E-Mail Blog between Asda and myself

Here is the email transcript from start to finish:


Dear Asda Customer services

Re: Disability Discrimination Act (DDA)

On 2nd January 2007, I was unable to use your disabled parking at your Newstead Road Asda in Weymouth Dorset. 

This is because one of your disabled spaces were taken by a non blue badge driver. As a result, it was unreasonably difficult for me to access your premises and use your services.

I have a mobility disability after an accident which I now hold a blue badge to ease shopping for me. I do not drive but have someone drive me when I need to go out. On this occasion I had to wait for a space to become free to park as walking from a distance is not an option for me.

As I am sure you are aware, the Disability Discrimination Act says that where a physical feature makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult for disabled people to make use of any service which is offered to the public, a service provider must take reasonable steps to:
remove the feature, or
alter the feature, or
provide a reasonable means of avoiding the feature, or provide a reasonable alternative method to making the service available to disabled people.

You have provided spaces for blue badge holders to park and this is great to allow access to your store from a shorter distance and also having wide access bay to park in.

However it seems that it is local policy to allow non blue badge holders to park in these bays and thus breaking the DDA by reducing the access while they park there.

I have written a complaint in the stores complaint book but have had no reply. I have spoken to staff members who have all told me that the store manager has told the TCP parking attendant that he can not issue fines to rule breakers, just take numbers. He has been told by three managers within the store that he must no get involved and to allow anyone to park in those dedicated spaces. This does breach the DDA as stated above by hindering / removing the dedicated access for blue badge holders.

I believe the TCP parking attendant as I have heard him talking to the rule breaker who had parked when I had difficulty on the 2nd January and he has nothing to hide has he?

Please could you also explain the steps you intend to take so that disabled customers like myself can have access to your services on the same basis as non-disabled people and have full and exclusive access to the blue badge parking spaces at the Weymouth Asda Store at all times? I would also like to you to confirm to me and to TCP that rule breakers will be fined and there will not be any further hindrance by the local managers? This needs to be passed on the TCP parking attendants on the Weymouth Asda site.

I look forward to receiving your reply within 14 days. If I do not receive a reply within 14 days I reserve the right to take action under the Disability Discrimination Act.


Yours faithfully

Kelly
 
From: Peter Smith
Sent: 24 January 2007 09:09
To: Kelly
Subject: Response from ASDA (Ref #000000014987647)

Thank you for your message.

Dear Kelly,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us, I was sorry to learn of the problems you had when using our disabled parking bays. We are very concerned about this problem and try hard to make sure that only disabled customers use these spaces. We display notices in the car parks and our trolley porters and greeters monitor the bays and approach customers who may be misusing the areas. In many stores we put leaflets on windscreens or tannoy the registration numbers of cars that seem to be incorrectly parked. However, despite all these precautions we are still reliant on customers who are not entitled to use the bays showing consideration for others.

One difficulty is that sometimes customers who are bringing elderly or infirm relatives to the store use the spaces. Even though they may not formally qualify for a blue badge these passengers can often have quite severe mobility problems. It is genuinely extremely difficult for us to differentiate between genuine cases and those abusing the system. Obviously we do not want to offend any of our customers and penalising those who are temporarily infirm would cause upset and inconvenience.

For these reasons we have decided that clamping would not be an effective or customer friendly way of controlling the problem. However to reduce misuse of disabled parking spaces we have carried out the following trials:

The Spacehog trial was introduced in 1996. The trial began in twelve stores and involved fitting all disabled parking spaces with a detector which senses the arrival of a car into the space. This triggers a nearby talking sign which plays the ASDA jingle and reminds the customer that that the space is reserved for disabled customers asking them to park elsewhere. This trial has been so successful we have rolled it out to a further 150 stores

Number plate recognition technology to control access to specially designated parking areas for our disabled customers has been implemented at Eastbourne, High Wycombe and Bridge Of Dee stores with further installations likely in the near future. With the Automated Number Plate Recognition system customers must first register their number plate details at the Customer Service Desk. In order to qualify customers must be a disabled permit (blue badge) holder. Customer details are input into a special PC which is connected to the barrier/camera system. When a registered customer drives up to the barrier the camera reads and recognises their number plate and then raises the barrier to allow entry to the area. Alongside this scheme we always provide additional disabled bays outside of the Automated Number Plate Recognition zone to allow for one-off shoppers who may not be registered.

