Lidl complaint: Parking charge

I have been sent a civil parking charge notice for exceeding my parking allowance of only 15 mins on 21 Aug 2020 for which I am exceedingly outraged.

For weeks prior to our Carmarthen store to be re-allocated to its new location, it had removed its signs notifying its customers of the authorised length of stay of 1h 45 mins so it became the status quo. I am not aware of when they were re-instated and certainly had not noticed any signs or be warned by members of staff to be aware of the authorised time allocated which should have been the right thing for them to do. Furthermore, I notice from my charge notice that the authorised parking time has been reduced to 1 h 30 mins.

On that day, after our shopping, both my daughter and I needed some medication from our chemist but unfortunately, we had to wait for them to be ready We could have easily parked in the Council carparks as they were all free to use at the time but had not anticipated the waiting time from the Chemist.

I have been a faithful Lidl customer for many years and enjoy the competitive pricing and the choice and quality of some of the produces. I am now feeling so disappointed by this turn of events that I am considering not to use Lidl ever again. I have obviously paid the requested charge of £45 as I don’t want it to escalate any further but I am experiencing a lot of stress over it especially when funds are tight and my husband is in receipt of Employment Support Allowance benefits.

We also really think it’s very heavy handed of Lidl to use a carpark management company when none of the other supermarkets around us have this system in place.