Ten minutes in a free car park. A €35 penalty in the post.
That’s one of the cases behind the Park Expert fine announced this week. Latvia’s Consumer Rights Protection Centre (PTAC) has fined the car park operator €122,774, saying its automated system hit drivers with disproportionate penalties. Park Expert disagrees and says it will appeal.
PTAC announced the decision on 12 November. It’s dated 9 November and orders Park Expert to stop the practice immediately.
Key facts
- Fine: €122,774, in a PTAC decision dated 9 November
- Typical penalty: €35 a ticket under Park Expert’s car park rules
- Complaints: 274 written complaints to PTAC from 1 January to 30 September 2026, plus 189 email consultations
- Reach: 148 car parks in Latvia, 128 of them in Riga, according to the decision
- Next: Park Expert says it will appeal; the decision gives it a month to go to the Administrative District Court
What did PTAC find wrong with Park Expert’s parking penalties?
Not the cameras. PTAC says using an automated system that logs when cars come and go is fine on its own. The problem, in its view, is how that system was used to hand out penalties.
According to PTAC, tickets went out for formal breaches of the car park rules or for running over time, without properly weighing what kind of breach it was, how long it lasted, what the driver had done to follow the rules, or what they had actually paid. It says drivers need real time after the camera logs them to find a space, read the rules, decide whether to stay, and pay or register their car.
PTAC also says a contractual penalty isn’t meant to be a regular extra income stream for a business (our paraphrase).
The full decision describes a driver who stopped for 10 minutes at the car park at Krišjāņa Valdemāra iela 62, where Alojas kvartāls shoppers get 30 minutes free if they register their plate at a kiosk inside. The driver told PTAC they went looking for the kiosk, couldn’t find it, made a quick purchase by the entrance and left. They got a €35 penalty, and Park Expert declined to cancel it, saying its system showed no payment or registration for the car.
Using the company’s own data, PTAC worked out that at least 26.58% of the penalties issued each month were later cancelled (17.24%) or cut (9.34%). That’s roughly one ticket in four. Reduced penalties ranged from €12 to €20, the decision says.
The fine itself is 3.6% of Park Expert’s 2025 net turnover of €3,410,395. The legal maximum was 4%, and PTAC took 10% off that because the company said it was ready to improve.
What does Park Expert say?
In a comment published by Delfi, Park Expert said it disagrees with the decision, considers the fine disproportionate and will appeal. It said it has worked with PTAC in recent months and already brought in much of what the regulator recommended: a clear process for reviewing and cancelling penalties, a way to pay for parking even after you’ve left, and faster, more careful handling of complaints. It also doesn’t rule out a settlement with PTAC (all our paraphrase, translated from Latvian).
Got a Park Expert penalty? What can you do?
PTAC’s advice: take it up with the company first. If you can’t agree, a court has the final say, and if you were hit by this practice you can use the reasoning in the decision to back up your case.
It’s not the only Riga parking ticket that has raised eyebrows lately. Last month residents were getting a €30 police fine on a Ķengarags lot that officially isn’t a car park. And PTAC isn’t the only watchdog handing out big numbers this autumn: in October the Competition Council said a funeral cartel rigged public tenders worth about €2M.
Read the rules at the gate, and keep your receipts, Riga.
Photo: car park on Aleksandra Čaka iela, Riga, 21 September 2023 (not a Park Expert site), Андрей Романенко / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped, number plates blurred
