Hospital parking ticket a case of gouging

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Date: Jan 28, 2010

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On the morning of Jan. 18, I drove myself to Georgian Bay General Hospital to attend the emergency clinic. One cannot park at the emergency entrance, so I had to use the paid, public parking facility.
No major inconvenience, but I had no way of knowing how long I would be in the hospital. A few hours? Overnight? Using all the change I had, I bought a ticket for two hours.
I was admitted, diagnosed, released and got back to my car at 10 a.m. My ticket was good till 9:08 a.m., which means I was 52 minutes late. And for that I was stuck with a $25 additional charge.
In a situation like this, it is impossible to know how long one might be detained at emergency, and this $25 charge for 52 minutes is a classic example of gouging – the bulls in Madrid couldn’t do it better.

R.A. Madill
Lafontaine

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