Sir, - Last Saturday morning my wife and I parked our car on Stephen's Green opposite Hume Street. We wanted to park for a maximum of three hours but we accidentally inserted more money in the meter than we needed to. We pressed and turned the red button to refund our money and nothing happened, repeatedly. We were getting a bit desperate as we now had no money to park at all!
Finally my wife, who has small hands, stuck her fingers up the refund money chute and felt paper inside. After some poking around she pulled it out, releasing in the process more money than we had inserted. The extra money was composed of 1999 £1 coins, which these machines do not accept. The paper was newspaper which had been folded over several times and stuffed into the chute. Our curiosity aroused, we checked the next four machines along and each one had newspaper inserted in the refund chute in the same manner.
Obviously there is a scam being operated to collect and keep the coins that these machines, ridiculously enough, don't accept. Who knows how many machines around the city have been similarly tampered with. As we could not find a garda to report our findings to, we thought we would use your Letters page to inform your readers and Dublin Corporation. - Yours, etc.,
John Brennan, North Strand, Dublin 3.