Damaged car in supermarket car park... should I complain?

IceDiamond

I always keep my lights on in underground car parks, in case someone doesn't see me coming. You're right about whoever owns the car park coming after you for the 'damage' to their pole. Its likely not the supermarket who own it. They probably rent it from someone else.

johnfarquhar74

I'm not looking to get flamed here, and there's no excuse for driving a car into a stationary concrete pillar, but is there not a chance the OP's car park does not conform to relevant standards? I know of an underground car park in the centre of Edinburgh that failed a 'sweep' test(no idea if that is the correct name but it's where they measure widths of roads/corners for new developments either using computer modelling or actually sending a man out with a measuring tape). Apart from being rather narrow on entry/exit as well as some of the corners, this particular car park has had to restrict vehicles to heights of 1.9M, not because the low floor to ceiling height but because of the camber on the access roads between floors.
Just a thought, unless of course the supermarket has been there for ever and this is an isolated case of error of judgement!

shanitee

Good point IceDiamond... I think it is owned by some other company who are in charge of parking enforcement. Probably not worth the potential hassle and culpability that might arise from raising a complaint.

shanitee

Well, as a point of reference, it's the Waitrose car park on Finchley Road in London. I'm sure other drivers would attest to the challenge of getting around this car park, regardless of the size of the vehicle!

colino

johnfarquhar74, if that's St James multi-storey your referring to I remember it well. An absolute tip of a place that though expensive, not nearly as much as everywhere else city centre. Could never work out how it was built on the same complex as the John Lewis multi, but arranged completely differently. Probably by David Begg or another Edinburgh car hater.

johnfarquhar74

colino wrote: »

johnfarquhar74, if that's St James multi-storey your referring to I remember it well. An absolute tip of a place that though expensive, not nearly as much as everywhere else city centre. Could never work out how it was built on the same complex as the John Lewis multi, but arranged completely differently. Probably by David Begg or another Edinburgh car hater.

Alas no, I forgot about that one. I was actually referring to the car park under the new Council HQ at Market St/New St.
New St car park is meant as the car park of choice for Waverley Station. The height restriction used to be 2.1M but certain types of cars were hitting their roofs of the insulated concrete sills, causing damage to not only the cars but the structures, so they had to lower the height restriction to 1.9M.

billn

At the risk of being shouted down about this, some multi-story car parks in this country were built using continental plans and because of this are designed for left hand drive cars, this may sound stupid but the car parks are being used the wrong way round i.e. the exit should be the entrance and entrance the exit. There are two car parks were I am that have been built like this and every pillar in them has damage caused by cars too big for the sweep of the bends to get from level to level, I once spoke to the management of the car park (not because I had hit anything) and he admitted that this was the problem and the likelyhood of anything being done about it was less than nil!
Next time you are in a muliti-story look at the design.