A dad hit with a £273 fine after being 20p short on a parking ticket has issued a warning to other motorists.
Lee Taylor, 38, took his family out to a soft play centre in Redcar one Saturday during the summer, according to Teesside Live.
They left their Citroen in a Euro Car Parks private garage and paid £3.30 for what they believed was four hours parking.
After returning to the West Dyke Road car park, the family left within their allotted time limit, however a few weeks letter were shocked to find a £100 fine in their mail.
Dad of five Lee, a leakage technician, and his wife Laura realised they had paid the Monday to Friday price instead of the Saturday price of £3.50 and got in touch with Euro Car Parks to appeal and offer to pay the extra 20p.
But, he claims, they received no correspondence back from the company - which requests appeals are made in writing - until a notice arrived to say the fine had increased because he hadn't paid it.
They sent another letter - and a few weeks later a demand for £273 came through the door also threatening court proceedings.
Euro Car Parks, which operates more than 1000 car parks across the UK, Ireland and Europe, has not yet replied to a request for comment.
However Lee told TeessideLive: "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 the machine to indicate we 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 the debt company and they basically said there is no way of appealing this anymore and we either paid it or face court.
"Me and my wife have tried everything to resolve this and we have been totally ignored. I feel this is all a way of these companies exploiting and scaring people into paying these unreasonable fees," he added.
"This has caused us much distress and I would hate it to happen to lots of other people."
The family often goes to Redcar, says Lee, and they have used the car park before.
They usually pay for parking by phone but this time, they paid using cash.
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