A woman who met her friend for ice cream at a beach has been left fuming after she was stung with a £60 parking fine, despite buying a ticket.
Retired garage owner Christine Pollard decided to go to Portreath to take a stroll on the beach.
The 77-year-old grandmother of five from Pool parked her Ford Fiesta at the Waterfront Inn car park in the seaside village on May 28.
She says she struggled to use the pay machine as it kept asking her to input her registration number every time she tried to pay by contactless.
In the end she thought it was so much of a faff that she walked back to her car and managed to find £2 in cash which she duly fed into the machine to pay for a two hours stay.
Christine said she was surprised and angry to receive a letter in the post a month later from Liverpool-based car park operator Civil Enforcement Ltd demanding she pays a parking charge notice to the tune of £60 within 14 days or risk having to pay £100 beyond that date.
Christine said she has no intention of paying the extortionate amount when she has already paid to park and didn't overstay or park across two parking spots.
"It's not my fault if their machine did not work very well.
"I tried several times to put in my registration number and to pay with my card but it kept going back to the beginning asking me to enter my reg number.
"I know the internet connection in Portreath is quite poor so the card reader probably did not work that well but in the end I had enough of this malarkey and went back to the car to scrounge some cash.
"I paid for two hours just so I'd have an ice-cream with my friend. I didn't stay for two hours but these car parking people said I had overstayed by more than 10 minutes when I'm just trying to use their machine.
"It's not like I did a runner. I would not dream of not paying for parking. I wanted to pay and I did."
Christine received a first letter from Civil Enforcement on June 6 and wrote back to the parking company on returning from a caravan holiday in Devon explaining her situation.
Her letter coupled with the parking ticket itself, which she showed Cornwall Live, reads: "As you can see I didn't park without payment. The reason for the time delay was that the parking machine would not work properly as it kept losing contact. I tried several times, putting in my details many times. It was very frustrating. In the end I managed to get some cash and pay that way.
"I never ever park without paying and as you can see I did pay. If your machine was working properly I would not have wasted valuable minutes trying to pay with my card."
Christine said that when she tried to appeal against the PCN the company refused outright saying her struggle to pay had lasted for longer than the 10-minute grace period - even though when tallied up with the time she actually stayed on site, it still amounts to less than the two hours she paid for.
She was told she should appeal to POPLA the industry watchdog but says she found it too convoluted and complicated.
"I really don't see why I should pay this charge when I've paid already," Christine added. "Especially when it's their machine that's not working. I'm 77, I really don't need this type of aggravation in my life."
Civil Enforcement Ltd has been approached for a comment.