Hell In Hove

I had to park in Hove on Friday, finding a space was easy enough, but paying for such parking brought a whole new level of moronic bureaucracy. I rang the number of the sign next to where we parked, which is where it all started to go wrong.

In a former life I must have rung the number before as I was in their system. As when I put the location code in the automated service told me I was parking our old car. So, I pressed the option to change the car registration. But this led to them sending me a text with a code to type in to verify it was me, but obviously it wouldn’t allow me to cut and paste it. So, juggling between apps I managed to enter it.

Then they asked me to speak the registration, and so I very carefully enunciated G-U-1-9-K-P-P, and after twenty seconds it read it back to me as E-U-1-5-K-T-G. So, I moved to keypad entry of the registration number. I hit 4 to enter G, only to not get G as an option, only 1 for H, 2 for I and for 4. So, I retried, and it gave me the option for G the second time. It took some time to enter all seven digits and then press # to say it was complete.

On to the next level. I had used a card to pay at some point in the past, but it had expired, so I had to enter new card details. Which I did. Only to find that there was then no option to select how long I wanted to park for. It kept telling me to press * to go back to the previous menu. Which I did, several times to only get the same menu, and then it cut me off.

I rang back, only for the automated system to tell me it wanted to use the old registration number which I had changed on the first call. I hung up and stomped off to find a physical ticket machine.

When I did, I tapped start, put my registration number in and pressed the + sign to add time, only for the machine to reset. On to attempt two; start, add reg, hit plus twice and OK, and I got the prompt to tap my card on the reader. I did, and it said payment was successful and it was printing the ticket. The machine asked if I wanted a receipt. I hit yes and said it would print that as well. Only for the machine not to print either ticket or receipt and return to standby mode.

At this point I looked for something heavy to give the machine a damn good thrashing, Basil Fawlty style, as he had used a branch on his car in an episode of Fawlty Towers. But there was nothing around, so I stomped to the pub, 15 minutes after parking, swearing loudly as I did so, scaring the local residents.

Parking Rant

Parking in Crawley can be a pain in the arse. We often find it difficult to park on our own street due to the volume of multiple car owning properties. It isn’t helped by inconsiderate bell ends like Bob the builder from Malthouse Road who parks two of his work trucks in the close instead of on his own street where he needs permits. If only the council would move the need for permits up one more street.

Town can be painful as well. I nipped into the mall one evening last week. The ticket I got from the machine was stamped 17:31. I nipped to the shop I needed to and got back to the pay on exit machine at 17:39. For those eight minutes I was charged £2.50. I won’t be making the mistake of using their car park again, not when it works out to be £18.75 per hour.

I don’t know how they can justify a pay on exit car park having a minimum term of payment that covers two hours at a cost of £2.50. Where are the fifteen or thirty minute options, or even an hour one?

Then there is the car park next to the Memorial Gardens. It’s reasonably priced for longer stays, but the machines never seem to be working. The machine that offers the ability to use cards for payment hasn’t been working on the last four visits to the car park stretching back over a month. The cash only machine was only working twice. Which means there has been no working machine on two occasions.

They then try and force you to use (or try to) the stupid ring and park apps they have signs up for. No good if you haven’t got your phone with you. And even if you do, why the fuck should we have to pay an additional fee on top of the parking cost to use the app?

It’s bad enough that the robbing bastards deliberately set the prices on the machines to amounts they think you won’t have the right change for so that they will keep the additional value you put in because their rigged machines don’t give change. But now they’ve found another way of ripping people off.

Well it doesn’t work on me; I just get back in the car and head for the Kingsway car park instead where it’s a flat rate of £2.50 all day.

The parking wardens must have known the machines were broken. You hardly ever see them on a Sunday, but this week you couldn’t walk more than a few yards without tripping over one of the fucking jobsworths. Rubbing their sweaty little hands together in glee at the thought of putting tickets on cars without tickets.

Bastards.