A DRIVER has claimed that she was slapped with a £50 parking fine despite paying thanks to a signage mix-up.
The mum slammed the fine as “wildly unreasonable” thanks to what she claimed was a confusing car park layout.
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Roz Maree, from Farnham, Surrey, was on her way home from a late Plymouth ferry when she decided to stop off at the Premier Inn in Exeter with her three children.
Parking up in the nearby St Davids station, Roz claims that she noticed a sign from parking operator APCOA in the car park requesting payment.
To get her ticket, she says she went past the sign to a parking machine just behind it, where she called the dedicated number and made her payment.
However, what Roz hadn’t realised was that the machine was actually attached to the on-street parking outside the car park, which was not operated by APCOA.
The firm then fined her £50 for non-payment and rejected her appeal when she alleged she had mistakenly paid the wrong people.
She told Devon Live: “I sent them evidence that I had paid RingGo mistakenly but they didn’t make any sort of acknowledgement of the fact that the signage is clearly totally misleading.
“I’m sure the people who are routinely getting on the train know but it’s the people who are just a bit out of the area driving into Exeter who are getting caught out.
“I just dislike this abuse of the public and I don’t want this to happen to anyone else.
“I’m so horrified at the person who was made to pay £200. It is obviously wildly unreasonable given the signage.”
Despite initially rejecting her appeal, APCOA now says it has cancelled the penalty “as a gesture of goodwill”.
A spokesperson said: “Unfortunately, the customer’s payment was not valid for the station car park in which they were parked, it was made for Devon County Council’s adjacent on-street parking spaces along Bonhay Road.
“However, although this was a case of customer error, as a gesture of goodwill we have cancelled the charge on this occasion.
“To reduce the risk of any reoccurrences, we will speak with Devon County Council to discuss the clarity of signage on their payment machine.”
It comes after Brits driving to a major airport this weekend were told to avoid a busy motorway amid a series of closures.
