Morrisons Parking Fine Resolution?

In the previous post I discussed the unwelcome receipt of a letter and its contents from the Big Brotheresque company called Parking Eye informing us we were to be fined for heinous parking crimes in Morrisons car park; crimes we did not actually commit.

Naturally furious my wife phoned the number on the notice (I won’t dignify it by calling it a letter). Guess what, she got through to a call centre manned by some poor girl with no experience, training or communication skills who, thrown by the possibility that Parking Eye may in fact have got it wrong, said she would look into it. No apology.

Interestingly my wife then phoned Morrisons, explained the situation and received an apology and an indication that this was not the first time this had happened and that this was actually all the council’s fault! According to this person, Morrisons have been forced to install the Parking Eye system or, as the person indicated, a short term parking management system. The person also said that Morrisons didn’t want the system but were exasperated that people parking in “their” car park often didn’t even shop in the store. This does seem to contradict the correspondence between the council and Morrisons – click on the link the link to the Morrisons Parking Campaign to the right for details.

My wife did point out that the agreement when Morrissons – or Safeway as it was back in 1992 – developed the site was that it would continue to be a public parking resource for the town as it was previously, essential for the High Street. In other words, this is not just about Morrisons, it is about our town and the survival of its businesses, particularly now in the midst of a deep recession.

To be fair to Morrisons they took the problem off our hands and said they would sort out the fine and that seems to be the case although we have not heard since from either Morrisons or Parking Eye to confirm or deny this and of course no apology or admission of culpability. Think how out perception of Morrisons would change if we did receive a personal letter and how much would it cost them?

Morrisons’ new car parking system is just a technological solution to something that has been and would be far better dealt with by a human being. It wasn’t long ago that there was a manned barrier and there were no problems then. Simply get your car par ticket stamped by Morrisons and pay a nominal amount if over the 2 hour limit. It’s probably something to do with security, keeping money in an unsecured kiosk or some other sad reflection of our society. But why have an over complicated process and more importantly, one that aggravates and alienates customers?

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