17 July 2023 , 21:16
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A commuter was slapped with a mammoth parkin g charge of over £1,000 due to an apparent technical glitch.
Gareth Price travels to Cardiff once a week for his job as an IT consultant and couldn't believe it when he left the NCP car park to be told he owed £1,201.85.
The error happened last Thursday but he says he is yet to receive a refund. However Gareth, from Neath Port Talbot, was able to use a promotional code through his work which reduced the bill to £320.35.
The car park in the Welsh city's Greyfriars Road uses cameras to snap registration plates of vehicles entering and exiting to calculate the fee. Gareth said the system seemed to think he had left his car at the site for around 42 days. NCP says it is investigating the issue.
The system glitch seemed to think Gareth had parked up for weeks (Gareth Price)
Greyfriars Road NCP car park in Cardiff (WalesOnline/Rob Browne)Speaking to WalesOnline, Gareth said: “I drove out of the car park on Thursday and on the app I had two receipts come through.
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"One of them said £7.95 for the day, and the other was for 42 days I think it was in total.
“I paid on June 1 and have paid for parking for the day since, which is £7.95, so I’ve no idea what has happened. It must be a glitch.
“I got home and opened the chat session at 6.30pm and I finally got a reply at 10.30pm. They said they’d send it to the refunds team and they’ll pick it up when they pick it up. But I’ve still not received anything back.
“I’ve emailed the complaints team but had a response saying they also take 14 days to reply. So I’ve just been left for the moment. It’s frustrating.”
A spokesperson for NCP said: “We are so sorry that this issue has occurred whilst parking with us, and for the delay in refunding. We are investigating with urgency to understand why the parking sessions weren’t automatically closed down.
"Whilst we look into this we have spoken directly to the customer and the refund is being issued today. We have also offered a week’s free parking as a further gesture to acknowledge the inconvenience experienced, along with our most sincere apologies.”