Yaditi Kava, 39, was shocked to find out that she was charged £4,586 after visiting the Queensmere Observatory Shopping Centre in Slough, Berkshire – but experienced a problem with payment machines
A mum has revealed she was charged more than £4,500 for just two hours of car parking at a shopping centre. Yaditi Kava, 39, was hit with the hefty fee after visiting the Queensmere Observatory Shopping Centre in Slough, Berkshire, last month with her young daughters.
The family had been doing some shopping on the evening of May 16 and had just finished eating dinner in a restaurant when they went to leave. The area with parking payment machines was closed, so Yaditi says she was left with no choice but to pay at the ticket barrier as she left. The two hour multi-storey car park stay should have only cost the mum £2 and she didn’t think much of it as she typed in her pin and paid.
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But shortly after, she received an alarming message from her bank to say she had actually been charged £4,586. Yaditi said: “When I reached the barrier, a message was displayed saying I needed to pay something, and I didn’t pay it much attention. I was rushing to get out of the mall as it was really late and dark.
“The girls were cranky, and I just wanted to leave the car park. I didn’t think in the worst of my nightmares that they would deduct that from my bank account. It was genuinely shocking. I was shocked to the core. I literally couldn’t drive past for a few seconds I was so stunned. I kept being in denial that something like this could really happen to me.”
The mum immediately tried to speak to staff at the car park but said that there were only security guards around, so she was told to wait until the managers were back the next week. She also contacted her bank, but they said that she would have to wait for the transaction to be completed before they could do anything – and it would take up to six weeks to investigate.
Yaditi was finally able to speak with a car park manager on the following Tuesday, where she says they admitted it was a faulty machine and agreed to give a refund. But ten days later the money still hadn’t come into her account, she says, with blame being shifted between the bank and car park owners.
After three weeks of waiting for the money, a solicitor friend recommended she contact the BBC Three Counties JVS Show, and the next day the money was in her account.
Yaditi, a clinical researcher, added: “It is really sad to see how a normal person gets thrown back and forth like a ping pong ball and one call from someone who has network and authority just does the magic.
“Had it taken any longer it would have impacted financially on my account. My payment would have bounced and my credit history would have been effected. There was a lot at stake at that point in time. I am a single mum of two young daughters, so that is a huge amount for me.”
The car park is managed by estate agents Savills, who Yaditi says have personally apologised to her since. But the mum is now trying to get additional compensation from the company for the stress that they caused.
She said: “I am in conversations in regard to how they are going to compensate me for the additional costs that have occurred from them holding onto my money for that long.
“It changed my life for those three weeks. I literally had heartburn. I needed that money, it was very important for me. It was for a very important thing in my life. It was so stressful.”
Savills said: “As the appointed managing agent at Queensmere Observatory Shopping Centre, Savills can confirm that it is aware of an isolated incident concerning an anomaly parking charge at the scheme.
“The matter has now been rectified with a full refund issued. This was a very unusual occurrence, and we are investigating the car park system to prevent this from happening in the future.”