RED-FACED council chiefs have revealed much of the £400,000 wrongly taken in duplicate car parking payments will be repaid in the coming days.
The long-running saga, which saw the council threaten car park ticket machine operator Flowbird with legal action, now appears to be on the way to being solved with 183,000 repayments resolved by the end of this month.
Flowbird has confirmed to the council all 56,000 duplicate payments made by Mastercard were processed on Sunday (October 16) with the cash expected to arrive in bank accounts from Monday (October 24).
Visa card transactions were processed on Monday (October 17) according to Flowbird which will mean a further 127,000 duplicate payments being refunded to customers.
These will start showing within the next five working days.
Duplicate payments have been found as far back as August 27 since Worcester City Council were made aware of the issue at the end of last month.
More than 200,000 duplicate payments have been taken from customers’ accounts and Flowbird has accepted responsibility for this issue.
City Council bosses say it has impacted 15,000 car parking sessions and has resulted in around £400,000 of income wrongly being paid into council coffers.
Shane Flynn, director of finance at Worcester City Council, said: “We are pleased that this situation is now beginning to be resolved and that our customers will soon start to receive their refunds.
“We’d like to thank everyone for their patience and we will continue to provide regular updates until everyone has been refunded.
“We know this matter has been not only frustrating for customers, but has left many people, albeit temporarily, out of pocket.
“It appears that people whose bank cards have been expired or cancelled will have to wait slightly longer than others to get their refunds.
“We sincerely apologise for this, but once again, I would urge people to get in touch if they are facing financial hardship as the Council can provide emergency refunds where necessary.”
Anyone who suffered financial issues such as bank or overdraft charges as a result of the error is asked to e-mail [email protected].
For a refund of parking charges put ‘Duplicate Payments Refund Request’ in the subject box, for a reimbursement of bank charges type ‘Request for Reimbursement of bank charges.
