Editor,

Although a septuagenarian I believe that I am fairly conversant with current basic technology but the ticket machines at Ceredigion County Council parking grounds have tested my abilities to the limit.

As a regular to my old home town, I have had few problems in parking or in paying for that privilege in the past but just this week I came face to face with a most frustrating state of affairs. I first called in the old park and ride car park off Park Avenue only to find that one ticket machine was out of order.

I approached the second machine as a gentleman was leaving it and muttering imprecations under his breath.

I found out why after 15 minutes of trying to get the machine to operate as per the instructions, many of which had such a small font that it almost needed a magnifying glass to read them.

In the end I gave up and not wanting to leave the car and risk a fine I left and headed for the South Prom.

I passed the first machine due to a queue of seemingly bewildered people and went on to the second where I found a few more trying in vain to obtain a ticket.

I joined this queue that became a total of seven persons and with everyone assisting each other tried to persuade the uncooperative machine to produce tickets.

Suddenly it relented and produced one ticket, the elated recipient of which then going through his actions for the benefit of the other six of us.We waited with bated breath in vain and all walked off in high dudgeon.

I, in complete frustration rang the telephone number on the sign board beside the machine and spoke to a young lady in Ceredigion CC’s technical department.

I must, through this letter, apologise to her for my Victor Meldrew attitude but I also sensed a certain vibe of disheartenment in her by rote replies!

She did however give me a reference number to quote should I be unlucky enough to be issued a fine for not displaying a ticket.

Apart from the instructions on the machines there is also a board with written instructions, but these unfortunately don’t correspond to those on the machine.

For instance, on the board the instruction is to press the power button shown by the accepted Unicode logo. This is not replicated on the machines and a few other instructions are also at odds with those on the machines.

I cannot contemplate how much the council are losing in parking fees due to the sheer frustration of those legitimately trying to pay.Out of seven only one was successful, so the six that couldn’t pay represent a high fiscal loss.

I don’t know who was responsible for the purchase of these machines, but I believe that little serious consideration has been given to the problems of their operation.

I am fortunate in being fairly savvy as regards technology and have become use to the cashless transactions but with these ticket machines there has been no alternative made for those who find this technology beyond them and prefer to use cash.

I have no argument with the machines being bilingual and being fluent in both languages would support that. However, the rest of the machines’ operation is very poorly thought out and to me is another white elephant’s feather in Ceredigion council’s cap!

Rhys Griffiths Llandeilo

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