A Melbourne mum is urging motorists who use paid parking to double check their bank accounts, after she was wrongfully billed more than $3500 for a ticket machine fault.
Sharon Micallef was overcharged thousands of dollars after parking her car in a car park owned by ACE Parking at Sunshine Hospital in the state’s west on Wednesday.
Ms Micallef arrived at the carpark at about 10.30am, where she used her mother’s debit card to access the car park through boom gates.
About four-and-a-half hours later she attempted to use the same card to exit the car park however, the machine didn’t recognise her mother’s card, so she tried her personal debit card which opened the gates to let her out.
Half an hour later, the mother-of-three was looking through her bank account when she noticed $3536.94 had been deducted from her card – giving Ms Micallef “the fright of (her) life”.
“Because it was after five o’clock, I couldn’t ring (ACE) up and I had to wait an agonising 24 hours before I could talk to somebody about it,” she told news.com.au.
After Ms Micallef raised the matter with ACE parking the next day, the company conducted an investigation, before notifying her on Friday that she would receive most of her money back.
“They said, ‘Well it can take up to five working days to give your money back and it’s up to your bank,’” Ms Micallef said.
“I said, ‘Right’, but it’s all right for them to take it out just like that and I have to wait over five days for my money.”
Ms Micallef believes she was charged for nine months’ worth of parking, after she experienced a different ticket machine issue at the same car park in May last year.
“My dad was in hospital with Covid and this one particular day I went into the car park and tapped my card, but on the way out the boom gates were all up,” she said.
“I thought ‘okay, there’s a problem with the boom gates’ and I just left.”
Consequently, because Ms Micallef had an “open session” she was charged for parking at the site for three-quarters of a year despite only being in the car park for a matter of hours.
In an email sent to Ms Micallef, ACE confirmed, “There was an issue with the machines on the day (she) left” back in May.
Ms Micallef has since received a refund of $3521.94, with the parking company keeping $15 to cover her visit to the hospital on Wednesday.
While she is grateful for getting her money back, Ms Micallef said this incident should never have happened in the first place and there should be a limit put on how much parking companies can take from a customer’s bank account.
“I was lucky that I had the money in the account but other people may not have had money in the account and they live day by day. How would they survive having that much money taken out?” she said.
“Who knows how many people they would have ripped off. There should be a cut off so you’re arguing about $150 or something, not three and a half thousand. That’s my money, not theirs.”
James English, the director of ACE Parking group said Ms Micallef’s situation was “exceedingly rare” with the customer service team acting swiftly to refund the customer.
“We are extremely sorry that this occurred and have taken action to ensure this will not occur in the future,” he told news.com.au.
“We pride ourselves on our customer service and innovation in parking and we are always open to feedback and improvements. As a family business we recognised the importance of getting things right and we act accordingly.”