Darebin City Council

Received parking fine at the loading zone due to signage on my car. I'm a full time courier and weren't aware of the rules and regulations. Requested if they could review and cancel my fine as this is my 1st offence. No consideration. Had to pay the fine. Council desperate for funds.

Parked next to a giant P sign on the corner of High St X Elm St for 5 mins only to get fined for parking in a no standing zone whilst I was standing right next to my car. The sign literally serves no other purpose than to deceive innocent citizens. Council did not even bother responding as to what the purpose of the sign is. This council does not act based on logic or empathy.

Fined *hundreds* of dollars for parking 6 minutes past a clearway sign, while buying urgent medical supplies for my partner who had had a serious bike accident that very hour. They never responded to me, after I immediately (that day) asked for an exemption with proof of purchase of urgent medical supplies which is one of the few reasons you CAN park in this manner.Receiving a notice of legal action, SIX MONTHS after the incident with only one 'reminder' (without them ever responding to me) is the kind of empathetic customer service I received.Just one of the many unacceptable interactions with this council, which is well known for it's revenue raising parking scheme.

Certainly lives up to it's rating as one of the WORST councils in Victoria. Full of incompetence from the top down. Don't bother dealing with them go to a higher power if you want to make life easy!!! To busy being woke and attending to the minority than dealing with bigger issues.

Useless public servants and an office drowning in bureaucracy. Double standards plague this Council. Don´t bother seeking support nor representation - especially in housing & development - because you will find yourself fighting an unwinnable fight.

Absolute disgrace this council!!! If you live or have been on victoria road, don’t even bother!!!! Constantly people parking 24/7 where ever they like no consideration for anyone that lives or needs to park there!! Even for disable people!! Constant headache with people who live in apartments no respect for their neighbours. And council say we can’t do anything!!!! Absolute rubbish!!! Getting to the point where people are too scared to even move their car heard it from several people!!!

Hey thanks for yet again taking zero care with the bin collection.Do you want residents to just throw their rubbish directly on the road to cut out the middle person? Not the first time...over it.Get your act together.

Darebin rarely maintains any of the glorious Palm Trees in Northcote, which are now looking really unhealthy and in some instances are dying (see along St George’s Road). Darebin is also slow to plant new trees across the municipality. I have written to them several times on this matter and never receive a response. The staff that used to work in Darebin’s tree department were great, but they have since left and don’t appear to have been replaced. And don’t even get me started on Darebin’s planning division - applying for planning consents in Darebin is just impossible. Expect unreasonable delays, push-backs on everything and to be treated really poorly. We have just gone through a 2 year planning process to renovate a single dwelling home. During that time, the cost of renovating has absolutely skyrocketed. Overall a complete disaster. Had we any idea about the planning difficulties we would encounter, we would never have purchased the property. And the rates are extortionate.

Darebin Council give themselves 120 days to respond to a fine appeal. I moved house in that time frame. Too bad, they were able to find my new address via VIC Roads and summon me to court. When I question why they didn’t find my new address to send reminders to, they demand you tell them why you didn’t advise them you had moved, because telling a council who you appealed a fine to, months ago, that you had moved, is high on your priority list?Forced me to speak to someone initialled Y who severely criticised a young man in their council called H for telling me that they drag people to court once they find your new address so that they don’t run out of time - but then he turned around and said the exact same thing! He then became cold, hard and lied that he couldn’t remove the court costs; which they did in the end, only to reapply penalty reminder costs that they had already removed, and Vic Road fees. Still, I saved about 125 dollars that they probably are out of pocket for doing this kind of stuff. Y had boasted proudly that they had taken thousands of people to court.CEO tried to get him to ring Y again to “remind” me to pay (in other words, strong arm me). This is how little emotional intelligence there is, obviously I was distressed by the man, so why get him to call me. So they tried to get his supervisor V to contact me. She did the same stonewalling, deflecting and threatening court instead of explaining why the raft of new fees were reapplied to the fine, that they had removed. She ignored my question and said “go to court”.Many of their elected councillors sympathised and who told me to fight it. One told me that she had been fined for BFing her newborn baby outside her own house, that this parking fine business was absolute rubbish and an extreme reaction to Greens not wanting people to use their car. I said “look you can fine, but dragging people to court the minute you find their address is just rubbish”. I barely use my car, but punitive and extreme measures are not going to encourage public transport use, they’re just going to encourage resentment.The councillors and the mayor are powerless, don’t think you are paying for the council, they are puppets and the operational people are unelected and run an autocracy.“Must drag as many citizens to court as possible and make their days as painful and difficult as possible and intimidate them as much as we can”Not “we had your wrong address, how do we resolve this in a win-win situation”. Which is still a loss given how high the fines are & how little parking is available in Melbourne

Excessive parking fine, was not clearly marked as parking zone the sign is very high up easy to miss and can see others complaining of the same trap. The amount of very high and they give you only 3 weeks to pay it off, ridiculous. Was for urgent medical matter. Never ever coming back I can’t afford to pay hundreds of dollar for few min parking and the council was refusing to remove the fine. I can’t afford to pay it but still did. Never coming back to this rotten council