The Netherlands: City of Almere Parking Fines considered "Municipality Legalized Robbery" by vistors and citizens

Almere: a parking fine can cost you a fortun

Parking fines, you know they exist, but how high they are usually is a total mystery until you get a fine.

Of course rules are rules, but they should be proportional. Not a Municipality legalized robbery.

Visiting the city of Almere on Sunday, July 31, to do some errands, we parked the car at 12.55 in a downtown Almere open air car parking called "Landdroesdreef" and paid  € 4.10 (US $ 4.60) to park for approximately one and a half hour worth of parking time until 2.27 pm..

Unfortunately, the errands in downtown Almere took slightly more time than expected and when we arrived at the parking lot it was 2.42 pm, only some 15 minutes too late and we found a fine on the windshield of the car for € 62.50 (approximately $70 US Dollars).

The parking "police", who had given the fine were still standing on the parking lot and we immediately went to them to apologize for the 15 minute delay, but they were not willing to forgive the fine, or even reduce it. Worse of all, they were also unable to explain why a fine for 15 minutes of overtime in a parking lot was € 62.50.

By whatever standards, these kind of a parking fines are ridiculous, specially in smaller cities like Almere, or on a Sunday, when in most cities around the world, there are either reduced parking rates or no parking fees at all.

The Municipality of Almere and the business community would do good to look into this if they want to make Almere consumer friendly and attract more visitors and tourists to the city..

Almere-Digest