I attended a wedding reception at the Marriott Hotel in Waltham Abbey last Saturday (8th September), On arrival we realised that the car park was pay and display, and because we did not have any change I went into the hotel reception while my husband waited at the car.

Once we had the money my husband went to the pay and display machine to purchase a ticket. At first his money dropped straight through until we realised that you had to enter your vehicle registration number before the machine would accept the coins. He duly did this (£1 for four hours’ parking) and we went into the wedding reception, checking various cars as we walked through the car park to see if any of them had a ticket (we weren’t issued with an actual ticket, but assumed that the fact we had entered our registration number was enough).

Yesterday (17th September) I received a parking notice from Parking Eye Car Park Management stating that I owed them £90 for failure to pay. The letter states that I either failed to purchase a ticket or stayed for longer than the allotted time paid for – we stayed for 3 hours and 12 minutes.

Obviously I have no intention of paying this charge, and am awaiting a call back from the hotel to see if their CCTV footage shows anything we could use as evidence.

Any advice you could offer would be most appreciated.