ST. LOUIS – The St. Louis Treasurer’s Office is stepping in after a FOX 2 report on mystery parking charges.
Charges from the City Hall parking lot are at the center of the investigation. It’s a prime spot for Blues fans, as it’s right next to the Enterprise Center.
As FOX 2 first told you Monday night, charges suddenly appeared on drivers’ credit card statements in bundles. Tom Walsh’s family noticed 12 charges hit their accounts last Thursday.
“I know I don’t have 12 cars and I know I wasn’t downtown Thursday morning,” he said.
Walsh said he does park in the lot frequently as they have season tickets but says he hasn’t been there since January, and no one from his family has been there since February.
We took it to the treasurer’s office, which oversees St. Louis parking. After hours of investigating, the office told us it learned the charges were legitimate—just late to be billed.
“People swiped their card, and it might have showed up as pending, but it actually never posted,” City Treasurer Adam Layne said. “People weren’t double charged. They just weren’t charged in the first place.
“I can tell you with 100% certainty that no one was double charged, but the part that I don’t like is that multiple charges showed up months later.”
Layne said his office’s investigation is just beginning into the companies responsible, which might be the credit card processing company, or it might be the application attendants’ fault when swiping the cards at the lot.
“I do not want to release the names of those two companies because we don’t know where the wrongdoing is yet, so that would be unfair to them,” he said.
Layne is confident the issue is fixed, but citizens are welcome to call his office. You should check your statements from May 16 through the weekend for a charge that says, “City Hall Events.”
The treasurer’s office is also investigating whether citizens should still be responsible for paying for their parking after a so much time has passed. Layne promised to follow up once his investigation is complete, when he said he will name names of the companies involved. And their contracts could be in jeopardy depending on the treasurer’s findings.
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