Good to know that you will have to pay for this service using the same Pay by Phone technology that landed me with an £80 fine last weekend. It's a clever system, you get to give your number plate to some muppet who then charges you a very high rate direct to your credit card. You get a confirmation text saying you've set up the service and then just a few minutes before your parking expires you get another one giving you the warning. At this late stage they also cleverly confirm the registration number they heard over the phone. If this happens to differ by one character out of seven (say a V instead of a B) then you will find a nice ticket on your car for 80 notes on top of the 12 sheets for 4 hours parking.

Sensible idea, i.e. parking has got so damn expensive that carrying 60 x 20 pence pieces for the meter is no longer a viable option (not because this is tough for the motorist, it means the meters fill up too quickly and require frequent emptying). If you're paying by card who will notice if it's eight quid or twelve so great way to push through a trent oil tracking price rise. But typically piss poor in implementation - how hard would it have been to include the registered licensed plate in the set up text rather than on expiry?

Westminster Council. Bunch of useless morons.

BTW - I used the fully automated RingGo service at a car park near Bristol Temple Meads. Was excellent - took a few minutes to set up my car but was all voice recognition and confirmed back to you to avoid any chance of mistake. The guys on Top Gear were taking the piss out of the question, "Describe in one word the colour of your car" - mine is grey so I didn't have any trouble with this one.