Poor customer service and processes

I admitted my 14 month old baby to Sandton Medi Clinic on 1 December 2017. On Saturday and Sunday I was in and out of the hospital going to run errands and returning to be with my child. I asked the parking officer if I could get a day pass somehow. They insisted this was not possible and I had ended up paying over R48 in parking fees over those two days.

It was somewhat irritating, but I guess a policy is a policy.

But, this morning (Monday, 4 Dec, 07:55 am), I came into the hospital to drop a tooth brush off for my wife and then had to rush off to work. When I arrived at the parking entrance, the ticket machine wasn't working. The attendant gave me a ticket with a time manually written on it. I disputed the time she had written on it, as it was not inline with my GPS connected watch which is automatically updated to GPS time. The attendant said it didn't matter as she was using her time and that when I exited she would refer to the time on her system. I wasn't trying to be difficult, I just knew that I needed the 20 minutes to run in and out of the hospital. The time manually written on the ticket was 07:52, I made a mental note that the time on my watch was 07:55.

I had to rush away from my wife and child to make the parking deadline. When I arrived at the boom (08:13 am - On my watch), the same attendant asked me to wait as she needed to assist people entering the parking with manual tickets as the system was still not working. She came back and took my ticket at 08:14 (on my watch). She said to say I needed to pay R6. Firstly, I was not there for more than 20 minutes, even on her time. Secondly, she made me wait whilst she assisted other customers due to the fact that your systems weren't working.

The R6 is not the matter here (Even though I have already forked out R48 for parking). Its the principle and arrogant attitude of the attendant. I called for the manager and had to have a long fight with the manager to be let out. If your systems aren't working and you implement a manual system, don't make your customers pay for it. I suspect, the attendants are being rewarded in some manner for making people pay when they are not required. Or, if a manual system is in place, there is no way for management to track cars in and out and so, the attendant could be taking the money for themselves.

Please can I ask that this is investigated and I receive a report back. I will be issuing a complaint on Hello Peter, various social media platforms and other customer service monitoring platforms. I am happy to remove the complaint and issue a response if I receive a satisfactory response from yourselves.