Last Friday night I met up with my girlfriends over dinner at Umai-ya which recently opened in IOI Boulevard. Located in a commercial area directly opposite IOI Mall, IOI Boulevard’s concept follows after Jaya One, with an array of coffee joints, bars, restaurants and an occasional live band performing in the foyer. Built within an already populated community of commercial properties, it only makes sense for IOI Boulevard to include ample parking space in its vicinity. For the unfamiliar, tenants include Munich, Kissaten, Otak Otak Place, XO Shabu Shabu, Pappa Rich, and Honeymoon Dessert to name a few.

When it comes to a big commercial building as such, we would expect the automated parking management system to be pretty standard i.e. we need to make payment before exiting the parking lot. I’m writing this blog post to announce to all in the web universe that the IOI Boulevard Parking payment system is MAJOR FAIL.

Here’s what happened:

I paid for my parking at the automated kiosk. Inserted RM 10 for a RM 2 payment (as i didn’t have small change). Instead of getting my change back, I was given a “refund receipt”, which instructed me to walk to the car park management office, and get my RM 8 back.

At this point, I was a bit concerned as I was alone, in a basement car park, and I had no idea where the heck the car park management office is at. Thankfully, it was a mere 20 meters from where the payment kiosk is located.

I walked over to the office and there was another couple in there and we realised that, THERE’S NO ONE THERE TO GIVE US OUR REFUND! I see phone numbers stuck on the wall, and I called one of the numbers. No answer.

Two minutes later, 2 of the parking management staff shows up, and takes the refund receipt from me and the couple. He asked me if I had RM 2, cos he only had RM 10. I looked at him and said, “If I had RM 2, I won’t have inserted RM 10 right?”. So you’d think he was using his brain after I said this but NO…he went on and asked the couple if they had RM 1 (cos their refund was RM 9). At this point, I almost fainted at his dumbness.

The couple managed to take out all of the coins they had and gave him RM 1.

Then, my turn. I decided to look for coins in my car and see if I had enough. Instead of the staff trying to get spare change, he asked me to exit the parking first, in case the 15 minute grace period was up (cos it’s like taking us forever to get my refund back right? wtf wtf)

I literally ran to my car, drove over to the management office, took out whatever coins I had and chucked it on the table. Instead of saying sorry for the inconvenience, he was pissed at me giving him 2 x 5 sen coins! WHAT THE F?

Maybe it was the sashimi that kept my cool cos I was surprised why I didn’t yell at that incompetent piece of nutjob. I made it out of the parking just in time but i guess the next time i come here, I’d probably not park in the basement.