I was charged £4.5k for 2-hour stay in shopping centre car park after payment machine glitch… would YOU spot the error?
A MUM was left "shocked" after a shopping centre car park charged her more than £4,500 for a two-hour stay.
Yaditi Kava, 39, visited Queensmere Observatory Shopping Centre in Slough with her two young daughters to pick up some dinner after work on Friday May 16.
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As she returned to the multi-storey car park, the area with the payment machines was closed.
Instead the mum used her contactless card to pay at the exit barrier as she left.
After she tapped, a message told her she needed to enter her pin - a step not normally needed for purchases of £100 or under.
However, bank security protocols do require customers enter their numeric passcode from time-to-time even for transactions under that amount.
Regardless, Yaditi was in a rush and failed to spot that she was being charged a colossal £4,586 for her brief stay.
"I was in a rush, the girls were getting tired, and I did not see the number on the small card machine," she told the BBC.
She saw the display said '4,5' and mistakenly believed the fee was going to be £4.50.
Instead, she was horrified after receiving a text notification from her bank showing the size of the charge.
"To my shock, I saw that they had deducted not £4.50 but £4,586 from my account," she said.
"It was surreal - I just couldn't fathom that they had taken that money."
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Yaditi her to wait until Monday May 19 to try and reclaim the money, eventually speaking to a manager who she says blamed a "faulty machine".
The manager provided her with a receipt and told her the money would be repaid within 2-3 working days.
But three weeks on, the money had still not materialised.
The accidental charge was repaid shortly after an intervention by the BBC's consumer rights programme The JVS Show, hosted by Jonathan Vernon-Smith on Three Counties Radio.
Yaditi received her full refund on Saturday June 7 - a whole 22 days after the money was first taken.
Real state company Savills, who manage the shopping centre, called it an "isolated incident" and said it was investigating to avoid other customers being inconvenienced by similar problems in the future.
Yaditi is currently in the midst of a divorce and claims the money that was taken by the car park was cash she had set aside to cover legal fees.
She also considered calling off her daughter's birthday party over the stress.
A spokesperson for Savills said: "As the appointed managing agent at Queensmere Observatory Shopping Centre, Savills can confirm that it is aware of an isolated incident concerning an anomaly parking charge at the scheme.
"The matter has now been rectified with a full refund issued.
"This was a very unusual occurrence, and we are investigating the car park system to prevent this from happening in the future."
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