Almost there!

You know when you come across a piece of technology, that almost works and could be really useful if they just went that little bit further? No? Lucky you!

I was flying from Heathrow the other week, and being a good corporate citizen I booked my long-term parking in advance to save the company money. System is quite neat; you pay in advance and when you arrive it reads your number plate and knows who you are. The ticket it give you has your number plate on it, and when you come to leave you simply insert this ticket and it knows you have paid. 

So where's the problem? Ah, the problem is that it read my number plate wrong! It read the W as 11, and actually ended up with a registration that is not even possible on a UK car - in fact, I can't think of any country where the combination it produced would be valid. So, mistake number one is not putting some intelligence into the program to work out what a valid number plate would be. Not terribly tricky.

So, spotting the error, I drove round to the office and asked if they could exchange the ticket for an accurate one, so that I could drive out easily when I returned from my trip. I had the paperwork with me to prove I had paid, but this was when the people and process part, rather than the technology part, fell apart.

"Sorry, we can't do that."

"Why not?"

No logical reason came forwards, but the basic answer is because they never thought of this possibility, or the bloke hadn't been trained how to do it.

"Just come to this window when you return and we will sort you out."

"Why can't you sort it now - I did this to save time?"

etc. etc. etc.

Now, I wonder if that means the speed cameras are reading my number plate wrong? No chance!