Driver slapped with £2k worth of fines at Peterborough Station car park hits out at ‘confusing’ payment system

A driver slapped with fines worth £2,000 for parking at Peterborough Station is refusing to pay up after hitting out at the ‘confusing’ payment system.
Chris Eley at Peterborough StationChris Eley at Peterborough Station
Chris Eley at Peterborough Station

Chris Eley from Yaxley has received 20 parking charge notices after a mix up saw him mistakenly pay for tickets for the short-stay rather than the long-stay car park.

The management consultant has criticised car park owners LNER which promised to improve the signage back in January after the Peterborough Telegraph had highlighted how motorists were being confused by having payment machines for the separate car parks placed near each other.

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Last week the company said it was continuing to review the signage after being contacted by the PT again.

Mr Eley’s problems began in July after he successfully appealed a parking fine he said was due to a mistake with the car park’s automatic number plate recognition technology.

So when he received further fines he kept appealing in the belief that the same mistake had been made.

However, it turned out this time the issue was he was paying for his parking tickets through the RingGo app - which is for the short stay car park - rather than the Glide Parking app which is for the long stay car park.

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And because it took seven weeks for his next appeal to fail - and for him to find out why - he had kept making the same mistake and racked up £2,000 worth of tickets.

Chris (30) said: “I’m frustrated. I’ve found out you’re meant to use the Glide Parking app, but if you Google ‘Peterborough Station car park’ it does not come up.

“When you go on the LNER website it does not tell you who to use. People in Peterborough are used to using RingGo, and the RingGo app says Peterborough Station main car park.

“It’s the same price as what’s on the website as well. It’s annoying it took so long for me to be told about this.”

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Mr Eley, who has receipts for his RingGo payments, has tried to get his fines overturned, but despite contacting RingGo and CP Plus (which manages the long stay car park), as well as LNER on several occasions, he has not been able to find anyone who will look into the matter.

He added: “I’m not going to pay up - I would rather go to court. Hopefully it can be dealt with before. This will have happened to other people and they will have just paid the fines.” LNER said: “We would encourage Mr Eley to contact us directly so that we can investigate and aim to resolve the issue.”