We are unique amongst retailers in using these methods to prevent abuse of disabled parking and feedback to date has been extremely positive. We are planning to introduce these measures at all of our stores as part of our effort to provide successful solutions to enhance parking provisions for those customers with a disability. In addition we have been undertaking a programme of works across all stores to ensure that we have a sufficient number of disabled spaces and that they are clearly marked with signage and surface markings, this is in compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act.

I am very sorry that your visits to our store have been spoilt in this way and hope that as parking difficulties reduce we can look forward to your continued custom.

Thank you again for taking the time to write to us and I trust that you are reassured about our commitment to providing our customers with above average standards and facilities.

Yours Sincerely,

Pete Smith
Customer Relations

From: Mark Wright
Sent: 13 March 2007 11:56
To:
Subject: Response from ASDA (Ref #000000015446334)
 
Thank you for your message.
 
Thanks for your recent email to my colleague Andy Bond. I've replied in his absence as I am the customer service manager.
 
We're now looking into your complaint and you will receive a full response me as soon I can.
 
I'm sorry for any inconvenience caused, but, in the meantime, if I can be of any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact me.

Peter
I appreciate your email but you contradict yourself in your own reply. You say "We are very concerned about this problem and try hard to make sure that only disabled customers use these spaces." yet you then go to say "One difficulty is that sometimes customers who are bringing elderly or infirm relatives to the store use the spaces. Even though they may not formally qualify for a blue badge these passengers can often have quite severe mobility problems. It is genuinely extremely difficult for us to differentiate between genuine cases and those abusing the system. Obviously we do not want to offend any of our customers and penalising those who are temporarily infirm would cause upset and inconvenience."

So your saying that drivers without a blue badge are being allowed under your rules to park in a disabled space. You are using your own clause to overturn the whole idea of blue badge holders in your own car parks. If this is the case, then you should not insist that blue badges are required to be displayed and your Parking attendants are being employed for nothing and should be removed as a cost saving as there presence is irrelevant as anyone can say that they are worthy of parking in a disabled space, can't they?

You should remove all signs of disabled parking as you are allowing non disabled parking in those spaces and in certain stores encouraging it from the
attitude of the manager as in our local store in Weymouth, Dorset.
You either have disabled parking or you do not, you can not have both. The DDA clearly states that you should provide equal access or provide facilities to enable access to disabled persons. It dose not say that you should provide the same for persons who think they can use them, does it? And I am sure that is why you employ the parking attendants to carryout this task for you or why do you employ them at all?
We had the signs that gave audio warnings at our Weymouth branch but as we thought the batteries soon ran out and were not replaced, so they are useless. If you know how your stores are set up, then you will of course already know this wont you?

If you want to make an effort to change the way people see disabled spaces at Weymouth, Dorset, then set up your new barrier system and of course this is fine by me as it will only allow genuine badge holders to park and once only to use slightly further away spaces or until this is implemented at Weymouth, Dorset, let the parking attendant do his job and fine those who do not have a badge.

If you have never been to the Weymouth, Dorset store which I doubt you have, then you will not know the full situation and you will never be able to give an accurate response to my concerns. Why don't you come down to Weymouth and have a few hours with the parking attendant and see what you so called implementations are doing now and then email me back and tell me that my concerns are not justified and that your local managers are not breaking the DDA. Do it without them knowing your coming, please.

