Wye Valley Butterfly Zoo Reviews 31

Butterflies are great, but at £100 for an hour, the parking is a little steep.

You had better guess which random crappy parking app they are using before you get there - as there isn’t enough signal to make it work once you are! 😞

Has the payment gone through? Yes? No? You won’t know until it’s too late 😆

AVOID - this place is operating a parking scam! No better than thieves!

Some lovely butterflies. But over priced for a small green house that takes about 10 mins of your time. And then you have to pay £3 for parking.
Would I recommend NO - need to be 3-4 times the size for that price. Or you should get the mini golf included at least

Spent 15 minutes in the butterfly zoo
Got fined £100 for carpark apparently it's something that frequently happens the carpark belongs to the zoo.
Absolutely DISGUSTING!! Not going back

Like so many other victims of Parking Eye, at the Wye Valley Butterfly Farm (and elsewhere) I paid for parking in good faith, and was surprised to receive a £100 fine in the mail some days later. I went to the car to find the ticket only to see that it said ‘this is not a parking ticket’ and ‘void’ in small letters. Other than that it looks exactly like a normal parking ticket, and I believed it to be one, displaying it in my windscreen accordingly. After receiving the fine, I went back to the Butterfly Farm, to ask them to waive the ticket. The worker on reception said this scenario happens all the time. He said the butterfly farm has no authority to waive the fine. I rather doubt this is true. Parking Eye’s so called appeal procedure is absolutely pointless. They are not remotely interested in considering your position, or taking any responsibility. This is how they make their (presumably not inconsiderable) profits. Do not visit this car park unless you can afford extortionate parking fines. And don’t expect the completely uncaring butterfly farm to have even so much as a polite notice suggesting their customers check their payment has been processed, despite acknowledging ‘this happens all the time’.

DONT GO UNLESS YOU WANT TO LINE THE POCKETS OF THE DIRECTORS IF PARKING EYE

As with others, we were stung by a parking fine.
We saw that it was an ANPR car park, and went and paid at the machine. It issued a ticket with my bank card details - last four numbers starred out. It stated ‘ This is not a parking ticket’. Fine - it’s a ANPR car park and I’ve paid; my registration number is on the ticket.
But… three weeks later, a £100 fine. I still had the ticket, and checked it. In tiny letters, in the top left of the ticket- where it’d easily be obscured by your fingers as you were holding the ticket- it says ‘VOID’.
Everything else looks like a normal parking ticket including the bank account. So, my bank account wasn’t debited although I had no knowledge of this at the time.
We appealed through POPLA pointing out that we’d paid in good faith and the issue re the misleading receipt, but were turned down on the grounds that we hadn’t read the payment terms and conditions board.
It cost us £180.
I wish I’d looked at Tripadvisor and Trustpilot beforehand. This has happened to so many people that the frequency is extremely troubling.
I note that there has been no response by the Butterfly Zoo to any of the unfavourable comments about parking, and leave you to draw your own conclusions.

AVOID - as others mention I received a £100 parking fine after attempting to pay at the parking machine but being given a void receipt instead of a payment receipt. The receipt has my card details, car reg number and time/date and only in very small writing at the top does it say 'VOID'. This is a scam which judging by reviews has been going on for almost 6 years! I am still appealing the fine after visiting in October 2024, but I am now writing my defence for the court as ParkingEye have told them I owe them money. The butterfly zoo was fine but definitely not worth this experience, and the staff there provided no warning of the parking scam, despite the fact that they must be aware of it. Others have suggested the butterfly zoo is in on the scam, and there is no evidence apparent to me to prove otherwise. I visited with my friend who also received the same PCN, but unfortunately did not still have a copy of her receipt so she paid the fine. I contacted the butterfly zoo to notify them of my PCN and request that they inform me of actions they are taking to safeguard future customers from the same fines.... surprise surprise I received no reply.

Crap! One parking machine and not working! Had a fine. Maze wasn't open, nor crazy golf. Hardly any butterflies. Receptionist was rude.

