite are coming, and the Christmas trading period is when a bad car park experience costs most in lost goodwill. Businesses that fix their contractor’s practices before the regulator asks will look prudent. Those that wait will find their brand attached to the next tribunal ruling.
Sources
- 1News: More than 400 parking fine complaints to Commerce Commission this year (2026-11-08)
- RNZ: More than 400 parking fine complaints to Commerce Commission this year (2026-11-09)
- Commerce Commission: OIA25.197 – Information relating to car parking concerns (2026-04-20)
- Commerce Commission: OIA 24.190 – Complaints about Parking Services Ltd (2025-05-09)
- The Post: Groundhog Day at Disputes Tribunal over car park managers’ misleading claims (2026-11-09)
- The Post: Parking fees ‘reasonable’ to some is ‘unusual and onerous’ to others (2026-09-26)
- FYI: Statistical data regarding claims heard by the Disputes Tribunal related to private parking breach notices (2025-12-10)
- NZ Herald: Parking breaches – Shoppers across NZ being wrongly stung for visiting businesses twice in a day (2026-09-29)
- NZ Parking Association: Code of Practice for Parking Enforcement on Private Land v2.2 (2025-07)
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