Parking Dilemma

I work in a building that was built fairly recently and has 121 offices inside.  However when the offices were built no-one obviously thought about how people were going to get to work as they made no provision for car parking.  The closest affordable car-park is about half a mile away.  However, there is a bed shop with a rather large free car park that’s only a couple of minutes’ walk away.  There are about 15 of us commuters that have realised this and we all park our cars in there for the working day.  There’s one very small sign that says parking is for customers only and any non-customers will be clamped but we all ignore it.  There are so many spaces in the car park that it’s not like actual customers will be short of one. 

A couple of months ago a note was left of my windscreen saying that the car park would be closed for the next two days for resurfacing. I thought that it was rather strange and wondered if the staff had just got bored and thought they’d kindly let the commuters know about the resurfacing.  So reluctantly the next day I left my car in the further away car park and walked in to work.  When I walked back to the car that day there nothing seemed to have happened in the bed shop car park with regards to the resurfacing and there were still cars parked in there.  So the next day I went back to parking at the bed shop. 

Two days ago I got back to the car and found this note on my windscreen- 

‘Any cars parking that are not registered to park need to do so straight away by calling us on 014****3996.  Do not call into the shop.  If you are not registered your car will be clamped without further warning’.  

So yesterday I parked up in the further away car park and on my way back to the car after work there were still quite a few of the commuter cars in the bed shop car park and none of them had been clamped. 

I didn’t park in there again today but I’m already wondering whether the bed shop’s threats are just empty because let’s be honest how on earth are they going to clamp 20 cars?? Already this year I’ve saved £140 on parking money so if I did get clamped I’d still have made a saving because surely they wouldn’t charge me £140 to remove the clamp?? What would you do? Would you risk it to park closer for free, or would you pay to park further away?

Alex x