Be careful when parking at the Redmond Center (where the QFC and Trader Joe’s are located on Redmond Way).

The sign says there is a three-hour maximum parking limit. But if you go early in the morning for five minutes to grab a coffee and your car is spotted by Diamond Parking, you are not welcome back to do more shopping there for the rest of the day. If you return later in the afternoon for five more minutes, and they see your car again on the same day anywhere in that lot (it doesn’t have to be close to your original parking spot) more than three hours since the last time they spotted it, you will get ticketed, even if the total time spent there was less than 15 minutes.

Something similar happened to me, so I called Diamond Parking, and while they were very friendly and waived my citation for me this one time only because of the circumstance, they confirmed to me that in this specific scenario that I described, they would always issue a citation.

They claimed that the shop owners have instructed them to act this way, which I find hard to believe. If you are a business owner and you didn’t realize that your customers are being discouraged from patronizing your business like this, you may want to talk to Diamond Parking and tell them that they are enforcing parking rules that do not actually reflect your desires.

Danny Miller

Carnation