Parking Lot Company Allegedly Scamming Motorists, The Star Backs Down

Don't you just love it when profit-grubbing companies keep inching their hand further into your pocket to make sure they grabbed every last dime? That seems to be exactly what went down this week on Commissioners Street near the Cirque du Soleil show, as Accordion Guy wrote about on his blog yesterday.

The scam supposedly involved an Impark employee laying down orange pylons along the road before the Cirque showswhere free parking was available, no doubt to entice drivers to opt for the nearby parking lots instead.

What's worse? The Toronto Star initially wrote two stories about this on October 20th and 22nd, but later made a very cryptic retraction about the whole thing. So what happened here?

Did The Star get bullied into submission? Or was this a genuine error on the writer's part?

When they approached the employee dropping the pylons on a public road, he claimed he worked for "the parking." As Joey mentioned, this raises a couple questions; Who owns the lots, and who in fact authorized this guy to take public road service into their own hands? Furthermore, should the city be taking action here in the face of blatant abuse of public services?

If anything, I'd say this warrants a follow-up story or explanation from The Star.

Have you come across this kind of thing before on the roads? Sound off in the comments.

Photo from the original Star article and Joey deVilla