Euro Car Parks website payment scam

[carl0s]

Fuckers.

 

Go to the ECP payments website ( http://www.eurocarparks.com/charges-pcn.htm )

 

Fill in some made-up details.

 

Watch as it happily takes your money from you.

 

Now, just to confirm this is dodgy.. go ahead and put some proper details in:

 

Ticket type A,

Number 0551239

 

see.. it checks the details and it knows how much is owed.

 

So why then does the website take money by default ?

 

I made the mistake of entering the details wrong (I entered ticket-type A, but I also put A0551239 for the number), and as far as I was concerned the payment was made. Now my office have just gone and paid the £50 and ECP say I have to check my bank statements from February to see if they took the money and then refunded it, or just took it.

 

Their website doesn't do anything modern like send you email confirmations. Just as well I PDF'd the confirmation page in February.

[Snooze]

errrr - you can't put A0551239 as the number - the field isn't big enough.

 

Weird that it doesn't validate ticket numbers, though. Maybe the database only contains some of the ticket numbers, so they made the decision to assume anything that wasn't recognised just hadn't made it to the database yet?

[carl0s]

So, I must've been drinking that night. I missed off the last digit!

Maybe my PCN ticket was funny looking or something - it was ages ago.

 

See attached:

http://www2.css-networks.com/ecp.pdf

[Jake]

errrr - you can't put A0551239 as the number - the field isn't big enough.

 

 

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/3042/waterslidewrongsr3.gif

 

A0551239 isn't the ticket number, it's 0551239

[carl0s]

[qimg]http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/3042/waterslidewrongsr3.gif[/qimg]

 

A0551239 isn't the ticket number, it's 0551239

 

LOL

 

That's the point. If you do it wrong, they don't tell you that. They still take the money.

[Snooze]

You can see this sort of problem where (and I'm guessing here!) the website runs off a local database of ticket numbers separate to the ticket issuing database. If there is no "live" link between the databases, and issued ticket data only gets copied across to the website database every day, or every week, or something, you have a problem.

If the data is only copied across on a timed basis, that means that your website is not really able to take payment for recently (same day) issued tickets, so you have to decide either: (a) you don't take payment for these "same day" tickets, and end up with lots of pi**ed-off, last-minute buyers, or (b) you take payment for anything and assume it'll tie up later on.

Looks like they chose option (b). To make the solution slightly nicer, they should probably have implemented something to make sure that the ticket numbers that have been paid for actually DO turn up at some point, and to tidy up, refund, etc. if not.

 

Anyhow - this is pure hypothesis - I've no idea how the Europark IT system is architected really - just trying to suggest that this sort of stuff often occurs because of badly thought-out system design, or sometimes because the designers have their hands tied completely by legacy systems - rather than it being deliberately designed to rip people off.

[carl0s]

You can see this sort of problem where (and I'm guessing here!) the website runs off a local database of ticket numbers separate to the ticket issuing database. If there is no "live" link between the databases, and issued ticket data only gets copied across to the website database every day, or every week, or something, you have a problem.

If the data is only copied across on a timed basis, that means that your website is not really able to take payment for recently (same day) issued tickets, so you have to decide either: (a) you don't take payment for these "same day" tickets, and end up with lots of pi**ed-off, last-minute buyers, or (b) you take payment for anything and assume it'll tie up later on.

Looks like they chose option (b). To make the solution slightly nicer, they should probably have implemented something to make sure that the ticket numbers that have been paid for actually DO turn up at some point, and to tidy up, refund, etc. if not.

 

Anyhow - this is pure hypothesis - I've no idea how the Europark IT system is architected really - just trying to suggest that this sort of stuff often occurs because of badly thought-out system design, or sometimes because the designers have their hands tied completely by legacy systems - rather than it being deliberately designed to rip people off.

 

I agree it's probably to do with the ticket data not being on the sytem right away.

However, Trafford's parking services website simply says "Sorry, it's not on the system yet, try again later".

 

Even if they just emailed a confirmation, and then emailed again to say there was a problem then that'd be a start.