EDITOR – I read your piece about parking in the vicinity of the building and I’m sure that’s valid and will have to be sorted out. But one of the reasons must surely be the imminent charging for parking inside The Atrium for the first time.
I have had a post box there for over 33 years and I guess another few thousand customers have boxes. When I saw the installation of ticketing and exit units a short while ago, I immediately realised the fiinancial consequences for people, like myself, picking up post. The price list on the stands said 0 – 1 hour R5. It was absolutely unrealistic to expect customers to pay that nearly every day. Clearly management or the owner/developer should have forseen that and priced, say, the first half-hour free?
Feeling very strongly about the failure to anticipate that problem, I engaged the postmaster, and, at her request, three other officials, explaining the problem and my simple solution. Unfortunately they were not authorized or willing to offer any help apart from suggesting I talk to the centre manager, whose name was unknown and who had only, the day before, arrived to take up that position. I tried to explain that I was the forerunner of a stream of their customers with the very same, legitimate complaint and recommeded that they seek the immediate advice of someone senior in the post office before the flood of complaints started.
A few days later I popped in – the charging had not yet started, but the boards read the same – and was told they had heard that 0 – 2 hours would be free. Your article, clearly well-researched, mentioned that only customers of Checkers, Dis-Chem and Virgin Active could benefit. The problem of R5 for collecting post had obviously not been raised.
Any chance of pursuing this matter for all the post office customers?
Malcolm Smith
Overport
Centre Management responds:
Spark have put the prices up prematurely. It is half an hour free parking for this reason exactly.
Gareth Cameron
Centre manager