I look forward to hearing your findings, until then I reserve my right to legal action in this case under the DDA. You either support the DDA or Not, there is no in-between, even on private land if you are offering a service like you are, then you must be fully compliant. 

All I want is to park in a disabled space to do my shopping without non disabled persons taking the spaces, it is not hard surely?

Regards

Kelly

From: Mark Wright
Date: 19-Mar-2007 19:04
Subject: Response from ASDA  (Ref #000000015446334)
To:

Thank you for your message.

Thanks for your recent email and patience whilst I've been looking into your complaint.

I'm sorry Peter didn't reply to your email and I want to know why.  I've spoken with his manager, Colette, and it appears he accidentally deleted it after reading it.  This isn't good enough and I've asked Colette to work with Peter to find a way to stop this from happening again.

Our policy is to fine customers who park in disabled bays without a blue badge.  The exception is there will always be customers who are temporarily less able due to injury or illness.  The elderly can be very infirm and need to park close to the store.  We'd always use discretion and empower our wardens to look at each situation on it's merits.  We leave this to the local management team to police.  Any advice you can give us on other things we could do would be helpful.

Thanks again for taking the time to contact us.  I hope I've been clear in explaining our policy.  Be sure to let me know if I can help with anything else.

From: kelly
Sent: 31 March 2007 17:02
To: Mark Wright
Subject: RE: Response from ASDA (Ref #000000015446334)
Mark
Many thanks for getting back to me. I have been away for two weeks so I also apologise for not responding straight away.
I thank you for your response but it still does not really clear anything up at all.  

You agree that people should be finned for parking in blue badge spaces which is what I feel is right and must continue. However it is the discretion part that is still very Woolly. You do not state who has the final say with discretion.

I see that the way it should work is that on all Asda car parks that have parking attendants like we do in Weymouth, then the final say in discretion should always be with the parking attendant and not with the store Manager. However in stores that do not have parking attendants like the two I visited while away (St. Austell and Bodmin in Cornwall) will have discretion decided by the Store Manager. In all cases these spaces should be patrolled by either staff or Parking attendants as employed.

I say the above as the experience that I find in the Weymouth car park is that the Manager does override the parking attendant and continues to do so even while I was away. As the most recent example shows, on the 22 rd March a woman with a child parked in a blue badge space, the parking attendant was told by her that the Store Manager at Weymouth said she can park there whenever she likes if there are no Child spaces available. And because of this the parking attendant could not give her a warning or a fine. This is unacceptable and I am sure you agree that this should not happen and will look in to this.

I would like your policy for Blue Badge Spaces for all stores to be as mention above but to sum it up:

Asda Car Parks where parking attendants patrol:
Parking attendants have final say in any discretion during their hours of duty and are able to issues fines that can not be overturned by Store Manager but may be appealed with the Parking attendants Company (like Town and City Parking etc if required. Out of hours, Store Duty Managers may use discretion if required and should arrange patrols but this is not to override any passed or future decision by the Parking attendants and Store Managers should ensure that this is abided by and not abused.

Asda Car Parks where parking attendants are not patrolled:
Duty Managers should have responsibility to arrange patrol of the Blue Badge spaces and fix notices to wind screen to warn abusers that they are parking in the wrong places. Store Managers should resolve and discretion of parking in those spaces.
I am sure that you must agree that this is sensible and should enable both Managers and Parking attendants will then have direct rules to follow and the wooliness will be taken out of any decision.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this as a company wide procedure on Blue Badge Parking. It will ensure that you have a good sound policy for everyone. 

Many thanks

Kelly

On 03/04/07, Mark Wright wrote:
Thanks for your most recent email.
I can understand your thoughts. When customer's wish to appeal a fine, they can appeal to the store, town and city or our head office. Ultimately, it is our head office colleagues who hold the final say as town and city work for us. Whenever discretion is used, it is always subjective to the colleague who's making the decision and another colleague may take a different view. For this reason this situation will never to as clear cut as we'd perhaps like it to be.

