Tesco Car Parks

...my village had an original Tesco store in it ever since I can remember. This is quite a step up from the surrounding villages that are lucky to have a One Stop, but mostly just have nothing. Of course a 20 minute drive could take you to a Morrisons in a village that is trying to recreate the 'groundbreaking' design of my village -- or possibly the quicker option of actually driving into town where there's a choice of many supermarkets. Tesco is all ...
...an absolutely huge Tesco Extra store come the turn of the new millennium. I felt quite privelaged, seeing as I'd never been in a Tesco Extra at this point.

This review is not supposed to be about the stores though, but perhaps a more interesting point - because we all know the range that Tesco sells. With a big Tesco store, comes the need for a big carpark and this review is specifically about those Tesco Car Parks and the service ... more

You don't really need me to shout out the stats that are the story of Tesco's success, do you? We all know they are the leading supermarket chain, and do regulary like to boast about their success. I guess I've always been quite lucky and never known it, because my village had an original Tesco store in it ever since I can remember. This is quite a step up from the surrounding villages that are lucky to have a One Stop, but mostly just have nothing. Of course a 20 minute drive could take you to a Morrisons in a village that is trying to recreate the 'groundbreaking' design of my village -- or possibly the quicker option of actually driving into town where there's a choice of many supermarkets. Tesco is all about expanding though, and my little original Tesco turned into an absolutely huge Tesco Extra store come the turn of the new millennium. I felt quite privelaged, seeing as I'd never been in a Tesco Extra at this point.

This review is not supposed to be about the stores though, but perhaps a more interesting point - because we all know the range that Tesco sells. With a big Tesco store, comes the need for a big carpark and this review is specifically about those Tesco Car Parks and the service that Tesco offer to us. Do they put all their concentration into the store and not care where people have to keep their cars? Lets see. With the new Tesco Extra store came an amazing amount of traffic into my village, and in fact the big money company had to completely redesign a lot of the village and I remember a lot of times where the layout of my village was all over the place, of course though I was too young and this point to appreciate the annoyance this was bringing drivers on the road. Tesco did choose to compensate our village for the pressures they put on it, and with all that money they have their built a very useless skate park. Do we all remember when skate boarding was a trend yes? Well now that places is just a haven for drugs, and of course the people that haven't grown out of it yet. The place isn't really that out of the way, as it's just across the road from the village pub, but there is never a police presence there.

Try coming into my village on a Saturday, or even finding a parking space for Tesco on a Saturday. It's quite a nussiance in that was quite a peacefully village for the people living there now has this huge hussle and bussle from all the outside presence. There is a huge volume of traffic that wasn't around before, and it can be annoying for people in the village who just want to do something simple like do the lottery. As Tesco put the rent up for the shops nearby to it to a so-called ridiculous amount, it pushed companies like the local newsagents out so now if you want anything except a meal from the chip shop or a new mobile phone from the local Carphone Warehouse you have to go to Tesco. This pushes my mum to actually rather drive into town to do the lottery in a newsagents on the outskirts, rather than fight her way through the crazy shoppers at Tesco. I remember the first day the new Tesco opened and they had actually opted to putting traffic lights on the roundabout of the entrance to my village (there is only one entrance and exit to my village sadly) and this caused absolute chaos on the roads. Not only was the traffic on the motorway heavilly affected but you'd find cars queueing all about the village. By the next day these traffic lights were removed, but because of the chaos Tesco had caused I don't think the school bus came that day. I guess I should be thanking them slightly.

Only recently Tesco have decided to begin trying to tackle the problem of no car parking spaces, and they have done this by implementing a rule where if you stay in their car park for longer than 3 hours you are issued an £80 fine. I have seen this new campaign being spread out wide across a lot of the local Tesco's, and whilst the fine may vary a bit I generally see that three hours is the time to get out by or you'll regret it. Of course though this rule does not just apply to the busy times, and whilst my village may have an absolutely huge car park if you leave your car in there for more than three hours at a late at night time when there is no other cars around they shall still issue you the fine. I guess it makes sense that they wouldn't make an exception, but this is where my complaint comes really. It can be bad enough leaving your car in a busy car park in the daytmie, perhaps coming back to see you have some damage on your car or something to that affect (I'm sure these supermarkets love having the ability to put up signs saying they can't take any liability for that sort of thing) but leaving your car somewhere that isn't a Tesco car park at night time takes some guts, especially around my parts. That's why as my friend drove me somewhere I decided to leave my car there, although in all truthfulness I wasn't planning on trying to exploit the 3 hour rule, I just had no idea we would be gone that long! On the 29th June 2007 I received a letter from Tesco, dated the 27th mind you, saying they'd caught me out abusing their parking rule. Uh oh.

