Driving experience memory card fine of £80!

[J4CKO]

Did an experience thing on Friday, got it for my wife as she rattles on about Mustangs all the time so got her a go in one, sort of £99 stocking filler from Christmas 2021, anyway she didn't bother and then told me it had three days to go before it expired and did I want it.

I booked it with a company called "Car Chase Heroes" and it was on Friday at the Three Sisters track.

Anyway, turned up and they now make you pay £2 for parking, then you get the choice of £30 for insurance or handing over your card for the £5000 bill if you bend the car in some way.

So, £32 extra, had anticipated the insurance.

Drove the cars, generally felt flat as a fart, Mustang GT "Roush", felt a bit gutless but to be fair cant get into its stride on a small circuit with a 12 year old driving a comedy Batmobile replica at 23 mph in front of you, but hey ho, you get what you pay for at £99 (Plus £32...) Even a Hellcat felt slow, wonder if they nobble them in some way as there is no way something with 707 bhp should feel anything other than ballistic. Corvette C7 was very nice to be fair.

Anyway, waffling a bit but they give you a pouch on a lanyard that contains a SD Card that is inserted into a dash cam on the car, and they also take photos as you drive round which they match and plonk on the card if you so desire before you leave.

But, if you plonk the card in your pocket and pay for a rather skilled young lady to blast you (and your youngest son) round in an Aerial Atom for a couple of laps and leave buzzing after that, and now a bit late due to the wait, and forget to return the memory card only to put your hand in your fleece and find it later.

Well, you open it up and find a card that says there is an £80 fine for taking it away, rather than just handing it in or purchasing the media.

Now I know it must cost a lot to put this on, and that there are some big risks letting the public loose in large numbers in some powerful cars on a circuit but this seems a bit like sharp practice, a bit like entrapment as its small enough to fit in a pocket and go unnoticed. It was a genuine mistake as was under time pressure to drop my lad off.

So, dont want fining £80, not hard up for £80, and dont want to cost Car Chase Heroes any money and am happy to return their memory card, but feel like its a bit of a scam.

What's the legal position on this, in the meantime I have frozen my card on my banking app so they cant just take it, feel like should be given an adequate chance to return it and not get "fined" £80.

They have had £171 already for the experience, parking, insurance and passenger laps in the Atom, dont feel inclined to be hit for £80 as it feels like its designed to catch you out to an extent.

Any suggestions, I suspect they do an admin task on weekdays to check customer numbers against memory cards returned and then run a job to take £80 from all the missing ones.

[PF62]

Based on a previous thread about someone forgetting to pay at a petrol station and being charged a penalty, then the overwhelming response will be that it is -

1. utterly your fault
2. you should be grateful that they are only charging you £80
3. £80 is what it actually cost them for the admin of emailing you the penalty
4. it is a lesson to be careful next time.

[MBVitoria]

If they want to pursue you they will need to go to court and be able to prove that they have incurred losses to the tune of £80.

If you return the card by recorded delivery, I cannot see how they have incurred any losses.

I wonder whether the "fine" to do with you taking the digital images away with you and them losing out on the chance to fleece you for providing printed copies etc?

Either way, I would simply post it back and ignore them. 1 star review etc online too.

[Taita]

They haven't actually contacted you or you contacted them yet.....

Give them a buzz and say 'hey I noticed I forgot the SD card, I am posting it today'.

If they say they owe you £80 then its worth reinvestigating but until then, it is just a teeeeensy error.

[C5_Steve]

MBVitoria said:

If they want to pursue you they will need to go to court and be able to prove that they have incurred losses to the tune of £80.

If you return the card by recorded delivery, I cannot see how they have incurred any losses.

I wonder whether the "fine" to do with you taking the digital images away with you and them losing out on the chance to fleece you for providing printed copies etc?

Either way, I would simply post it back and ignore them. 1 star review etc online too.

The £80 is absolutely going to cover the admin/replacement cost as well as the fact you've taken away their media content without permission rather than paying them for the images/footage. So even if you return it, you've still had access to all the media on it which is a loss to them as they sell it.

It's a silly mistake but I understand how easy it is to do having done almost exactly the same as you (except the taking the card home bit of course). These places do make all their money on the upsell, the low entry cost is the way they get people to buy them as gifts for people easily. If you only pay for what you want it's still reasonable depending where you go.

I'd swallow the cost and make the most of watching that comedy Batmobile go round.............

On a side note, when I did one of these my girlfriend filmed from the sidelines, I was embarrassed how slow it looked on camera and would absolutely not pay to watch myself crawl round a track

[Grumps.]

Why make a drama out of it?

Just tell them you’ll be retuning the card using 24hr post and move on with your life.

[bennno]

They sell you the images and videos on the SD card, im guessing by taking it away then its probably an expensive SD card plus loss of the revenues.

Just say you handed it back.

[J4CKO]

MBVitoria said:

If they want to pursue you they will need to go to court and be able to prove that they have incurred losses to the tune of £80.

If you return the card by recorded delivery, I cannot see how they have incurred any losses.

I wonder whether the "fine" to do with you taking the digital images away with you and them losing out on the chance to fleece you for providing printed copies etc?

Either way, I would simply post it back and ignore them. 1 star review etc online too.

Not actually looked on the card, think they upload the imagines and the dashcam footage is recorded by the car.

Will do like you say and return it recorded.

A 16 GB SD card is like £3 in bulk, couple of quid for a lanyard and pouch if that, wasn't going to buy any media anyway, and they will get it back.