All the same, I've passed your comment on to our car parks team for their information and to see if they want to proceed with your ideas. Thanks again for contacting me. I hope I've made this subject clearer for you.

Kind regards,

Mark Wright
ASDA Customer Relations

From: kelly
Sent: 03 April 2007 12:08
To: Mark Wright
Subject: Re: Response from ASDA (Ref #000000015446334)
Mark
Thank you Mark for your reply. I look forward to hearing from you once the Car Parks team have had chance to respond. I agree that discretion is always subjective and that is why only one person should have it at any time on site. If this is not to be the case then lets ensure that your colleagues at head office are the only ones with discretion. Everyone gets a fine, if they appeal, they do it through head office and not locally.
Whilst I wait for the Car Parks to reply to you please just note the following just to refresh your memory:

Disability Discrimination Act
From October 2004, Part III of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 came into effect within the United Kingdom. This legislation places a legal requirement on service providers to ensure that disabled people do not find it unreasonably difficult or impossible to enjoy the service in the same way as non-disabled people.

Legal Requirements
Whilst the earlier parts of the Act focused primarily on disabled access into buildings, Part III now looks closer at the issue of car parking. A key element of Part III is that service providers that operate a car park now have to 'monitor' their disabled bays to prevent abuse by non-disabled drivers. Failure to provide monitoring could result in a heavy financial penalty, as disabled drivers exercise their rights to compensation under the terms of the Act.

I was in the car park at Weymouth on Sunday. A car next to the one I was in had a ticket on his windscreen. He came back to his car with his child, the Parking Attendant went to talk to him but he ignored him completely, placed the child in the car peeled off the notice and threw it on the floor, got in his car and drove off! This is what I am up against. This car had a local number plate but we have many holiday makers who abuse the spaces from now until October too! I asked the Parking Attendant about it and he said that this was only a warning notice but the man never even looked! He told me that this is what he is up against without any concrete policy. He is armed with a proper ticket issuing machine but without the policy backing from Head Office, he and all your Parking attendants must be in the same boat. And we the disabled are the ones who have to suffer when the spaces were placed for our help and to make access equal to able-bodied persons.

I wait for your yours and the Car Parks departments response as sorry, this situation is not going away. If you feel that this is becoming something that may be too big for your hands, then please pass it all on to Andy Bond. I think that he should be aware now.

Regards and talk soon.

Kelly

From: Mark Wright
Sent: 03 April 2007 12:56
To: kelly
Subject: RE: Response from ASDA (Ref #000000015446334) 
Dear Ms *******,
Thanks for your most recent email.

I've now spoken with my colleague Paul, who looks after this area of the business within our retail team. He'll ensure our store colleagues pay particular attention to our disabled bays. He's also stressed we allow short term less able bodied customer to use these spaces when necessary. We have to take a common sense approach to these bays. We're fully compliant with DDA and have been audited as such. We go above and beyond its requirements and are seen as industry leading in terms of our disability services.
Let me assure you I'm happy to respond to your concerns.

Andy trusts me to deal with our customers, however he's aware of and comfortable with our correspondence.

Paul feels we've done all we can on this matter and that we now need to draw it to conclusion. As such, I won't be able to respond to any further contacts on this subject, but please let me know if I can help with anything else. 

Yours sincerely,

Mark Wright
Customer Relations Management

From: kelly
Sent: 10 April 2007 17:47
To: 'Mark Wright'
Subject: RE: Response from ASDA (Ref #000000015446334)
Mark
I appreciate that you feel that this matter should be drawn to a conclusion but your conclusion is not the same as my idea of a conclusion. If you are unwilling to answer or forward on any internal responses on this matter or talk further to me to allow me to get the answers from your car parks dept, then I will pass on all my emails and list of over 140 non disabled drivers number plates (yes over 140 since January of this year and that’s a lot of illegal parking in disabled badge spaces as well as lost revenue for you at the Weymouth store) to the Baywatch campaign at disability now as well as Mobilise and Disability Action. I am sure they will be able to give me the advise I need. It’s a shame as you through Susie Williams once supported Baywatch along with your competitors. They have now left you well behind on tackling disabled parking abuse.

