A man handed a £100 penalty for not paying fast enough in a car park has won his battle after three years – by using ChatGPT as his lawyer.
Rafal Goral, 45, used a pay-and-display car park in Newquay, Cornwall, in August 2023 for a day out at the coast. He claims that the machine had a long queue and wasn’t accepting card payments, so he had to download an app and set up an account to pay, which he did.
But, two weeks later, the refinery worker from Chelmsford, Essex, received a letter with a £100 charge, which stated that he had paid 16 minutes after driving through the entrance. After three years of back-and-forth with debt collectors and Smart Parking Limited, Rafal finally received an email at the end of December saying that his ticket had been cancelled.
Long queue led to penalty
Rafal said he arrived in the Tower Road car park at around 10.12am on August 4, 2023, and joined a long queue for the pay-and-display machine. When he finally got to the front, he said the machine was only accepting cash payments, so he instead had to download an app to pay.
With signal being poor, getting RingGo and setting up an account took some time, but he managed to sort it and went about his day. The PCN from Smart Parking Limited was issued on August 25 that year and listed insufficient time paid as the reason.
In September he appealed and said he didn’t hear anything until January, when he got a letter from a debt collection company for £170. He contacted the debt collectors and said they went back and forth for four months until the case was put ‘on hold’. Rafal said he heard nothing for a year-and-a-half until November 2025, when he got a letter from a different debt collection company.
Threatened with court
He was then told the case would be going to court in October 2026 and he had to prepare. There was a mediator trying to sort it out and Smart Parking Limited Rafal claims it allegedly offered to drop the charge to £60, but he refused. On September 25, mere weeks before the court case, he got an email to say that the case and the fine had been dropped.
He told Sell Us Your Story: “I am so happy. This is something that properly raised me up after three years of this fight. I was so ready to go to court. I would have gone all the way to the High Court. I won the war without the final battle.”
Thanks to ChatGPT
Rafal said his victory was mostly due to the help of ChatGPT, as he uploaded every letter and email onto the AI site to ask what he should reply. By the time the court case came around, the fine had been upped to around £300. He also tried calling the Citizens Advice helpline a few times, but he said it wasn’t as helpful as AI.
He added: “From start to finish I was asking ChatGPT every time I got a letter what to do. It was telling me what to say, where to go, and everything. I did it all with the help of AI. They even prepared my defence, which I sent to the court. I want the public to know that they can do it and they shouldn’t give up. People don’t want to go through the hassle, so they just pay, but it is wrong. It is shocking.”
Smart Parking Limited was contacted for a comment.
