A strange thing happened to me yesterday…

Yesterday I had cause to go to the West End for a meeting at 4.00pm. I took the car because getting there by public transport is a nightmare and takes forever. However when I came to find a convenient parking meter, I was astonished to find that they had all gone. The price of parking in London has gone up by so much that meters cannot cope. I hate to tell you this but they have been replaced by zombies. I stopped the car and read a newly erected sign. It told me that you now have to pay by mobile phone and credit card. So all you out there, if you don’t have either a mobile phone or a credit card, you cannot park on the streets of London. Nevertheless I had no choice so I diligently phoned the number on my mobile (incidently whose battery was low). The message was garbled, it was by now dark and I did not have my glasses so you can imagine it was not the easiest of operations. However I listened carefully and was told to open an account. This I did, with my car registration number, my credit card number, expiry date etc. etc. There was a customer relations number in case of doubt but the message told me it was out of order at the moment ( there will be a point to this story in a minute). As you can imagine it took a lot of fiddling about in the dark to assemble all this information on my mobile and a lot of false starts. However eventually I was awarded with success and the nameless anonymous voice announced that I had indeed opened an account and would I now like to park my car (press 1 for yes, 2 for no etc. ) I pressed yes, and was asked for my 'zone number'. By this time it is very dark and raining hard, but I ascertained that the zone number was on the board so I put this in the phone, then added the number of minutes I wanted to park for (120 to be on the safe side). The lady’s disembodied voice said thank you and goodbye. I received a text message saying my account was now set up and thank you for using the parking service. So I walked to my meeting safe in the knowledge that I had paid for the parking and that Sven was safe for a couple of hours…but…

You guessed it. When I got back to where the car had been an hour and three-quarters later…no car. Now Sven being a Volvo is not in the habit of wandering the streets of London on his own so with a sinking feeling I began to think that all had not gone well with my paying by mobile phone. But surely the text message was evidence enough that I had paid. In the car pound, very wet and another hour and half later, the man thought differently. According to him there was no record that I had rung at all. The text message from the Parking Services was not evidence, there was no account opened and therefore I had not paid. It cost me nearly three hundred pounds to get my car back, not to mention the taxi fare over to the pound. And there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. You have been warned.

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• By Sharon on Wed 28 Nov ’07
• With 2 remarks