PCN from Smart Parking Limited

JackBauer35

Hello everyone!
Let me first say thank you to anyone that will eventually reply and help me and sorry for my english as it is not my first language.



I have read the sticky topics looking for help/clues on what to do but I'm not sure whether my case is worth "contesting" or not and I would like to know your opinion on this as you're certainly more experienced.


Nearly a month ago I went to Snowdonia for a week-end with a hire car. On the 29th of March we parked the car at the Llanberis Car Park and used the paying machine at the entrance to pay for the parking. There was probably something wrong with the machine as using my debit card to pay it took nearly 3-4 minutes to get the "transaction" accepted/processed and at the end it printed the little ticket that I've then put under the car's windscreen. I didn't look at it, not in the morning and not at the end of the day when I left, so I don't know what was written on it.
After a couple of weeks I've received a letter from the Hire Company saying that Smart Parking asked for the details of the hirer because of a PCN and they were ltting me know that they gave them the details and then charged me £30 for it (on a side note, is this something they can do? It seems a lot for just handing over a name..).
A few days ago I found in my mailbox the letter from Smart Parking where I can see two photos of the hire car: one for entering the site and one exiting the site. They are now asking for £100 to be paid by 28 days or £60 if I pay by 14 days.


Now, this is the "interesting" part: after founding out about this fine, I've checked my bank account statement and I can't see anywhere a transaction showing that I paid for that parking on that day.
So what I don't understand is, if the transaction didn't go through then why a ticket was printed/issued by the machine? Is it possible that they print a ticket with something like "transaction failed" written on it?
Based on this and the lenght that it took to process the "payment" there could be a chance that the machine wasn't working properly (but still I don't understand why issuing a ticket) but as you can figure out by reading this I literally have no proof of anything (no ticket, no bank transaction,..).


Do you think there are basis to fight this PCN? I should've been more careful at the time and check everything and especially keep the ticket and not tosssing it.. so I'm happy to pay this if there are no grounds for appeal, but since it's a strage situation I just wanted to check with you and see what you think first.


Thank you for reading this and any thoughts/advice is much appreciated!


Thanks!