DO NOT GO TO Wye Valley Butterfly Zoo

A few years ago I received a parking fine, even though i paid for parking. Since then I have had almost daily bullying phone calls off a debt collection agency. They are now threatening court action against me, this needs to be sorted, and it is something you are quite obviously complicit with, or fobbing people off with a 'blind eye'. Whichever it is, I will be contacting the national press to find out why, after hundreds of customers have contacted them, they continue to allow this robbery to take place. Any denial on there part at this point is only made laughable by looking at trip advisor reviews about parking fines for this attraction. It is obvious that they would not be so idle and unhelpful, if they weren't making money out of THEIR customers mysery.

A nice day ruined by parking. I wish I'd seen the reviews before! We paid to enter the zoo, did the maze and mini golf as a group of 6. We also visited the cafe twice so spent a fair amount of money on site! We took two cars and both got hit with the £100/£60 parking charges as other customers have said. Would not return as it made our day very expensive and has tainted what was otherwise a lovely trip out. Would avoid purely based on the amount of people sharing this experience.

An ok place to visit but received a £100 parking fine from Parking Eye despite paying at the machine before leaving. Even challenging the fine was no use and they recommended I go to the ombudsman for a refund. I would not visit here again and will try to avoid any places that use Parking Eye, a complete scam.

My god what a rip off. Butterfly farm OK, but parking is a scam. Even when you pay for parking and have a record of it (VISA CARD PAYMENT). So forget that you have paid for entry to the "Zoo", and can prove the parking fee was removed by the car park, you will probably have a fine which they will refuse to cancel. Butterfly farm do not want to know(they were pig ignorant); My solicitor says I need to find relationship between "Zoo" and car park owners, anyone have info; can be put on this site ; I will pick it up as and when.

My daughter and her friend visited on 20th August. They thought they’d paid for parking as the machine read their card and issued a ticket. However on closer inspection the ticket they were issued although looking like a valid ticket and detailed the charge etc. was not in fact a ticket but instead a record to say the transaction had failed. If you visit this place check the ticket that gets printed very carefully. It’s clear from the other posts this is a long standing issue with this machine but one which the operator is apparently not incentivized to remediate. Consequently I have received a demand for payment of £60. The only method of appeal is via letter despite the parking company having a web presence. In fact, the parking companies website appears focussed predominantly on collecting fines.

I paid for parking and got a fine, appealed and sent copy of ticket, still fined. Absolute disgrace, the place is a rip off. Won't ever go back and will not recommend. Disgusting.

I agree with the last reviewer. Avoid unless you want to end up with a hefty parking fine. We have just received a parking notice from Parking Eye for our visit to the Butterfly Farm and have had to pay out £60.00. I cannot remember much about the circumstances of our visit except that the butterflies were attractive. I have never received a parking notice before. Sadly I cannot remember what notice of a charge we received in the car park, but I would have paid for parking if it had been obvious to me. This is twice the price of a traffic violation and very mean-spirited. JW

Wish I’d looked here before we visited. My friend and I both got the £60/£100 parking fines after paying for parking for our visit. The fact we didn’t get our parking ticket literally as soon as we entered the car park and cameras taking the time from when we entered meant we overstayed by 10 minutes?
I assume these companies do not care in the slightest for people who have families and have never got children in and out of cars.
It’s also the summer holidays and we had to queue for the pay machine as we were paying with cash.
It’s completely ruined our experience and has made us both not want to return.
The visitor centre were so unhelpful when I rang them about the fines saying it’s nothing to do with them. Well surely they’re the ones who put parking eye in their car parks. We have appealed but some how it can take upto a month for a response and after reading these reviews I feel it’s useless.

We had a lovely day out but it has been spoilt by the car parking charge which I am appealing!! Please make sure that your payment has gone through if paying by card at the machine. We thought we had paid and then have got a parking fine of £60 if we pay it now!!!! Upon checking our bank account today we realised that the payment had not gone through. No indication that my payment had not been paid on the machine so we thought everything was ok until I got the letter today. I wish I had read the reviews before parking there.

Awful customer service refused to help when I made an error with my booking and expected me to pay more when I had already paid to much

Staff miserable and rude, totally spoilt our experience. Way to go expensive for such a small tunnel.