$5 parking turns into $75 for under 4 hrs of parking. What a scam!!!
It was supposed to be an evening of fun and laughs in downtown Calgary. We arrived downtown at 6:30pm and could not find parking anywhere, so we asked an attendant at the hyatt where he may know of some parking. He recommended that we park under the Bow building because its a "Flat rate of $5 from 6pm to 4am".... Wow, awesome.....(so I thought)
By 7pm, we enter the parking garage and approach two ticket booths?? not sure which one to pull up to and another car is behind us....so we pull up to the "Short Term" booth and receive a ticket.... Assuming we would be gone before midnight.
When our evening was done (11:53pm) we came back to the same entrance doors and tried to pay our parking ticket...$75!! WHAT! So we called the parking attendant / security and they say they can't help us. We need to pay the $75 to get our car and then we can call tomorrow to sort things out.
So fine, I painfully paid the ticket and called first thing to speak with the Vinci parking staff.
I tell the situation to the man on the phone, and he says that he can't refund us even though we should be because their ticketing system goes through the city of Calgary and they have to submit transactions or something along those lines. So even if he wanted to, he could not. He also said we should have studied the signs and figured out which booth to get the ticket out of and long term parking may have been the better choice even though it was 4 hrs. SERIOUSLY!! I should have said I lost my ticket...I would have only paid $50 if I said I lost my ticket....but because I was an honest customer, not looking to get scammed...I get ripped off!
How does a $5 Flat evening rate turn into $75 in 4 hours?????
Horrible system, and horrible customer service.