But one man told First Up it was not always this expensive.
“Back in the day it was a lot cheaper, but I have no idea why it just jumped so high right now. I mean, two hours, $44. People don’t make that when they work. They don’t make $23. That’s crazy. Great business, right?”
A few tourists who came into the city to run errands said they were leaving because the Wilson carpark is simply too expensive.
Chris Schulz, a senior investigative journalist at Consumer NZ, said he could not find a carpark in the country more expensive than the Wilson site on Fort St.
“Actually, we looked into all of the major centres where you would expect carparks to be pretty expensive – Auckland’s definitely up there, it’s definitely the most expensive. I guess you’d expect that.
“I don’t think you’d expect the extreme prices that Wilson carpark on Fort St, in particular, as charging $22 an hour is like every car going into that carpark is earning minimum wage,” he said.
Just over 60% of New Zealanders commute to work by car.
In Auckland CBD it costs at least $5 an hour in the council-owned Downtown, Civic and Victoria St carparks. The maximum fee per day is $24.
When it comes to street parking, there’s no charge if you leave within 10 minutes – after that it’s at least $4 an hour on weekdays.
In Wellington CBD, the hourly rate in a council parking building is $5, while in Christchurch it’s $4.30.
In New Plymouth, the newly opened Downtown carpark charges $3 an hour, but is running a half-price special until the end of the year.
Further south you can put the “car” in “Invercargill” with the first 30 minutes free in the central carpark, and $3.50 an hour after that.
It could be the cheapest town in the country to park, with no charge for half an hour on the street, then only $1 an hour after that.
Back at the Fort St carpark, in a statement, Wilson said its high prices were because of supply and demand.
“The pricing at Wilson Parking is primarily driven by supply and demand. As a small site in the heart of Auckland’s CBD, it is a highly sought after site.
“Beyond this, to make parking more affordable, we offer ParkMate, which provides rates 25% lower than machine prices and virtually eliminates breach notice risks, if used correctly. Our new ParkMate Guest feature also allows drive-up customers to access these discounts without needing to download the app.”
Schulz said while the company encourages people to use the carpark app, most people who drive into the carpark do not have time to download it.
“Wilson has an app that you can get it slightly cheaper. I think it’s down to $16 an hour [and] they are encouraging people to use the app and they they did come back at me and point that out.
“But if you know most people, they don’t download the app, they don’t notice the parking app.
“They roll into town, they’re looking for a park. They find us like free Oasis that’s got spare parks on Fort St and they roll in there and suddenly they parked the car they’ve got out and they’ve looked at the prices and it’s $22 an hour.”
But it was not just parking prices that are higher than usual there.
Those who overstayed even minutes over their paid time get stung with a fee.
“If you’re late, they will ping you with this extra $85 fee and they wouldn’t tell me how quickly you get charged $85.
“But I’ve looked through the Google reviews and a lot of people complain about it. A lot of people are sort of maybe 10 minutes late, 15 minutes late, back to the car. But you know, a week, two weeks later they get a breach bill.”
There was a QR code at the Wilson Parking on Fort St that can be scanned to read the terms and conditions – which say a breach could result in an $85 notice.
But Schulz said Wilson Parking did not make it easy to find the fine print.
“Wilson is hiding its terms and conditions behind a QR code that is right at the bottom of the sign.”
Auckland Transport estimated Auckland CBD has at least 21,000 off-street carparks in buildings owned by council and private operators like Wilson’s.
Despite that, several drivers at the Wilson carpark with a $74 early bird rate told First Up they could not find anything else nearby.
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