I AM billed at least $100 a year for parking - even though my car is not taking up any lot in a carpark.
Yes, my car is in the carpark but I am incurring a charge for time spent looking for a vacant lot or the exit to go home. I’m certainly not using any parking space.
Typically, when you access the carpark in a shopping mall, the system starts clocking the time spent on parking once you drive past the entry barrier.
But you have not parked your car yet, and on a busy weekend or peak period, you could log up to 10 minutes before you spy a vacant space.
Driving out may again take up to 10 minutes. If you are parked on a higher floor, it may take a while to get to the exit on a lower floor.
It is also not unusual to be stuck behind a long queue of other cars trying to clear the building.
It ends up with you paying for these 20 minutes when your car is technically not parked.
It’s time consumers demand a brake to be applied to such unfair practices. One should just be paying for parking, full stop.
The extra expense could, depending on which mall you go to, come up to $2 per visit.
Multiply that by a conservative four times a month of mall visits and you are poorer by $8. In a year, you have fattened some mall’s bottomline by $96.
Obviously, that’s a scam - think of the tens of thousands of other motorists caught in this similar billing situation – and I am amazed that many drivers have not raised a stink.
Malls could do better.
Why not start charging, say, only five minutes after we have gone past the entry barrier?
When we exit, why not deduct at least five minutes from the time the machine has calculated that our cars were parked?
This could be easily done. If the parking duration can be determined right down to the minute, surely it is possible to reengineer the software to make certain time deductions.
I would think this gesture would make many drivers happier as they cruise, not too patiently, round the carkpark hoping to find an empty lot or the exit.