The minute I realised the letter was from Tesco my heart sunk;

"Each year we talk to many thousands of our customers. They tell us things they like about shopping at Tesco and what we could do better. Many customers say that they like to be able to find a convenient parking space."

I can't really see Tesco talking to their customers in all truth, but I'm sure easy parking is something everyone likes -- especially considering even though there is a massive car park there isn't really that many spaces considering how many people come to the store in my village. The problem with this paragraph though is the fact that if they looked at the car park when I was in it, they would see it was around 11pm at night and there was about 1000 parking spaces in sight.

"In many of our stores, Parking Eye run the car park for us to make sure that spaces are always avaliable. We have signs in our car parks that show the parking time is limited together with the other terms and conditions."

So it appears Tesco outsource and pay to have this system in place, of course I can't honestly tell you the ins and outs of how this system works because I don't know - but in truth I think it is done by a camera at the entrance of the car park that clocks people in and out. This is why when you get people on their mopeds that choose to come into the car park via the road then leave via the pathways they will regret it later because it looks like they have never left. On the subject of the signs though, most of them are placed high up and they cannot honestly expect people to stand there trying to read the T&C's.

"We know from research that the time exceeds the time customers spend shopping in our stores and that they feel they are fair and reasonable. Therefore, the next time you do not observe the time restrictions, a parking charge notice will be issues."

Phew. I got lucky. Just a warning. But of course I'm never going to do that again. I was actually quite surprised that I just got a warning, as I have heard many cases of people not getting a warning and just being issued the straight fine at other Tesco's. I have also heard stories of people being incorrectly issued fines when they have only spend a matter of minutes in the car park, although I hear if you complain then they do drop the fine. Of course that wasn't the whole letter, but it's pretty much the jist, my mum read the letter and said she found it to be quite sarcastic although on the whole I think it is written quite fairly -- just written in a way that even the slowest of readers can understand it.

I wonder what the cafes in Tesco think of it all, because I understand they are no longer ran by the Tesco brand and surely they are going to lose custom if people are worried about sitting down and eating and running out of time on their car park clock. The thing that annoyed me the most about the letter was how I didn't receive it til 10 days after the alledged offence, so I could have quite easily thought I had got away with it and done it again. The letter also included a reference number quite interestingly, so I guess if I was to complain about it I could get in touch, not that I am to complain about a warning!

Not everything to do with Tesco car parks is to do with the fines though, and of course there is also the matter of security. With a whole new generation growing up with this brand new Tesco and a lot more people entering the village, it was going to cause trouble. A Tesco open 24 hours most days, including a Friday, well it's like the ideal place for drunks to go to cool off! That's the reason why when this Tesco went for a 24-hour alcohol license they were declined it. This brand new look village of ours attracted a lot of people from outside, and whilst it was fun there were some nights that were less fun. Everyone from that certain age group seems to have grown up now, and the younger ones around the village don't seem to have that attitude that we had when we were that age. Perhaps a lot of the trouble that happened around Tesco Extra and the car park has been stopped by the introduction of a Designated Public Place Order that means no one is allowed to drink outside, even if they are 18 years old, and it also gives the police the ability to move people on with no real reason.

The amounts of fights you would see over the weekend though and the rubbish left lying around the next day, a lot of it was infulenced by the presence of the new Tesco because without that most of the people wouldn't have been there! I'm not complaining though, I'd take that for a big Tesco on my doorstep. Generally Tesco do quite a good job of cleaning up the car park just lately, and since the introduction of the trolley wheels locking once you get a certain part you don't get any locals complaining of trolleys in ditches anymore. There are quite a few trolley parks dotted around and always trolley men on duty, so there's not much excuse to leave yours lying around. To make the place nice it wouldn't be the same without the odd tree dotted around, unfortunately you don't really expect there to be trees in a car park and late one night I stupidly reversed into one! I think you're getting a good idea from this review of my ditsy nature. There is always security on the door of the store, usually just the one, but I've never really seen them do much. They just tend to like to stare you down. Every so often you do hear a story of a car getting broken into, and it probably does happen on at least a weekly basis, but I've never seen security patrolling the car park and I don't think their cameras offer that great coverage either - and just how many of them actually work is a good question.

It's hard to really feel happy leaving your car in Tesco Car Parks with fines and possible trouble, which says a lot when it's actually one of the best places to leave it. I guess you could always keep it on your driveway and walk, it would save me the hassle of trying hard to get to the second exit on the roundabout. 

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