Apcoa Reviews 

No consideration for a genuine error.

Got a PCN fine following forgetting to pay parking in a rush to get a train.
Appealed and provided payment evidence for previous month that I used the same car park nearly every day of the week and thus this was a genuine oversight.
Appeal was refused. No reason given.
No consideration when you genuinely make an error.

Tried to buy a day's parking at Chippenham train station but machine refused credit or debit card I hopped on train, looked up Apcoa and rang them. Waited 19 mins. "Oh don't worry, just pay when you get back!" ie, later that evening. So I go to the car park and there is a different phone number for payments on another, different sign. I ring and it wants a surcharge for late payments. (Why hadn't I been given this phone number when I rang at 9:30a.m.? Read full story for the answer) So, I pay what I tried to pay ahead of my stay at 9:30 a.m ie. £6:20 No PCN arrives in the post, only a debt collection letter from Manchester wanting £170. So ring Apcoa and they say I am not able to appeal as I am beyond the PCN deadline. So I am waiting to hear from Apcoa complaints dept. This company is diabolical. Am prepared to go to court as I have good evidence to corroborate everything. Always collect evidence?! Update: 16/10/23 been let off today after writing to APCOA complaints dept with a copy of my mobile phone calls to them that day, bank statement showing £6:20 for that day and a photo of their ticket machine. Parking Charge Notices (if you get one) are just invoices. ( Penalty Charge Notices follow public car park rules) Contract law operates in private car parks (not public car parks) so make sure you collect solid evidence. They will back off if you can prove your point. (You might have to repeat your point 4 times!) These companies are bullies so you MUST stand up to them. Even a badly lit sign (or too many different signs, or too many words) is a valid defence so don't get clobbered by private car park scams. They were trying to con me out of an additional £3. Instead, I cost them loads more in a DVLA search and admin. I do not have time to download a new parking app (10-15 mins) catching a train and it is an unreasonable expectation of a train station car park owner.

Used the app to prebook at 5.15am. App defaults to the next which I didn’t notice. Subsequently got a ticket. Appealed straight away and explained what had happened quoting booking ref. Two weeks later, get a reply saying that I said in my appeal that I had paid for the said day (which didn’t) and I need to send my ticket(I sent booking ref) or copy of bank statement. Useless company after your money I’d avoid but I have no choice

Terrible app, constantly experiencing network issues that lead to significant stress when trying to make on-time payments and throughout the entire parking experience. AVOID!

Absolutely awful. If I could select '0 stars' I would. Their app is shocking and either crashes or fails to load for me - I suspect it's part of their plan so they can issue more fines, which they did to me (£100 when I continuously tried to pay the £3.20 parking fee for the time I parked). Stay away at all costs!

The App is not easy to use, they force you to buy blocks of days or one week, for example. No start and end date for your parking period. To book 11 days I did the extra 4 day period and the actual time it showed was 3 days extra parking time. No 5 day option, you would have to buy an extra week. Absurd. The web-site is pathetic. Total shambles.

BEWARE. Been using Apcoa connect parking for around a year, as it’s the parking at my uni and since then I have been scammed about 12 times with Microsoft Xbox taking money out my account can be £30-£100 in different transactions. So I have to put in my new card details in to pay for parking, seems that whenever I get a new card and pay for Apcoa parking that’s pretty much the only transaction that I’ve used once I get the card, it scams me again. Very suspicious.

Absolute fraud and thank goodness for my banking app. Tried to pay for station car parking and bank warned me when i tried to give approval for fee that it was going to a really dodgy site. Disgraceful.

Shockingly awful. Tried to download app. Gave my cc details (stupid me) and found myself in some kind of games-trivia morass. It feels like a scam.

