On Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:22:40 +0100, John wrote:
Clive George wrote:
On 16/07/2010 11:59, John wrote:

The point that you (and everyone else it would seem) are missing is
that it is not a _public_ car park, it is _Lidl's_ car park. I
assume that when Lidl were spending the time, money and effort to
build a car park outside their shop, they were intending it to be
for their own customers. The fact that they didn't explicitly state
this on a sign somewhere, or barrier it off to all except Lidl
customers should not matter. The car park is on their land, outside
their store, so by implication the car park is for their customers.

The OP is a customer of Lidl. So where's the problem?

And so we come full circle.

The problem is that the OP was a customer of Lidl for a few minutes and then
went off doing general shopping, leaving his car occupying a Lidl parking
space when he wasn't a customer of Lidl. If the car park is/was full he is
effectively blocking a _potential_ customer of Lidl from _becoming_ a
customer of Lidl - ergo, potential customer doesn't get the shopping they
want,
Lidl lose money and decide that they need some company like UKPC to
look after the car park ...

I would expect Lidl's motivation to be far baser than that.
Consider the following model:
They get 100 vehicles an hour parking/shopping/leaving. If the shop is
open for 10 hours a day, that's 1000 vehicles. If only 1% of those get
a £90 penalty - and (say) 7 actually pay up, that's £630/day. I don't know
what Lidl's rake would be - let's say £200.
Now, to make £200 _profit_ from their commercial operation, if they make
5% margin on their sales they'd need to sell £4,000 of extra stuff each day.
If a customer's average transaction is £40 that's equivalent to 100 extra
punters a day - all for issuing one penalty per hour.
If half their customers use the car park, then that means they get 2,000
sales each day - so they've effectively got a 5% increase in turnover
but without having to do anything, except let a little plastic piggie
wander around their carpark, occasionally honking off a car owner.



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