The post you are reporting:
The burden of car-parking charges could be somewhat alleviated, if the local businesses agreed to a proposal I made to the members of the Loyalty Scheme, whereby if customers spent a certain amount with them (say £15 or £20) they would refund their car-parking costs, or at least the first hour - needless to say only about one or two would accept that, so it never took off.
Car-parking is free, or very cheap, at places like the rear of the Pencester Road indoor market - if you shop with them; just ask Mary Davis, who runs the cafe in there and she'll give you a (free) pass for the day.
The Charlton Centre is very close to free and now have some more good shops in there, so definitely worth a look.
There's also many places in and around the Town where you can park for free - you just have to walk a little further.
BBC Radio Kent did broadcast a piece about the demise of the Dover Loyalty Scheme this morning, but it came across that the fault of the scheme was that it wasn't advertised enough.
Monthly adverts in the Dover Express; fortnightly articles in the Express; the quarterly newsletter; posters put in members' windows (and subsequently taken down); the web-site and over 1500 email addresses.
Does anyone know of any other ways it could have been promoted ?
I know this sounds like a grumble, but making personalised posters for the members businesses, putting them up in their window and then they take them down the day after, what can I do ?
If people have their eyes open, when they shop around Town, they'll see the information; many people tell me they walk around with their eyes shut - I guess metaphorically speaking.
Two people spoke about the Scheme, one (surprisingly to me) said it wasn't promoted enough.
Mike Webb spoke in support of the Scheme and the efforts I had put in, but as I have said many times, it needs a "body" to support it - financially and morally. Perhaps running voluntarily didn't help, but with no one putting any money into the Scheme, should it not have started ?
A comment was made that I should have charged a £1.00 for the card - I had thought about that a lot in the beginning, but discounted it as I wanted it to be at no cost to the card holder, but maybe they would have used it moré if they had paid for it.
Roger