“Further to earlier correspondence about Rye Jempson’s parking fees”, writes a reader, “we had an unpleasant surprise when parking there”- [but it has had a good result, though the complainant then wanted to withdraw his letter, which seemed a bit unfair to Jempson’s as they say they have resolved the problem – so his name has been simply omitted, Editor].
“Much has been claimed about the fact that it is free to park there before 9:00am. However, if you arrive earlier, as we did at 8:28, and knowing we would be longer than a half hour and would then be required to pay a fee from 9:00, we paid £1.
We expected that this would mean we would be issued with a ticket that started the hour from the time you need to pay at 9;00. However, the ticket started at 8:28 and expired at 9:28, meaning we were paying for 30 minutes when there is in fact no charge to park.
Rother car parks add the period paid for on to the time that paid parking starts, therefore in their car parks the expiration time would be 10:00.”
[Editor’s note : After this was raised with Jempson’s by the complainant, Stephen Jempson looked into it, we are told, and agreed that this was not what was intended- and Rye News understands the parking ticket machine has been fixed so this should never happen again]