I am not happy that after all this time that we have got nowhere between us or if we have you have not conveyed anything put in to action back to me. Most of your stores still allow abuse of the parking bays and this will not change without a change of Policy by Asda in the UK. I hope that the recent proposal to the UK law to change it to make any parking in a disabled space (on or off private land) without a blue badge an offence and this is now being backed by the DRC amongst others. I look forward to seeing this made law.
 
The only one saving grace at present is that your Weymouth Manager Darren Rideout has finally seen the amount of abuse (recorded number plate lists) and the recent tally of offenders in his car park. He has stated to the TCP attendants that he will back their decision and that they can issue one warning notice and then fine them on the second and subsequent offence unless any discretion by the TCP attendant is given. His customer service team are no longer allowed to override him and I think that this at least in my local store is one step closer. I just wish you had the balls to make this or my suggestion a company policy. If Baywatch was still actively reporting surveys, you would go straight to the top and not have any comments in disabled persons forums or blogs as you do now.
 
I am not giving up until abuse in yours and other car parks is resolved or policies are in place to control any abuse, so I am not going away even if you will not talk to me. However you can get in my good books a little by getting new batteries put in the space hog units so they work again. It must have cost a few bob to get them installed and you made such a hoo rah about them but you never changed the batteries when they went flat so if your not going to talk to me, then please can you arrange this to be done starting at Weymouth. I will be calling personally for the Manager every time that I see a disabled space being abused or have to wait because of abuse in what ever Asda store I visit, so soon they will no me by name and get my message. Hopefully this will now not be needed in Weymouth but Darren Rideout will soon find out and I will know if anything from our emails actually did filter back down the managerial chain to the store managers.
 
Many thanks and look forward to talking to you again in the future and hearing those Space hog melodic tunes again.
 
Regards
 
Kelly

From: kelly
Sent: 01 May 2007 09:58
To: 'Andy Bond'
Subject: Disabled Parking Policy
Andy Bond
I am really sorry to have to bring this issue to your attention yet again. That is of course if you really did see the previous comments that Mark Wright wrote on your behalf and with your approval.

Disabled Parking spaces at your stores are being abused. 192 instances of abuse since January of this year at the Weymouth store alone. As you can see from the email correspondence below Mark Wright has now washed his hands of the problem and has basically refused to talk to me. I hoped that at least he would have taken some of the items on board and resolved them.

Instead I have proof that the opposite has been done. A document for your trolley porters seen at the Weymouth store has given Porters permission to override the TCP Parking attendant and gives permission for the Porters to allow pregnant women and women with children permission to park in blue badge spaces. This really does go against the blue badge system and is effectively removing the spaces at times from the use of any disabled persons.

I would really appreciate it if you could have a look at this documental policy that has come from Asda House and withdraw this section.
 
I enclose the previous email for your reading and look forward to hearing from you really soon. This is going on beyond belief and I am now seriously gathering all my items of correspondence and the 192 number plates to pass on the media and disabled societies to use with their campaigns for equal and fair treatment.
 
Remember ‘Baywatch’, you used to be one its greats!
 
Regards
 
Kelly

From: Kelly
Sent: 24 May 2007 15:35
To: Lisa *********
Subject: Disabled Parking Policy (Asda)
Hi Lisa
Can you please pass this on to Andy Bond for me as it seems that he didn’t get the last email or written copy I posted recorded delivery (and got a signature for). If he will not entertain it or he insists to try and pass it off please let me know. I intend to publish a report in the press soon, so he can respond or if not I will write and state that there is no response from the UK. Please let him know that I am also in contact with Wal-Mart as Asda’s parent company to discuss this at a higher level in the absence or continued refusal to discuss this in the UK.
And if all else fails, please print this and place in a large folder, at least this way it will be stick out the top of his bin when he throws it away (hopefully not).
 
