Christmas parking drives shoppers online
Christmas parking remains a gripe for nearly half of all
shoppers according to new research.
The survey carried out on behalf of AXA indicates that it is the
queues, rather than the cost, of parking that will drive nearly
half of us (43%) to do all or most of our shopping on-line this
year.
Over one in 10 Christmas shoppers waited more than 30 minutes
for a space during last year's festive shopping period. Top of the
queues is London where one in four had to wait more than 30
minutes. Outside of London the worst places for queues were
Cardiff, Cambridge, Leicester, Brighton & Hove and Glasgow.
Shoppers were also asked if they believed parking was too
expensive in their local town. The top two areas who responded
`yes' (Worcester and Southampton) were also in the top five least
likely to shop online suggesting that while they believed it was
expensive, it wasn't enough to stop them shopping in town.
London, which according to the research is the most expensive
place to park, also featured in the top five areas where online
shopping was least likely. Only Cambridge featured in the "too
expensive" and "most likely to shop online" categories.
AXA also knows from its claims experience that car park rage and
the resulting damage is not uncommon as a result of the stressful
parking situations - the company's research suggested that one in
10 may have been involved in some sort of incident.
And this is often exacerbated by drivers behaving badly when it
comes to nabbing a parking space, with the most common crime being
driving the wrong way round the car park to beat another driver to
a space. The worst offenders for this are drivers in Wrexham with
almost half (50%) admitting to doing this.
Amanda Edwards from AXA says: "Christmas can be stressful and
parking is definitely up there when it comes to raising the blood
pressure. It is interesting to see that the queues rather than the
cost appear to be the biggest issue. But whatever it is, we would
urge drivers to keep their cool when parking - a moment of
hot-headedness can so easily lead to a bump and an expensive
claim."
13/12/12
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