Frustration Over Car-Lot Congestion

Question: On Nov 23 I went to Ralph’s market at Wilshire Boulevard and Bundy Drive on Saturday afternoon, as usual; parked in the store’s lot, as usual; bought a week’s supply of groceries for us--some $80 worth--as usual; stood in line the usual 20 minutes to pay for it. This whole exercise in aggravation takes a couple of hours.

When I staggered out with my cart heaped with Ralph’s wares, there was the following nasty notice on my windshield.

“Warning--Read It! Private Property: The use of this parking facility is restricted to customers While Shopping Only--1 Hour Limit. You have been found in violation of posted parking regulation. Your license number has been recorded, and any further violation will result in your car being ticketed by police and/or towed away at your own expense. LAMC 80-71-4, Sec. 22658 CVC By Parking Patrol Corp.”

(And under this grim warning are spaces filled in with the make of your car, your license number, the date, the time, the location and the name of the security officer issuing the warning.)

They say they’ve got my license number on a list, and next time I commit this “violation” they will have police ticket me or tow my car away.

Who can buy groceries for a family in an hour on a Saturday (never mind it being the Saturday before Thanksgiving) and why should one have to? I have spent thousands of dollars in this store and have never once parked my car there for an unreasonable length of time.

I am mad on principle. I fight their mobs and buy their food and then get harassed and threatened for not doing it quickly enough.

On a practical level, I’m afraid to shop there again now that they say they have my license number on their call-the-police list.--J.M.

Answer: In terms of tact, perhaps, the parking-violation notice does, indeed, sound like something issued by a Nazi occupation force in World War II.

But, if the threat of being towed is to be made, however, it’s a legal requirement that a warning to that effect be issued first, and--like a notification that your appeal for clemency has been denied--it’s a difficult thing to phrase in a jolly way.

What we have here, according to both Bob Hagstrom, manager of Ralph’s store at Wilshire and Bundy, and to Jan Charles Gray, a vice president of the grocery chain, is an unusual set of congestion circumstances--even by the standards of an industry that, traditionally, has freeloaders taking up its customers’ parking spaces.

“Satellite” stores that, by mutual agreement, share the supermarket’s parking lot aren’t normally a major problem unless the nature of them encourages a traffic that lingers--such as a popular restaurant that caters to the leisurely, three-martini-type diner. At Wilshire and Bundy, this doesn’t seem to be the case, but the complex is shared by an exercise salon where, again, the clientele isn’t exactly the sort of fast-drop-in, drop-out traffic attracted by a doughnut shop.

“Both at Wilshire and Bundy,” Gray adds, “and at our location at 3rd Street and San Vicente Boulevard, we’ve got a mix of nearby commercial locations that give us a lot of problems. At Bundy, for instance, we’ve got a large medical office building across from us with inadequate parking and with all of those office workers who don’t want to pay $5 or $6 a day. Without this sort of hour-limit policy, our entire lot would be filled with them all day.”

Also, store manager Hagstrom adds that an adjacent street with several large apartment complexes is closed to parking (on alternate sides) for street cleaning two days a week.

“So, all of these tenants on those days find our lot a convenient place to park. It’s not our responsibility to provide parking for everybody in the neighborhood who needs it--it’s to our customers, and we’re certainly not trying to make it difficult for them.

“People all shop differently,” Hagstrom notes.

“You’ve got some who will drop in, zip up and down the aisles and, boom! they’re gone. You’ve got others who will come in, spend three hours and go out with 10 baskets. Be my guest! They may get a warning notice because they took so long, but we’re sure not going to have them towed. In fact, nobody is ever towed until the security people check with me first--so the chances are pretty slim.”

If Ralph’s parking problems at Wilshire and Bundy are bad, Gray adds, they are--if anything--even worse at the company’s store at 3rd and San Vicente, another giant congestion area.

“We’ve got people who want to park in our lot and walk over to the hospital, Cedars-Sinai, and we’re also across the street from Beverly Center. So, without this sort of policy, we’d have the hospital people parking all day for nothing, and we’d have the Beverly Center shoppers who would rather avoid the hassle of the garage, park in our lot and walk over to the center.”

And, Gray assures us, “The person who wrote you doesn’t have to worry about having a ‘record’ with us and being towed away the next time she shops. We obviously don’t have a giant computer somewhere keeping track of everybody indefinitely.”

The suggestion that validation might be a more tactful way of controling its parking problem--rather than the current reliance on the “off-with-your-head” threatening notices--drew the admission from Gray that “we tried that once at 3rd and San Vicente, but the labor costs were simply prohibitive.”

What it boils down to, all hands agree, is that the patrolling of those security guards--and those chalk marks they put on your tire as a timing device--is primarily a deterrent to those who are habitually freeloading at Ralph’s expense (and blocking your legitimate parking needs). They are a reminder that, sooner or later, the constant reappearance of the same car with the same license number--for hours on end--is going to ring bells and, sure enough, one day the tow truck appears.

“If it happens again, have her come in and see me right away,” Hagstrom says. “We’re not trying to make it difficult for anyone, and I’m always glad to talk to them. A few people make it difficult for the majority, but we do have a problem trying to preserve adequate parking for our own people.”

Addendum: In connection with last week’s plight of J.T., who resubscribed and also renewed a gift subscription to Vanity Fair but who, at the same time, received a bill for a comparable dual subscription to Smithsonian magazine--which was foreign to her--we have late word from Neodata Services in Boulder, Colo., the “fulfillment” house servicing both magazines.

According to Tom Mines, executive vice president, the computer tape addressing renewal notices to Vanity Fair subscribers, sure enough, got plugged in a second time with the wrong renewal form on the printer--for Smithsonian magazine, which none of the addressees had ordered.

“Only a handful of them--10, or at the most 15--got out before we caught it,” Mines notes, “and we’ve already sent out letters of apology to them--including J.T. None of them will be billed, of course, for the subscriptions that they didn’t enter in the first place.”

With the company making 204 million individual mailings a year (including renewals, expirations, changes of address and billings), an error of “10, or at the most 15” has to be considered, we think, in the “acceptable” range.

Stocking-stuffer suggestion: As a last-minute pick-up for your coupon-conscious friends, how about a “Coupons of Hope” book? Sponsored by the City of Hope National Medical Center, which, since 1913, has provided no-cost treatment for patients suffering from major illnesses--such as cancer and leukemia--the “Coupons of Hope” book has raised more than $2.7 million in the last five years.

The sixth edition of the book, available only in Southern California and Las Vegas, may be ordered for $5 directly from the City of Hope. It contains 342 grocery coupons worth more than $85 in savings. Mail to Coupons of Hope, P.O. Box 3337, Los Angeles, Calif. 90051.

Don G. Campbell cannot answer mail personally but will respond in this column to consumer questions of general interest. Write to Consumer VIEWS, You section, The Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053.