Many thanks for your time today and I hope to hear from you very soon.
 
Regards 

Kelly
Disabled customer

From: Lisa **********
Sent: 24 May 2007 18:16
To: Kelly
Subject: RE: Disabled Parking Policy (Asda)
Hi Kelly
 
Thank you for your email. Andy is aware of your comments below and is content for our Customer Services Department to act upon your email on his behalf.
Please send me a contact number and I will make sure Paul Hedley, Customer Service Project Manager, rings you back as soon as you are available to take the call.
 
Many thanks
Lisa
Lisa ********* PA to Andy Bond, President & CEO
Asda Stores Ltd

Lisa
Thank you for getting back to me. I have also copied Paul in on this and if you see that his email is incorrect I would appreciate it if you could forward it to him. I am still not sure, as I have again not had any personal response from your CEO, if he had actually read through this email. I will be very disappointed if legal action is started over this and he wasn’t aware and could have done something but it was filtered out before getting to him. This is a similar reply I got when Mark Wright tried to resolve it and he promised me that Andy was aware and happy. I am sure he would not have been happy that Mark just basically refuse to talk to me further! So please Lisa, if this has been filtered out from Andy’s mail, I think that you should at least mention it in case it any legal action s taken under the disabled discrimination act.

I will not be sending Paul my phone number as I am unable to record any of the conversation. I am sure that copies of all correspondence will be enough to start with and enable him to be brought up to speed with what has and continues to happen at just one of Andy’s stores across the country. I would hope that he is also in receipt of the letters from other Weymouth store users letters and emails in respect to this matter, one I know was sent within the last two weeks by a Justice of the peace by recorded delivery. He was just sent back the standard Asda letter on disabled parking. The TCP parking attendant on the Weymouth site has told me that others have also been in contact over the last few months and they too had the same response.
 
It boils down to this. I know your car park in my case is on land owned by yourself (formerly Weymouth Foot ball club) and as such not privy to the same law that is on the double yellow lined road outside where your trucks illegally park at times. You are providing spaces for disabled drivers and call them blue badge spaces as such by painting them blue with the blue disabled sign in the bay. The signage says that you will issue a £40 civil penalty fine for any one parking in them ‘without a valid disabled badge’. This to anyone would mean that you have designated them for disabled use and not for anyone else. Some spaces in the Weymouth store opposite and less than 4m away from some disabled spaces are available for persons with children and are marked in yellow paint against the blue paint used on the disabled spaces. Some of the spaces are closer to the doors than some of the disabled spaces.
 
Your store, by its policy, allows nearly any member of staff from the Manager, Customer service, Greeter and more recently uncovered from a policy issued to your trolley porters that at least these persons can overturn the stated signed policy and allow non disabled badge holders to park in blue disabled spaces and therefore restrict and as such discriminate or lessen the access to disabled people to park and use the facilities available at your store or in its grounds. You employ a company ‘TCP’ to patrol your car parks at some locations including Weymouth and his job I would presume is to enforce the signage you have placed in your car parks. Surely it is in their contract to follow the rules of the signs you have placed and to fine non disabled badge holders and to police that area, not the store or anyone nearly who works there to do this. If this is the case, the signs need to come down and TCP need to be removed and let it be a free for all. I am sure you do not want this either, do you. If there is to be any discretion as to who can or can not park in disabled bays, then it should be the TCP attendant where one is patrolling. Now that would be fair considering that it is private land but it should be on the sign!
 
