Just had another issue with Astoria Central Parking.
Surprise. Not really.
In August, I updated my card on file by giving it to one of the valet parking on a piece of paper that he handed me. The parker was a taller gentleman with glasses and straight hair.
In early September, I received an email from Astoria Central telling me that they needed an updated payment information from me because my previous card information was not working. I knew the previous card did not work because I'd lost it, which is why I had updated it. This wasn't the first time I had lost my card, which I take full responsibility for. But I updated it before the bill was due and I gave it to an employee before September, so I was set.
In past months, I had been told to rewrite my payment information after *already writing it down for them* once on a piece of paper-- that they subsequently lost. I told them I wasn't doing that this time and told them to find it. I said I'd update it if it was electronically or if they found it, we were good. You'll understand that if I already am frequently losing my information, I am not going to add further opportunity for my information to be compromised.
Today, when I pulled in, the valet parker in the garage said Q wanted to talk to me. Q was on the phone.
Q, the owner of the garage, took on a nasty tone, spoke down to me, and told me that he could not be responsible for his *former employees* losing my information and that if I did not fill out a form right then and there he would cancel my contract. He said something blaming me for losing my cards and making up some lie about me never offering a new card update to his workers (he has security cameras; he can easily check those and see that this happened). Instead, he said that I said that I would come back and update it later. What I had done was given a card for one month (it was a temporary card -- you get a temporary card from Bank of America when you wait for a new debit card and it's disabled BY THE BANK after 30-45 days) and said I would change it the following month -- I did offer that update, and gave it to a worker in August. That they lost that information is *not my fault.* I said that there have been too many opportunities when doing that exact same thing has caused my information to get lost so I wasn't doing it.
His response was to threaten to cancel my contract. A breach of contract -- because I never said I was not paying; I said I was not going to allow my information to be further compromised because they lost what I had already given them.
If they have a parent company, I would encourage them to find a different manager for this facility, because the current one is not well versed in customer service, contract disputes, or the legality of some of the very outrageous threats that he makes. read more