An Indian-origin finance executive in the UK received a hefty £3,731 bill for parking his car for just six hours in central London.
Manish Wadhwani received the bill from National Car Parks (NCP) after he took his wife, Risha, and their three-year-old son to the Winter Wonderland festival in Hyde Park last week.
Parking in central London is famous for being expensive so he had pre-arranged a £5 deal at the car park, which meant he could stay for up to 12 hours for £5. But he found he had been charged £3,731 when he returned to his car, media reports said.
It later emerged that the enormous bill was due to machines at the car park mistakenly charging him for the three months since he last used the car park.
“The first thing I thought was that it could not be true, this is absolutely ridiculous. I spoke to an operator at the car park and he was helpless. He said the only thing he could do was register a case for me and that somebody would pick it up,” the 32-year-old said.
The four-figure sum sent him over his credit card limit and left him facing the possibility of costly credit card fees on top.
“When I told the bank they were very helpful, but were also shocked. It’s been really stressful. I haven’t been able to use my credit card for a few days. My parents have been visiting us from India so you expect to do social things,” he said.
NCP, a popular car park chain across London, have since processed a refund, but Wadhwani is still waiting for the process to be complete.
An NCP spokesperson said: “Our investigation showed us that the customer had parked with us in August, and had not exited the car park using the card he used on entry. This may be due to a barrier already been raised.”
“As a consequence, when he parked on Sunday, the parking equipment believed he had overstayed from his August booking. The system believed he was on an overcharge stay and charged him accordingly. We offer our most sincere apologies and have immediately refunded this customer.”
