Motorists using bank or credit cards to pay for parking at Telford Town Centre have suddenly been landed with huge bills - thanks to a computer glitch.
Drivers had thought that their accounts were being debited each time they stuck their cards into the ticket machines, but a computer error meant that they had effectively got free parking for a month.
Now the problem has been fixed, the cost of a month’s worth of parking has been extracted from them in one go by 3C International, the payment service provider.
Rachel Conroy, 31, of The Rock, who regularly uses the town centre car parks, said she was horrified to have a large sum taken from her account without warning.
She used the Odeon car park on March 16 to take her daughter and the little girl she looks after to the cinema. She paid for her stay of about two hours on her way out by Visa card.
But on Friday she was confronted with four pages of parking charges in her bank statement totalling nearly £40.
At first she thought she had been charged about 15 times for one £2.50 visit, but eventually found out what had happened.
She said: “I have been trying to sort out since Friday who was responsible and I kept getting passed back and forth.
“I thought I had paid 50p here and £1 there each time I parked, and the ticket machine was saying my account had been debited.
“But apparently not. And nearly £40 has come out in one go. People who use the car parks every day must have been slapped with a huge bill.”
Mike Elasmar, of 3C International, said: “There was a period from January 9 to March 10 when there was an issue with broadband and transaction data could not be collected.
“So the money was just pending. When the problem was sorted the banks had up to five working days to process the claims.
“If people want to contact us for a breakdown of charges we should be able to sort it out.”
Telford car park manager Glyn Morrow said many people had contacted him about the issue.
He said: “3C has been dealing with the transactions since 2003 when the car parks started.
“We have received a lot of calls over the past week about this and people thought they had been charged many times. But it was due to a computer error.”
5 Comments
People moan about anything. Whether the card is charged each time you use it, or all in one go at the end of the month, Surely its the same amount coming out in 1 calendar month? People who have tight finances should concentrate on being more careful with their spending!
I think that the best way for companies to deal with this is to accept liability - Im sure that the money wouldnt have been that huge to the company - if the company makes a mistake, then the company should pay for it - afterall, if it is the other way around, the customer tends to get penalised!
Credit card statements only get posted out once a month anyway, so I cant see the problem, the amount owed is correct, its just that its all itemised in one go. I cant understand at all the argument that the company should waive the charges, no error has been made, the payments were just delayed. If anything, the customers may have benefited by a few weeks extra time to pay. Stop moaning and cough up what you owe !!
^-^ what Shroosman said.
I quite often use a card when parking in Telford as it saves scrabbling around for change, but since I keep on top of my finances I was fully aware that the charges hadn’t been debited to my card, so the lump sum came as no surprise.
“they had effectively got free parking for a month.” Talk about government and spin - there’s a good example.
These days with credit card companies giving you ever less time to pay your bill before they charge you for the services means that people really need to know when they’re being charged for something. I think I’ll go into the cinema and ask for a ticket and say - its’ ok I’ll pay sometime but Im not telling you when. Then see what spin they make of that then.