A motorist has said his battle with a car parking firm has felt ‘like harassment’ after an error on his £1.50 ticket meant he was fined £100.
Matt Browne, from Willenhall, West Midlands, had popped into Walsall in February last year to buy some slippers for his dying father when he parked at the Waterfront Car Park.
The 50-year-old tried to buy a ticket online but failed to do so, so he ended up using the parking machine.
But the machine did not print his registration plate on the ticket in full and instead just one letter appeared. Matt insists this was due to a device error, but he received a Parking Charge Notice (PCN) regardless.
He has now spent months fighting to get his fine overturned, saying that he didn’t notice the mistake due to concern over his dad’s wellbeing.
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This has led to a ‘stressful’ legal battle with the parking firm over it.
Matt, a self-employed gas engineer, told Metro: ‘When I first had this parking ticket, I was looking after my dad.
‘He had terminal cancer and that was the reason why I went down to the town in the first place to buy him some slippers because his feet had swollen up.
‘This has been horrific. I was going through a lot with my dad, he had bone cancer, it was awful, and this was adding to the stress. I did explain this to them in my appeal and said I hope common sense will prevail, but they are ruthless. But I will not back down.
‘My priority was looking after my dad at the time, but since he’s passed away last year, I’ve been fighting this since.’
He says he paid for a £1.50 ticket at the machine after the app failed to load, but didn’t think much of it when only the first letter was printed.
He added: ‘It’s been dragging on and on, and it’s caused no end of stress. I’ve dug my heels with this one, because I’m not in the wrong.’
Matt said trying to appeal, fight and chase the issue has cost him hundreds of hours – and he is now willing to go to court for the dispute.
‘I’ve taken days off work – and I’m self-employed – to speak to my councillors, my local MP and I’ve spent hours upon hours on the phone.
‘It has cost me time and all this is for a £1.50 parking charge which I’ve paid for.’
He described how the letters are dressed up ‘as though they are debt-collecting bailiffs’ by the operator. ‘They put slogans like “can’t pay we’ll take it away” all over them. It is shocking, and like harassment,’ he said.
‘It’s really caused me no end of stress.’
A spokesperson for Walsall Council told Metro: ‘The Waterfront Car Park car park is privately owned and managed by Euro Car Parks. As an authority, Walsall Council has no jurisdiction over the operation or enforcement of private parking charges at this site.,
‘The council has, however, noted the circumstances and will monitor for any wider patterns of concern. If there is evidence of unfair trading practices, such as persistent machine faults or misleading signage, we may investigate through our Trading Standards team.’
Ben Romney and Sri Dayalan are in a similar situation after parking at Lullingstone Country Park in Kent, which led to a PCN and then an offer to pay just £20.
The beauty spot car park has reportedly seen the most fines for ‘major keying errors’ in the Kent County Council area. Keying errors were behind 17% of fines between January 2024 and January 2025, meaning there was a total of 295 penalties, according to council data reported by Kent Online.
Romney, from Bromley, south London, his wife Kathryn and young daughter had visited the country park in July 2024, where she paid at the machine.
Halfway through the process a ticket was printed with only four digits, but the couple displayed it and didn’t think much of it.
But a couple of weeks later he received a PCN in the post, which he appealed to Euro Car Parks directly. Euro Car Parks rejected the appeal and said there had been a ‘major keying error,’ suggesting that it was their mistake and there was nothing wrong with the machine.
To add insult to injury, they were given the option to pay a £20 admin fee to settle the parking charge and to avoid going to court.
Ben told Metro the situation is ‘ridiculous,’ claiming that many others have had the same issue ‘with the faulty machine’ and that they have not made a major keying error.
‘And yet I’m receiving debt collector letters because I refused to pay an additional £20 fine,’ he said, adding that the tactics used by Euro Car Parks are ‘appalling’.
He said: ‘Given the sheer number of people complaining about the same issue with the machines at this single site – KCC must be aware that there is a recurring issue – but seem comfortable denying issues and gaslighting consumers by suggesting human error.
‘The only human error is the morality of ECP and KCC to continue to extort additional admin fees from people who can prove they already purchased a ticket.’
Sri Dayalan, from Tonbridge, Kent, told Metro his prolonged battle with Euro Car Parks has put him off from going to the country park again after he received a PCN in August.
The business owner told Metro: ‘It was my wife’s car, but I paid for the ticket at the machine.
‘I didn’t think anything of it, but a few weeks later I received a letter saying I hadn’t paid for the ticket.
‘Luckily, I had the ticket on the dashboard and I had proof of payment.
‘But they said I only entered first two letters of my number plate, which is impossible. I always enter my full number plate – why would I enter only the first two letters?’
Sri said it was unfair that Euro Car Parks accused him of making a mistake and then gave him an option to pay £20 to make it go away.
He said: ‘They said it might be a customer mistake, so just pay us a £20 administration fee.
‘But why should I pay a £20 admin fee when it’s not my mistake?
‘If it was just my mistake, how could it have happened to so many people?’
Despite the offer to end the dispute, he said: ‘I decided I’m not going to pay. It’s not about the money.
‘It is absolutely unfair. It is stressful and has taken time out of my day. I don’t want this to happen to anyone else.
‘I don’t think I’ll be going to the country park again. We always go there and we never had an issue, but I don’t want to go through all this again if the car park is not fixing it.’
While each of the car parks are privately managed, drivers have called on the councils to reconsider their contracts with Euro Car Parks.
A Kent County Council (KCC) spokesperson said: ‘If a customer inputs the correct registration number at the machine, it will correspond with the number plate captured on the ANPR meaning a penalty charge notice (PCN) will not be issued.
‘We have had no ongoing faults with any keypads on the machines at our country park car parks, which are checked every morning and evening.
‘We want everyone to be able to enjoy the county’s much-loved country parks.
‘If a customer makes a mistake when keying in their details they should, at the time of the mistake, speak to a KCC Country Parks officer if one is available who will be able to help them if they can show proof of purchase, this could be in an office or at the visitor centre front desks during opening hours. Alternatively, they could contact the parks by phone through the number published on the site noticeboard during office hours or leave a message if out of hours to be picked up the following day.
‘After 23:59 on the day of the error a PCN will automatically be generated if a match cannot be made by the camera system. This may result in a PCN being issued. A successful appeal for a mis-key after a PCN has been issued may lead to the charge being reduced to an administration fee.
‘Every complaint we receive is thoroughly investigated and any faults that are identified with the pay and display machines are quickly remedied. We can check details down to each transaction which would indicate if there is any issue with a machine on a given day as the transactions either side of a mis-key would be wrong or there would be a group of mis-keys together.’
Metro contacted Euro Car Parks for a comment.
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