Saturday, April 7, 2012

Tonbridge Lidl shoppers beware: Big Brother is watching your car....

I hear that the carpark at the back of Lidl on Quarry Hill Parade has been catching out a few shoppers of late. Be warned shoppers of that low budget supermarket. It may look to be free parking but, read the small print, you only have an hour and a half. Ten minutes over and the Big Brother-style cameras will snap you and there'll be no getting out of a minimum £45 fine which increases to £90 if you don't pay up on time. So next time you're at Lidl and get carried away buying all those German sounding chocolates and 24 packs of brands of lager no one's heard of keep an eye on your watch. Better still there's always Sainsbury's or Waitrose where you may have to pay to park but you do get a refund at the check out. It seems that the council and the owners of these car parks are doing their level best to drive trade away from Tonbridge sometimes....

9 comments:

sebfox said...

An hour and a half in Lidls?? Are you mad?

anieb said...

This is not a good idea that you warned any one.


Car Soap

Paul Bailey said...

You're rather behind the times TB! The cctv controlled parking system at Lidl's has been in use for the best part of a year now, and is primarily designed to stop commuters taking advantage of the free car parking. There is no "small print" to read, as the notices explaining about the time limits are quite clearly displayed, and are certainly not designed to catch people out.

The system to my mind is quite fair, as people were abusing the car park and preventing others who wished to shop in Lidl's from parking there.

By the way, there is nothing wrong with the store itself, or its brands, in fact it is an excellent place to shop for competitively priced good quality fruit and veg, cooked meats, cheeses plus a whole variety of other products. It also has regular offers on bottled beers, often from the likes of Shepherd Neame, Wychwood and Marstons. In fact only last week it was selling Marstons Oyster Stout for just £1.29 a bottle; an excellent beer at a bargain price!

As Lidl's are a German owned ccompany one would expect them to stock the odd German brand or two, including chocolates! And for a country with over 1,250 breweries, producing over 7,750 different beers it's not surprising you may not have heard of some of the lager brands they stock. Don't however fall into the trap of calling Lidl's a "low budget supermarket". To do so exhibits a degree of ignorance and lack of understanding unworthy of someone of your standing and position in the community. In addition, writing cheap Sun-style xenophobic copy out of what is a rather old, and not very interesting story only goes to prove that old Fleet Street journalists don't quietly fade away, instead they retire to small provincial towns to run bookshops and write blogs! (Ouch!!)

sebfox said...

Yes but an hour and a half in Lidl's!!!??

sebfox said...

Actually I agree with Paul Bailey. Lidl's is a good place to do daily shopping, and also, every now and then they have a line in unusual stuff...such as office furniture, motorcyle gear, camping gear..that sort of thing. I bought a good, cheap crash helmet from there, and a computer desk. As for the parking, well there has to be some limit, otherwise everybody would just be parking there and buggering off to town for the day, or parking up to use the station. However, I wouldn't want to spend an hour and a half there.

p.schlector said...

Mr Bailey,
The question is, was the writer of this blog a Fleet Street journalist?

Paul Bailey said...

We need to ask him, but I vaguely recall something about him having worked on the Daily Mirror in a previous life.

Perhaps you could enlighten us Mr Books?

p.schlector said...

Come on TB the question will not fade away, Paul Bailey and I are still waiting for your answer.

Where you ever a Fleet Street journalist?

Paul Bailey said...

And biningshao wants to sell you some dodgy software!