Mum fumes after paying for wrong parking in 'misleading' Exeter car park

She says the sign is 'misleading'

A woman has hit out at a parking company after being slapped with a fine in Exeter. She says "misleading" signage led her to pay the wrong operator.

Roz Maree parked at Exeter St David's station on August 13 for an overnight stay at the nearby Premier Inn with her three children. She says she had decided to stop in Exeter on the way back to their home in Farnham, Surrey after getting off a ferry in Plymouth late at night.

The mum says she paid for parking by phoning the RingGo number at a machine on Bonhay Road, which sits directly behind a sign which says "Have you paid?". The sign is that of APCOA Parking Ltd, the parking company which runs the station car park, but it wasn't until later that month that Roz realised the machine behind it is actually for on-street parking on Bonhay Road, operated by Devon County Council.

She received a parking charge notice from APCOA on August 26, which claimed she had used the car park without valid payment and asked her to pay £50. Roz told DevonLive: "It was late at night when we arrived and in total darkness, with three tired children. We were driving late and needed to stop and break the journey.

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"I just ran off to get the parking ticket and read the top line, thinking that it would be trustworthy to follow. Having duly followed the instructions on the machine (behind the sign) that were written in bold and in big letters, I paid."

After receiving the notice, she says she sent evidence to APCOA that she had mistakenly paid using information at the wrong machine. She says her appeal was rejected and that the parking company didn't acknowledge her complaint that the sign was misleading.

She said: "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."

She says she was further angered when she found an article published on DevonLive in April, which told how another car park user had encountered the same situation. A commenter under the article said that this had happened to them too and that they ended up paying £200 after multiple appeals were rejected.

Roz said: "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."

After being contacted by DevonLive, APCOA says it has cancelled the charge issued to Roz "as a gesture of goodwill". The company says it will be contacting Devon County Council to discuss the clarity of the signage.

A spokesperson for APCOA 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."