Just feels a bit unfair, should be something obvious on the way out for you to dump them saying "Have you returned your SD Card ?", it sort of feels like they want you to buy it, even better if you take it and they charge you £80, if it was £40 say, would just suck it up, but £80, nah. Why dont they just make it £500 ? Suppose its set to get a decent return and hopefully not generate too many objections.

Its quite a punitive amount, and this is a pretty low cost (as experiences go) operator, a lot of the folk there will miss £80, and to be honest I have better things to spend it on than paying for some crap footage of me trundling round at 25 mph.

Did have it round my neck, but before going in the Atom, as it has a four point harness, didnt want it flapping about, so stuck it in my pocket.

[J4CKO]

C5_Steve said:

MBVitoria said:

If they want to pursue you they will need to go to court and be able to prove that they have incurred losses to the tune of £80.

If you return the card by recorded delivery, I cannot see how they have incurred any losses.

I wonder whether the "fine" to do with you taking the digital images away with you and them losing out on the chance to fleece you for providing printed copies etc?

Either way, I would simply post it back and ignore them. 1 star review etc online too.

The £80 is absolutely going to cover the admin/replacement cost as well as the fact you've taken away their media content without permission rather than paying them for the images/footage. So even if you return it, you've still had access to all the media on it which is a loss to them as they sell it.

It's a silly mistake but I understand how easy it is to do having done almost exactly the same as you (except the taking the card home bit of course). These places do make all their money on the upsell, the low entry cost is the way they get people to buy them as gifts for people easily. If you only pay for what you want it's still reasonable depending where you go.

I'd swallow the cost and make the most of watching that comedy Batmobile go round.............

On a side note, when I did one of these my girlfriend filmed from the sidelines, I was embarrassed how slow it looked on camera and would absolutely not pay to watch myself crawl round a track

Did a proper track day a few weeks back in my own car, even that didnt look that fast

Felt it inside though.

[C5_Steve]

J4CKO said:

Did a proper track day a few weeks back in my own car, even that didnt look that fast

Felt it inside though.

Thank you you've made me feel much better

[BertBert]

can't speak for that event as I wasn't there. However I was at one at CC and it was very obvious indeed that they wanted the card back or £80. But as others have said, stick it in the post to them and see what happens.

[BertBert]

Interestingly, it'll be hard for them to sue for lost income saying you've had the images/video that's theirs that they would otherwise sell to you as you can honestly say that they are not worth anything to you as you wouldn't have bought them.

[Zetec-S]

C5_Steve said:

On a side note, when I did one of these my girlfriend filmed from the sidelines, I was embarrassed how slow it looked on camera and would absolutely not pay to watch myself crawl round a track

I did one last year, paid for a couple of professional photo's (it looked like I was going fast ) but would definitely pass on any video evidence

[Dynion Araf Uchaf]

how do they know you have the card?

Surely it just fell out and is in the car somewhere?

[blingybongy]

Chuck it in the bin and tell them you don't know where they put it.

[J4CKO]

Dynion Araf Uchaf said:

how do they know you have the card?

Surely it just fell out and is in the car somewhere?

It has a customer number tied to your card details, I initially thought I have had a new card since I booked that, then remembered that they had it for the insurance so they get card details off everybody who drives or whoever booked it, parent etc.

So, they will look at which cards havent been returned, or paid for the media and bill those.

As it is currently, I have frozen my card, will unfreeze it before using and hopefully avoid when they run that reconciliation and billing of fines.

The sneaky bit is that the pouch is mesh and you cant read through it, didnt look at the card, just handed the SD card over to the instructor as requested, only read the card thinking it may have a return address, but just details of the fine, plenty of pouches available with clear plastic, its almost like its done on purpose to catch derps like me out for eighty quid.

[Bill]

Taita said:

They haven't actually contacted you or you contacted them yet.....

Give them a buzz and say 'hey I noticed I forgot the SD card, I am posting it today'.

If they say they owe you £80 then its worth reinvestigating but until then, it is just a teeeeensy error.

This. Talk about making a mountain out if a molehill!

[J4CKO]

Have tried ringing twice and no answer.

Just going to post it back to them, their website says,

"Media purchases are sold as seen and non-refundable. SD cards can be easily corrupted if used incorrectly so please take care as we do not keep back-ups of your footage. There will be an £80 fine for non-returned SD cards & lanyards"

So, based on that, if its returned then its not subject to a fine, no time limit or where it has to be returned is mentioned, so by implication posting it back to their registered address is fine.

[PistonTim]

J4CKO said:

Have tried ringing twice and no answer.

Just going to post it back to them, their website says,

"Media purchases are sold as seen and non-refundable. SD cards can be easily corrupted if used incorrectly so please take care as we do not keep back-ups of your footage. There will be an £80 fine for non-returned SD cards & lanyards"

So, based on that, if its returned then its not subject to a fine, no time limit or where it has to be returned is mentioned, so by implication posting it back to their registered address is fine.

If they dont specify WHEN or HOW it has to be returned then fair game.

And anyone who thinks that £80 is a fair representation of the value of the card and admin cost for someone likely on minimum wage is taking the mick. Its quite clearly designed to try and catch you out.

[BertBert]

J4CKO said:

Media purchases are sold as seen and non-refundable. SD cards can be easily corrupted if used incorrectly so please take care as we do not keep back-ups of your footage. There will be an £80 fine for non-returned SD cards & lanyards

And clearly they are not a body that can issue a fine, so it would be unenforceable anyway.

PistonTim said:

And anyone who thinks that £80 is a fair representation of the value of the card and admin cost for someone likely on minimum wage is taking the mick. Its quite clearly designed to try and catch you out.

From what I saw, it was extremely clear that you needed to let them have it back, so not very sneaky at all!