Another parking fine thread.

[BlueMeganeII]

A little bit of advice please so I can get this from the perspective of someone else that maybe sees this differently to me.

I've just been to London on a course and parked in the Chippenham £3 per day car park at the train station on Wednesday. This was payed on the automated phone system. There was no option to pay for anything other that 1 day or 1 week in my case so I elected to pay for 1 day to top it up the next morning over the automated phone system again.

The next morning I dialled the number at 6.10am and it just rang (parking ticket expires at 6.30am ish), same happened again at 6.30 and 8.45am. I was finally able to park the car for the whole day again through the automated system at 11.30am and it had even remembered my card details. The next day at 6:00am I did the same but had no such troubles and payed the parking charge straight away.

So, as you probably guessed I was ticketed at 11.18am on the Thrusday a whole 12 minutes or so before I was able to make a successful payment.

I was able to phone other numbers so it was doubtful it was my phone that was the issue. Annoyingly if I had known I was going to get a fine I wouldn't of payed the extra two days!

In short do I have a leg to stand on or do I pay this fine? The way I see it I tried to pay and carried on trying until I was able to. I have also paid the full amount for the full 3 days of parking so what loss have they suffered? It seems the car park is run by apcoa parking UK and it says to appeal to them directly. Who else would I appeal to?

Thanks!

[bga]

I've had similar in Haywards Heath station a few years back. I appealed with payment evidence & an explanation and the fine was dropped.