It's hard to describe how much I hate Apcoa's app, its website and its payment process. Everything is as difficult as it can be. The "pre-book" section does not feature Ashford International station, even though it pre-populates in the search bar. If you try to pre-book, it won't allow you to say the time - just forces you to pay from now - so it's impossible, say, to buy a ticket on Sunday for Monday. I have spent literally hours going round in circles (and I'm reasonably tech literate) just trying to pay for parking in these god-awful car parks run by this appalling company. And £8.70 a day at Ashford is an absolute rip-off.

WORST parking experience ever😡. No doubt their business model is to make it so difficult to pay, that before you found out how to pay (which requires you accept to be a member and give credit card and other details, taking forever), you will get a fine for not having paid for parking. Smart. Only one thing to do. STAY AWAY.!!!

Further to my last comment and my report to the DVLA i have since been advised that to issue a fine purely based on a camera reading without just cause is a breach of the Data Protection Act and thus an offence to be reported to the Information Commisioner.
This happened in my case .
So if it happens to you report it!!

Parked at The Cabin in Elmer Bognor and thankfully paid drinks by card. Today got ticket from APCOA. Letter sent to DVLA. Time for the authorities to step in.

I will give it zero .., but I can .. they give fines even if we prove that we had pay .. they still our money, just because of typo mistakes.. I do not park in apoa anymore..,they do not have any customer support .. the worse parking place in the world suprisse that they arr sow much use in denmark has an privat parkzone

I parked at Bognor Regis train station for the day,I paid by the app with no hassle. Until 2 weeks later, when I received a parking fine. I have appealed the case as I do have prove. I now have the stress of waiting a further 28 days, to see if they are going to accept my prove of payment. Not happy at all and extremely stressful

the parking app has regular problems submitting payments to bank of ireland on monday mornings...no cash payment posible and no customer service. then we get clamped....cowboys

Terrible company. Did not make it clear some parking bays were reserved so go a fine. Now website won’t allow payment. Spent over an hour trying to sort this out

Hi I just want to say that a similar thing happened to me on Friday 28/07/2023 at around midday in clondalkin town car park that was run by Apcoa. I tried to use the online app with my debit card which was refused as it wanted a credit card. When I used my credit card it was frozen by my bank ( my debit card was also frozen) as there was a suspicious transaction attempted on both my cards.
Just be aware.

Parking nazis. What more to say.

On July 25, I was WRONGFULLY fined by APCOA at Himmelbjerget. Being the first experience with paid parking, and a visitor, I was not aware about placing the ticket in my front window. I wrote to them explaining my situation, and sent them the parking ticket I had bought. They refused to reverse the fine and did not even choose to deduct the measly 10 kroner I paid for the parking. IMAGINE being fine a HUNDRED EURO for a 10 KRONER parking fee.
Besides this, I paid for 3 entries for Himmelbjerget Tårn.The gate did not open the first time, so I had to do it again. My mobile pay app says that they have charged me 4x10kr instead of 3x10kr. I tried to make a complaint online, and they do not have a complaint form for anything except parking fines. I tried to upload proof that they took extra money from me and their system will not accept a png image THOUGH it DOES say that I CAN upload a PNG image!! WHAT?!?!
So in effect, they have made an extra 20 kroner on my visit to Himmelbjerget, besides the 795 kroner fine they charged. Imagine making 20 kroner off 10000 people per day. THAT is a LOT of STOLEN money per day!!Though for me it is not so much about the money as it is about the helplessness I feel as a customer who has been unfairly treated and not heard.
I called the CustomerService number and all I got was a local call center who could not influence the decision, but told me if I had 'any other problem in the future', she would HAPPILY help me AND speak in English!! HAHAHA! WHAT a joke.
THIS is one of my most terrible customer service experiences ever!
APCOA I wish I could speak to SOME PERSON to sort this out!!! It is terrible that you hide behind an online complaint form that offers the people you steal from a VERY limited space to explain their situation, AND you do not have a telephonic customer service method to actually SOLVE problems.
Trust pilot needs to also give -star ratings. The lowest is 1 star, and APCOA has earned a -5 from me. How do I rate them that?