A BUSINESS owner says she is losing customers because of a failure to ensure pay and display machines in a car park are working properly.

Sam Boyce, 45, of the Wanstead Beauty Clinic in Wanstead High Street, says the machines in the nearby Grove Park car park are often full and go unemptied for weeks at a time.

When that happens people are forced to call the council’s automated parking service RinGo and pay by credit card.

Miss Boyce said:  “Over the last week I have had at least six customers arrive in a complete state about RinGo.

“People, especially elderly people, are completely flummoxed by it.”

She says some of her customers are so fed up with the system that they have started to go elsewhere.

“I have been here 25 years and the problem has got really bad,” she said.

“Either they need to empty the machines properly or put some pay and display meters on the High Street.”

Pensioner Edith Tinker has been a customer at the clinic for 20 years and says she has left the car park and gone home rather than use RinGo.

She explained: “I have a phone but I don’t know how to text and I’m not good with modern technology.

“It seems everything now you have to do on a computer, but I can’t use this system so I don’t leave my car in the car park.”

Traders in other parts of the borough have also complained about the same issue.

Wendy Brooks, head receptionist at Elaine Atkins Physiotherapy in High Road, South Woodford, said the machine in the nearby Derby Road car park only worked intermittently.

“We have been keeping records of when the machine isn’t working because sometimes it is out of action for one or two weeks at a time,” she said.

“The voice recognition system on RinGo can take as long as ten minutes to use and people often tell us they get fed up with it.”

Miss Boyce has written to her local councillor Chris Cummins in an effort to get the machines in Grove Park emptied.

He said: “I have taken this up with officers with a view to making sure the machine is properly emptied so that people don’t have to use RinGo if they don’t want to.”

A spokesman for Redbridge Council said: "It is wrong to say that the payment machines in Grove Park Car Park are not emptied “for weeks at a time” as the Council empties all its machines regularly.

"We would point out that from the outside of the machine it is impossible to diagnose a fault, should there be one. The machines show flashing lights to inform users that it is not working and, whilst it is possible that it could indicate that a collection is needed, it is also possible that the machine has a ticket or coin jam or a number of other issues.

"Recently the Council removed an old payment machine in the Grove Park Car Park that had been experiencing a high number of faults and we have replaced it with a new machine that will soon become operational.

"In the meantime the car park has been relying on one machine and we appreciate that this may have caused some inconvenience for customers for which we apologise. 

"We are now in the process of fitting modems to our parking machines and installing software which will mean that we will be able to see live information on pay and display faults and cash quantities, making the planning of our maintenance and any cash collection visits more accurate."

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