Brisbane paid parking: Indooroopilly Shopping Centre’s paid parking technical issues anger shoppers

IT’S been hailed as Australia’s “most advanced” ticketless paid parking system — but the problems at a Brisbane shopping centre just keep coming.

IT’S been hailed as Australia’s “most advanced” but the problems with the new ticketless paid parking at Indooroopilly Shopping Centre just keep coming.

While paid parking is never a popular concept, technical failures with boom gates, ticket machines and empty space indicators are pushing shoppers’ patience to the limit.

One shopper claims that when they tried to validate their movie ticket in a machines at the centre’s exit, the scanner was not working — and they had similar issues when they used different machines on different levels.

“When I swiped the cinema ticket it said it had already been entered and then the whole system proceeded to crash and we were left standing there with no idea whether it had worked or not. When we were finally able to leave, we were held up at the gates because of the line of cars trying to get out”, Sarah Mowat posted on the centre’s Facebook page.

Alex Madsen highlighted the difficulty in exiting by taking a video when he was stuck for five minutes when the boom gates refused to lift on exit.

“We called centre management however they did not seem to care and simply said ‘make sure your numberplate is clean’”, Mr Madsen said.

Gridlock in the Indooroopilly Shopping Centre car park. Picture: File

Other shoppers have posted comments saying the lighting system to flag empty spaces around the carpark cannot always be relied on.

Earlier in the week shoppers, who have been promised three hours free parking, were complaining of being slugged fees because they left the centre and returned later.

Indooroopilly Shopping Centre management said they cannot comment directly on these cases as they would need time to review.

“Indooroopilly Shopping Centre’s ticketless parking system is the first of its kind in a shopping centre in Queensland. Since its introduction, just under 200,000 vehicles have successfully passed through the system and 99.98 per cent of customers have had no issues,” a spokeswoman said.

“Our priority is to ensure our customers have a positive experience and we are working through each issue on a case-by-case basis with our customers and technology provider to quickly iron out any teething issues. 24 hour customer assistance is available at the exit booms with drivers encouraged to speak to an operator on exit if required. If customers have concerns they can also contact centre management directly. Registering your concern with the Centre is the best way to ensure any issues are addressed,” she said.