A Preston woman is raising awareness after a dispute with a parking company when she visited a car park to visit UCLan.

Emma Seed has spent the past 12 months debating a £175 parking fine after assuring she paid the original fee on the car park on Heatley Street, just off Corporation Street, managed by Parking Eye.

She said she was attending a training course at the University of Central Lancashire when she paid £6 over the phone to Parking Eye’s automated service, which confirmed to her that payment was complete.

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Parking Eye currently manages Aldi car parks and has recently taking over Royal Preston and Chorley and South Ribble Hospitals car parks.

However, Emma says the following day she contacted them to cease her payment and was told that her payment had not gone through and she had to pay a fine.

Since then, Emma has had ‘thousands’ of letters and demands to pay a fee.

Even with the threat of court, Emma did not pay the fine stating she had evidence of the call logs which demonstrate her payment.

Emma said: “The message said I had paid and parking could commence. They didn’t take the payment and have tried to bully me for the past 12 months into paying a £175 fine.

“I was all set to go to court on the 25th with my evidence of call logs. They failed to provide the call information evidence that I requested.”

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Emma said it ‘was no skin off her nose’ to pay the original car parking fee and if she had parked illegally she would hold her hands up and pay the fine – but she knew she had paid it.

Emma has now received a letter stating they have closed the case.

She says she is concerned for other people who are potentially led to believe they need to pay things like this, such as elderly pensioners.

She continued: “I want people to be aware not to have money extorted by this corrupt parking company. They have hounded me for a year with emails, letters and court threats.

“If you know you’re in the right, fight the fight and stand up to them. There are many other people they have done this to – I just want to raise awareness so people aren’t paying because they’ve been scared into handing over money.”

Blog Preston contacted Parking Eye for comment and had not received a response at time of publication.

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