You must be tired of questions to do with parking fines but I would appreciate your advice. In January I parked in a Premier Parking Solutions car park near Exeter station to go to London. On my return I was surprised to find a ticket on the car as I was well under the 12-hour limit I thought I had paid for.

On examining my ticket it appeared that the machine had only registered £3.00 not the full £3.50 that I had inserted in the machine. This allowed me 1 hour parking instead of 12 hours but unfortunately in my hurry to get off I had not noticed this. I wrote to Premier explaining that I had paid the correct amount and that the machine had not registered the last 50p.

They replied that I should have checked the ticket and if I had noticed that the machine was at fault I should have phoned them and that the £70 fine still applied. I replied on 25th January that I was disappointed with their response and did not intend to pay the fine. Today I received a letter from BPA acting for Premier saying that if I did not pay £130 by 22nd March further action will be taken.

Should I pay and be done with it? If I don’t which my principles tell me not to, is a Court Summons likely to follow or will the Bailiffs turn up on the doorstep?