Luton airport PCN - paid online in accordance with the terms but mistakenly selected the wrong date

ynojrhtna · 16 September at 1:23PM

My partner picked me up in his car at the Luton Airport 5 minute drop off car park at 00:33, leaving at 00:35, on 05/09/2025.

For this airport you pay online within 24 hours. I thought I had done this.

Received a PCN just now from APCOA and in my anger/panic/frustration phoned them up to understand why the charge was sent, because as far as I was aware, I had paid.

They informed me that when making the payment, I had inputted the correct registration and time of entry (I think you have to select a 15 minute interval of arrival time) but had selected the day before (04/09/2025), hence the PCN being sent out.

I have confirmation on my bank statement of payment. The customer service person also confirmed that payment was made at 00:40 (i.e. within 5 minutes of leaving the car park).

Now the website provides no confirmation once payment is received and does not request an email to send a receipt or anything like that, so I had no way of knowing that I had selected the wrong date (in my lacklustre defence, we were supposed to arrive on 04/09/2025 but the flight was delayed by a few hours so it really was an honest mistake) until the PCN came through the door.

I hope I haven't shot myself in the foot by calling APCOA to understand why the PCN was sent. I can see a lot of the advice on here is to deny being the driver, but have I done this by phoning them?

Can I just send an appeal to say that I made the payment on time in accordance with the terms but made an honest mistake in selecting the wrong date?

(It's almost as if they have designed the website so you make a mistake. I remember being dropped off to go on holiday the week before, paying the charge and feeling bemused that the website just reset itself with no indication of confirmation once I made the payment, I had to check my bank to see if the payment had been made!)