Disabled parking abuse is on the up everywhere and hopefully a law trying to be brought in will enforce the same rules on private land as is on public land and these issues will go away as you will have to enforce it. Why not take the lead in this and get one step ahead, use it in any future campaigns or what ever but please read through my emails get in contact with TCP and talk with Pat the guy from TCP who is on the Car Park and listen to the letters and emails you have had about the disabled spaces being abused. The income you have lost through fines has been horrendous. This should not be overlooked at as a business but on the other hand if the system worked, the signs were correct and the policy was right, then the fines would drop as people learnt that disabled spaces in Asda card parks are for disabled people shopping at Asda. Other wide spaces available are for others who need them.
 
Please make sure you read right through this email and not just comment on this top bit. It has come a long way from its start and at one point I thought it was sorted at Weymouth until the trolley porter policy came out!
 
On just one other point, do you know that all through this the Manager or Weymouth has never made or tried to make any contact with me to ask me what he could do to help or to just apologise, amazing!
 
I look forward Paul to hearing from you in the near future once you have been able to read through, visit Weymouth and talk to the TCP Guy Pat or the company. Hopefully you will be in a position to make and remove old policies and to finally get this resolved. Please have no reservations, I will not let it sleep and that is why I continue to try to get someone further up the ladder in your company structure to deal with it. I will get this published, I have had photographs taken ready. I have also been in contact with Wal-Mart as your parent company because American disabled spaces are far better policed currently and not abused.
 
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
 
Best regards and have a nice Bank Holiday weekend.
 
Regards
Kelly  

From: Mark Wright
Sent: 25 May 2007 15:28
Subject: Response from ASDA (Ref #000000016119168)
 
Thank you for your message.
 
Thanks for your emails to my colleagues Andy and Lee. As you know, he has complete confidence in our team to handle the issues you've raised.
 
Paul is in receipt of your email and will reply on Wednesday. He'd like to respond sooner, but is now out of the business until then.
 
You'll hear from us again soon.
 
Kind regards,
 
Mark Wright
Customer Relations Management

 Thank you for your message.

Dear Kelly,

Paul has asked me to contact you once again and thank you for taking the time to contact us with your feedback about our car park polices. 

Paul agrees there are opportunities to develop our polices and is currently looking into this with our car park planning team.  Once this has been done, we'll get back to you with the outcome.

Paul would like to thank you for your offer of help and he feels this will help us a lot.  Paul feels any chance to improve our service to customers should be fully embraced.

Regards,

Mark Wright

Customer Relations Management

I had heard nothing from anyone for a week, so to ensure that everyone was still aware that I want to get this resolved I sent this to Andy Bond (CEO Asda (Wal-Mart UK)) and also to Lee Scott (CEO Wal-Mart).

Gentlemen

Can I please thank you for passing on my email again to have the disabled Parking space issue at Weymouth looked at again.  I hope that your ‘Mark Wright’ will now not try to fob me off or close the conversation again before the issue is resolved. 

I am currently waiting for a response from the Parking team. I hope that this will not be too long as a simple visit to the store should get it resolved for Weymouth and I hope that you will then use the same policy across the country in all the Asda stores.  Once this issue has been resolved I would really like the manager of the Weymouth store to actually respond to my original complaint that was logged in his complaints book back in January.  As it seems he must ignore his complaints book or this really could have been resolved over 6 months ago.

Anyway, thank you again for supporting me in this issue and I hope that it is now brought to a swift conclusion.

 Best Regards

 Kelly Ford

And also to Mark

Sent: 11 June 2007 12:43
To: Mark Wright
Subject: RE: Response from ASDA (Ref #000000016159443)

Hi Mark

Many thanks for your email.  I trust it will not be too long before a response is given with respect to my previous questions and comments.  Thank you again for help in this matter.  I now hope that we can now bring it to the correct conclusion for everyone effected.

Regards

 Kelly

 Hi Kelly,

Thanks for your email and those to my colleagues Lee and Andy.  As you know, Paul is reviewing our policy and will be in contact when this is completed.  This is likely to be several weeks due to the process involved.  I'm sorry we can't do this more quickly - we'll contact you again when we've completed this process.

