A father-of-five was served with a £273 debt collection notice and threatened with court action after accidentally paying for the incorrect parking ticket which was 20p short of the actual tariff.
Lee Taylor, 38 from Normanby in North Yorkshire, was charged with a parking violation after he took his family to a soft-play centre on July 17th 2021.
He paid £3.30 for what he thought was four hours of parking at the Redcar car park owned by Euro Car Parks.
When a £100 fine dropped through the letter box weeks later, the leakage technician and his wife Laura realised they had paid the Monday to Friday price instead of the Saturday price of £3.50 – 20p more expensive – and that the £3.30 only covered three hours of parking.
Mr Taylor said that they had contacted Euro Car Parks in an appeal and were willing to pay the 20p difference.
Lee Taylor, 38, from Normanby, North Yorkshire, was served with a £273 debt collection notice and threatened with court action after accidentally paying for the incorrect parking ticket which left him 20p short
He claims that the company did not respond to the couple until another notice was sent. It stated that the fine had been raised because he hadn’t paid the original fine.
Euro Car Parks, which manages more than 1,000 car parks in the UK, Ireland, and Europe, asks for all appeals to go through writing.
A few weeks later, the company sent Mr Taylor another letter containing a £273 debt collection notice and also threatened court action.
The West Dyke Road carpark, owned by Euro Car Parks. This is where Mr Taylor and his family parked during the summer
Mr Taylor told Teesside Live: ‘I realised I had made a genuine mistake and had paid the Monday to Friday price instead of the Saturday price of £3.50 which meant I was short by 20p.
“I received no change from my machine to indicate that I had only paid for three hours.”
‘There was no way of contacting this company direct and it said to appeal we must do this in writing which we did explaining the mistake and offering to pay what we owed.
‘We received no correspondence from Euro Car Parks until a few weeks later when they stated the fine had increased because we hadn’t paid in a certain time.
‘Again we appealed in writing stating we hadn’t received anything back from our appeal.
‘Another few weeks passed with nothing then suddenly we received a letter from a debt company telling us the debt had been passed onto them and we must now pay £273 off or face court proceedings.
“We contacted debt company and they basically said there is not any way to appeal this and that we must either pay it or face the law.”
Mr Taylor paid £3.30 for what he thought was four hours of parking. He was charged for three hours of parking, but Saturday tariffs were 20p higher. He was then fined a few weeks later.
Mr Taylor stated that he and his wife have tried everything to resolve the issue, having used the Redcar carpark before without any problems.
He said, “We have been completely ignored.”
“I feel that this is all a way for these businesses to exploit and scare people into paying these ridiculous fees.
“This has caused us great distress and I would hate for it to happen again to many other people.”
Mr Taylor stated that he and his wife pay for parking at West Dyke Road car parks by phone, but that he paid cash on this occasion.
MailOnline reached out to Euro Car Parks for comments.