A family have been left baffled after they were reportedly slapped with a £100 parking fine despite returning to the car with an hour to spare.
Ayo Oyerinde took his wife and son to the Kent coast on July 31 - the third hottest UK day on record - to enjoy a day at the seaside.
The creative director from Chingford, North-East London paid £5.70 for a five-hour ticket at Cheriton Place car park in Folkestone, KentLive reports.
After staying for around four hours, the family headed home and were stunned when a week later they received a penalty charge notice through the post.
Ayo said: "We decided to go to the beach so we went down there and we parked in this car park, Longford and Cheriton I think it is called.
"There was a pretty straight forward machine where you type in your registration and you've got to pay for a certain amount of hours.
"I remember having a debate with myself as to how long we were going to stay for, and I thought you know what, let's not risk it, so I put in the amount to five hours.
"We went to the beach, had a lovely day came back and left the car park - it was not until maybe a week ago I got a letter through saying that it was a penalty charge notice and immediately I started to panic, like did I do something wrong?
"I was 100 per cent sure I'd paid for the ticket, I remember doing the bank transaction, I remember having the argument in my head, 'how many hours are you going to pay for?'.
"I decided to appeal, I thought I don't have the ticket because there was no reason to keep it but I checked my bank statement, and as I thought the transaction for £5.70 was there.
"So I put that in the representation and sent it back to them, they got back to me and said they rejected it. There is no concrete actual reason why though. "
According to the car park camera, their car entered the area at 2.51pm and left at 6.54pm, a total time of four hours and three minutes.
Ayo did a Google search in the hope of finding some signage at the car park but instead found a number of other visitors had also received unjust fines.
"Upon doing that and typing it in, all these articles about people going through the same thing came up and I thought, okay this makes sense, I'm not going crazy," he said.
He added: "I don't understand why I got one [a fine] in the first place and in the appeal they still rejected it.
"I saw the articles then I saw the backlash and these people are still doing this - preying on older people who would probably give up and cave in for the sake of it, or pay with cash and there's all these loopholes that they get away with.
"I think it's terrible, considering I did everything I was meant to do there is absolutely no way I am paying a £100 fine."
Ayo has now appealed to the Independent Appeals Service and hopes that the fine will be dropped.
The company who runs the car park, UKCPM, were contacted for comment and chose not to issue a statement.
