CellOPark Australia parking battle affects thousands of Brisbane motorists

Thousands of Brisbane motorists have become inadvertently tangled in a business stoush between an embattled parking company and an overseas tech giant.

CellOPark. Picture: Facebook

Thousands of Brisbane motorists have become inadvertently tangled in a business stoush between an embattled parking company and an overseas tech giant.

CellOPark Australia Pty Ltd, in a statement on social media, finally confirmed confounding emails sent to customers in Queensland and other states was due to a business war between the Australians that brought the technology here and the Israeli tech giant that first invented it.

Users have been assured their data is safe as CellOPark Australia apologised for “any confusion and inconvenience caused by the recent blast of emails you may have gotten from us”.

In the lengthy statement CellOPark Australia has revealed the issue lies in the ownership and development of the existing “CellOPark” app and moves by the Australian-based business to divorce itself from an Israeli tech giant.

The email sent by CellOPark to customers on December 19.

CelloPark Australia Pty Ltd, along with Smarter City Solutions, OPark Pty Ltd and VPark Pty Ltd, are all owned by Australian Ori Almog.

But the technology behind CelloPark Australia was developed in Israel by a company now known as Cello, which in its home nation also has stakes in electrical vehicle charging, and payment systems for toll roads and public transport.

The CelloPark Australia app remains owned and developed by the Israeli company Cellopark Limited, though users are managed by Mr Almog’s Australian business.

And it appears a move by Mr Almog’s company to divorce itself from the Israeli company and move Australian users to an app they’ve developed themselves known as OPark has gone sour.

The CellOPark app has been controversial. Picture: Facebook

The OPark app is owned and developed by VPark Pty Ltd, a company owned by Mr Almog according to ASIC records.

According to the CelloPark Australia statement, the emails sent to users on December 19 and 23 which sparked confusion were “system generated emails” issued by the Israeli developer of the app without their approval in “what is now a commercial dispute”.

“At no stage was there any external access to your personal and/or financial information. Your Credit Card information is NEVER stored and is always tokenised as part of our compliance with industry standards,” the company stated.

“We would like to apologise for all the confusion caused.”

According to CellOPark Australia a number of major universities which uses its services — including UNSW, Deakin and Monash — have all moved to the OPark app.

But Brisbane City Council has not and users are asked to continue using the CellOPark Australia app “until further notice”.

Mayor Adrian Schrinner on Saturday said council was waiting for the results of the legal stoush before ditching the service, but said patience was running out.

“At this stage, we’ve asked them to sort their differences out,” he said.

“Obviously, there’s an internal dispute going on at the moment, we are running out of patience with this, and we’ve been advised that it will be addressed in the very near future.”

Mr Schrinner remained tight-lipped over whether the council had lined up alternative providers, saying other pay parking businesses would be pursued “if necessary”.

“Obviously that’s the next step we’ll take, going to an alternative provider, but we’re giving them fair and reasonable time to sort this out,” he said.

Asked what reasonable timeframe had been given to CellOPark, Mr Schrinner said that deadline would be determined by a pending court process.

“There’s a number of legal matters that are under investigation I understand and so that relies on certain court dates and court appearances,” he said.

“The court appearances will determine the timeline, but those are pending very soon, in the very near future.”

Mr Almog, when contacted by the Courier-Mail on Friday, said he was overseas and would be available to speak next week.

Originally published as CellOPark Australia parking battle affects thousands of Brisbane motorists