A MOTORIST was left “shaking with palpitations” after being slapped with a parking ticket – even though she paid for her space and left a note on her windscreen.
Karen Wilson, from Hertfordshire, says her “legs were like jelly” due her outrage over the fine.
BPMKaren insists that she paid to park at her local leisure centre[/caption]
She was given a parking ticket despite thisBPM
She was given the ticket on 29 July at the Laura Troll Leisure Centre in Cheshunt, which she claims was due to an error in the parking system.
Karen, who has anxiety and uses the leisure centre to help her mental health, says that customers of the leisure centre used pay to park by using a machine inside the nearby car park, but this was recently changed.
Under the new system, she explains: “Your car registration number has to be recorded by a receptionist then the council employees monitoring the car park enter car registration plates into a handheld machine to see that the car has been registered.”
She adds that the new method “worried” her as there was no registration ticket provided and, therefore, no hard proof that parking had been paid for.
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This prompted her to type up a note saying that she was using the leisure centre and had paid for parking, which she left on her vehicle’s dashboard.
On the day she received a parking ticket, Karen says that she was taking part in a swimming session and had definitely registered her car with staff, with the receptionist repeating the registration back to her to confirm.
Despite this, she was still given a ticket and, upon reviewing it online, was told it was because she had “Parked in a car park without clearly displaying a valid pay & display ticket or voucher or parking clock.”
This caused Karen’s anxiety to flare up and left her shaking.
“My legs went to jelly and I started having palpitations. You just feel like somebody is out to get you. It really ruined my weekend,” she explained.
Thankfully the manager of the leisure centre recognised the error and emailed the council asking them to cancel the ticket.
A spokesperson for Broxbourne Borough Council said: “Without knowing the specifics of this particular case, it is not clear how this situation has occurred.
“If the customer has appealed the Penalty Charge Notice and a valid parking session is found to have been booked, or an error has been made processing the details at the centre, the Penalty Charge Notice will be cancelled.”
However, Karen does not think this is good enough and says the ordeal has affected her mental health.
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“I feel really upset by this and feel that either the car park attendants should be properly trained or, preferably, the system needs to be changed to one that works.”
She no longer drives to the leisure centre, opting to walk to her weekly swimming sessions instead.
She even left a note in case the new parking system didn’t workBPM Read More