A most costly shop

We parked the car, purchased a ticket for two hours and displayed it on the dash, go and do our shopping and get our money back on receipt of ticket, load the car... after one hour and 19 minutes we leave the car park and go home.

Three days later, much to our surprise, we received a fine for £80 which, if not paid within a specified time, would be £150.

As luck had it we still had the ticket – when putting the registration number in, it doubled up on two of the digits and that is why we got a parking fine.

The day we got the fine we drove back to Bognor to sort it out, saw the attendant and told him we got a fine.

We showed him the ticket and he said it was the machine, ‘it’s touch sensitive, go and see the manager’.

We did and he said we would have to write to Parking Eye.

By this time we were quite upset.

On photocopying the ticket, we sent it off with a letter explaining what had happened.

A few days later they gave us another fine, reduced to £50 (£80 if not acted on straight away), so we phoned Morrisons head office.

They didn’t know whether they could do anything so we waited for the weekend to pass and phoned head office again.

This time we spoke to Joan Vesesly who said she could help, then we had three letters saying the fine had been waived and could we send all correspondence so they can look into it.

In all, it was a very expensive shop.

Mr & Mrs Lewis,

Mantling Road, Littlehampton