A McDonald's customer has been fined after claims he visited a McDonald's car park twice in 14 hours. Ben Mulhall, 32, says he picked up a McChicken Sandwich from the Killingbeck branch near Seacroft, Leeds on the evening of September 30.
He drove home and then later his wife used the vehicle to order some breakfast on her way home from work the next morning.
Ben says the parking cameras never recorded him leaving the fast-food chain on the first visit and only captured his car leaving the restaurant on the second visit - 14 hours later.
He received a £100 parking ticket and is now appealing to the company that manages the car park.
Ben told LeedsLive : "I know sometimes you have to wait for your food but I definitely didn't wait that long. I was amused when I got the letter.
"I wasn't angry or annoyed, I just like exposing incompetence. The cameras must have just missed me leaving and the car coming back in. My wife sometimes likes a McDonalds breakfast on her way back from a night shift and I think that's what they've caught the next day."
The parking ticket, which Ben received in the mail a few days ago, shows a picture of his car (a white Volkswagen Golf) entering the car park at 5.56pm on September 30. Ben said this is correct.
It then shows a picture of his car leaving the car park at 8.22am on October 1, and calculates he'd been in the car park for 14 hours and 25 minutes (once the exact seconds the car left and entered are taken into account). The fine is £100, discounted to £50 if paid in 14 days.
Ben has CCTV footage taken from outside his house that shows him binning a bag that looks like a McDonalds one next to a white car, with the time stamp in the corner reading 5.29pm on September 30. However, Ben believes the CCTV camera could set to UTC (an hour earlier) and was actually taken at 6.29pm, showing him after returning home - when his car was supposedly still in the McDonald's car park according to the ticket he's received.
"I have lodged an appeal with the parking company," Ben said. "I doubt I'll hear back for days though."
Ben added that he does not intend to pay the parking ticket while he waits to hear back about his appeal.
LeedsLive contacted both McDonalds and the parking company responsible for managing the car park. McDonalds said customers should speak to the parking control company if they believe they have been wrongly fined, and that Ben's appeal should be approved if he has been fined incorrectly.
The parking company that issued the ticket had not responded at time of publishing.
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