"Appalling car park"

Attended on 5th July for cardiology appointment. Car parks at the hospital were extremely busy with many queuing to get in. As often happens, I had to use the private car park across the road, operated by Bullen/RGCarter.. I spoke to the attendant as there was a long queue of people trying to use the machines. He said I could pay on my return from the appointment (I had had to do this the day before as well, when in blazing hot sunshine and with my disabled daughter in a wheelchair we had not been able to queue for a long time as we would be late for our appointment. After 10 minutes standing in the queue, we spoke to the attendant who said it was ok to pay on our return. Luckily that time there had been only a minimal queue when we returned).

Today, on 5th July, after one hour I returned to the car park. I was feeling quite unwell but there was an extremely long queue in hot sunshine. I cannot stand for that long. I spoke to an attendant and he said it was fine to pay online. I took a picture of the notice board with the details of the website, Tap2park, with no other information.

On coming home, that evening I set about trying to pay the car park fee. I entered my registration number and clicked the pay button but it did not proceed to the next page and I wasted several hours trying to get it to connect, and trying to find out how to pay. I messaged them on Twitter but got no response. Tap2park is simply an organisation to take payments and there seems to be no link to the owners of the car park. It is now 4 am and I am still trying.

This is an appalling system. The only reason I think that the system has recently changed (in May, supposedly to ease congestion of cars queuing to enter - I have never seen a long queue there) from a simple ticket issued as you drive in,, pay at the machine as you leave system (which charges you for the actual time you have parked) is to rip off patients who cannot know how long they are going to be at their appointments, who cannot stand for long periods queuing with no shade or shelter to use machines that are not easy to use (and which have limited visibility of the screens because they face into direct sunlight), and who do not find the website easy to connect to and easy to use, with no information numbers and no other links to a website where you might be able to get help.

The Norfolk and Norwich Hospital is happy to announce it is working "in partnership" with RG Carter/Bullen to provide this private (or as the roadside notice says "Overflow car park" ) but when people are expressing valid complaints about the car park, the Hospital states that it is privately owned car park, nothing to do with the hospital.(see NNUH website)

Disingenuous and unfair.

the Hospital by now knows very well that this car park is designed to extract money from people who inadvertently fall foul of its confusing payment system. THe Hospital and PALS need to step up and protect patients from this unfair predatory system