'Scoundrel' parking inspector slaps driver with $120 fine WHILE he's buying a ticket
Holding on to your rubbish might not be such a bad idea.
An Australian driver is seeing red after copping a parking fine while on a night out, despite saying he had done the right thing on the evening in question.
"I received a $120 parking fine in the mail today," the Sydney motorist wrote online. "I was confident that I had purchased a ticket and correctly displayed it on my dash. I even recall coming back to the car after dinner to check on the dash how much time we had left."
It wasn't until he checked the "supporting photos" on Revenue NSW that he realised what had happened. "I was shocked to see evidence of no ticket on my dash," he said, and that's when the penny dropped.
The photo had been taken at the exact moment he was buying the parking ticket. "Thankfully I'm somewhat a hoarder and had kept my ticket," explained the motorist on Reddit. "I checked the time of the ticket and it matches the exact time the ticket officer took the supporting photos! The scoundrel got us as we were down the road at the machine purchasing the ticket."
A photo attached to the post shows that the $12.50 ticket was purchased at 6.43pm — the same time that's stamped on the images included in the penalty notice.
The poster went on to say he'd submitted a review, and is hoping he provided enough evidence to get out of paying the fine. "Lesson learned," he wrote. "Always hoard. Or take photos of the ticket on your car's dash as evidence when parking in a ticketed area."
Yahoo News Australia reached out to Revenue NSW, however a spokesperson declined to comment on the matter, instead pointing to a webpage where drivers can request a review of their fine.
System 'putting people at risk'
A month earlier a Melbourne driver was caught out in similar circumstances. "On Saturday evening, I parked my car and went to the ticket machine to buy my parking ticket," Mark Perrett wrote on LinkedIn. "I returned to my car to find an infringement notice stuck to the windscreen."
The "very nice" parking officer was unable to revoke the ticket, instead advising Mr Perrett to call the City of Port Phillip the following Monday to cancel it. He did just that, only to be told he'd need to write a formal appeal to have the infringement withdrawn.
"As someone who has studied workplace violence in local government, and spend most of that time working with parking inspectors, I can't believe that we're still issuing infringements in this manner," he said. "It's letting everyone down and is putting people at risk."
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