 Regards,

 Mark Wright

Hi Kelly,

Mark has forwarded me your contact in relation to our Disabled Parking Spaces at ASDA.

I am currently reviewing our policy in relation to the management of our specialist parking bays across the estate, and will be in contact with you as soon as this process is complete.

Thank you for your feedback which I will consider as part of the decision making process.

Paul

So we will have to wait now until we here from them.  In the mean time I have emailed TCP to see if they are prepared to let me know what is happening.  On each occasion I have emailed them, they simply say that they will pass my comments on to Asda.  So today I sent another to them and here it is:

Hi Elaine

I just asking to see if you have any news on the Asda disabled parking space issues in Weymouth’s Asda.  This has now gone on for just over 6 months and I really think it is time that some sort of decision is made.  Every time I ask you, you pass my messages on to Asda.  You have never got back to me with any answers from them or more to the point from yourselves.

Will you please let me know if you intend to change anything or you are just going to allow the abuse to continue in Asda car parks across Great Britton that you patrol.  This will not be an isolated issue I am sure, so any policy needs to be made country wide.

I have asked for another update from Asda and Lee-Scott, CEO of Wall-mart world wide as I feel that nothing is being done on this issue, so come on, please join them and lets try and get this issue resolved here in Weymouth and also across the country.

 I look forward to hearing from you very soon.

 Regards

 Kelly

From: Elaine
Sent: 14 June 2007 10:52
To: Kelly
Subject: RE: Disabled Parking Policy (Asda)

 Hi Kelly

Apologies for my delay in replying, I have been out of the office up until today.  Your further email was forwarded to me by my colleague this morning.  I have forwarded all your email correspondence to the Car Park Team at Asda House.

 Kind Regards, Elaine

Sent: 14 June 2007 13:35
To: Elaine
Subject: RE: Disabled Parking Policy (Asda)

 Elaine

I am asking you what your company are doing in this matter.  I know what Asda are saying but I need to know what your telling your staff to do in the interim of any policy change at Asda.

If you are doing nothing or are continuing to allow discrimination between who you do and do not fine for parking offences in the disabled spaces, then so be it for now but I would like to know your side as it is your attendants that will be looking at the discrimination charge if one was brought in the first instance and then you and Asda secondly.  I hope that it does not happen but without any immediate changes you could be heading in to some possible trouble waters with the current state of the actions of your attendant and the signage on the site as well as other sites you may manage for Asda and other companies on so called Private land with public access (grey area in law).

 I look forward to hearing from you please not Asda.

Thank you.

 Kelly

No response to date, still waiting to hear what TCP as a company are doing in this matter..........

Out of the blue came and email from disabled drivers first, a group who has more clout than me.  They read my email, saw the site and hopefully will have a go at Asda from there organisation.  Here is the email:

Well Mark replied with this email full of nothiness, well nothing I didn't expect...

From: Mark Wright [mailto:Mark.Wright@asda.co.uk]
Sent: 14 August 2007 09:00
To: surfingkelly@googlemail.com
Subject: Response from ASDA (Ref #000000016872824)

                 


If you have a story about Asda and it's Disabled Peoples  Parking  Policy and would like it added to my site, please email me at the address below, I'll publish it and if you will allow me, I'll pass it on to them as well.  Weymouth can not be the only store with TCP and this issue, so come on let me know.


Please note that I shop here.  I have nothing against the shop, its brand or any other issue than Disabled Parking Space abuse by non badge holders and Asda's policy to allow it to happen.  Some item on this website are copyright of the respective owners and I respect that.  If you feel that you would like your item, name or comment to be removed or a link added, then please let me know.  You can contact me at

Thank you.  I do not mean to hurt, insult or bring personal harm anyone who is mentioned on this website and will remove sections when asked.  This site is to show everyone the truth and to show personal emails between me and the companies involved to try to change company policy towards the disabled drivers.  Any use of personal threats verbal or physical made to me will be taken very seriously and reported to the relevant authorities.