Sir - I regret I do not share the rosy view of the new payment arrangements for parking at the station car park expressed by Mr Clarke of RingGo (Letters, June 8).
The new system, which involves making a mobile phone call from the station platform, is discriminatory against those who do not own a mobile phone, and such dinosaurs assuredly still exist.
Secondly, it is discriminatory against the hard of hearing. I tried the new system a couple of weeks ago and found it almost impossible to hear anything on my mobile against the raucous chugging of a stationary diesel train and the loud station announcements continuously apologising for the late arrival of successive trains.
Even worse, the automatic voice at the other end obviously could not hear my car number correctly, and repeated it three times very incorrectly. In the end I gave up and bought a ticket from the station ticket office, which cost £6 instead of £4.50 and I had to dash back to my car to put it in.
On the platform another man told me it had taken him 20 minutes to get through and was lucky not to miss his train, and a lady was cringing against the platform wall trying to make her call.
I can understand RingGo's need to ensure that only genuine train users park in the station car park, but whoever dreamt this system up had not thought it through, and surely there must be a better way than this.
Kenneth F Beavis, Eynsham
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