Man wins three-year parking ticket battle after using ChatGPT as his lawyer

A man handed a £100 fine 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 in Newquay, Cornwall, in August 2023 for a nice 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 fine which stated that he 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 fine had been cancelled.

He said: “From start to finish it was not about the money, I could pay it, but it is about the principle.

“If you know you are right then you shouldn’t be paying any money to them.

“This is kind of a David and Goliath battle. They have lawyers and they are a big company and they just gave up in the end.”

Rafal 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 says 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 25 August that year, and listed insufficient time paid as the reason.

In September he appealed, and says he didn’t hear anything until January when he got a letter from a debt collection company for £170.

He added: “I appealed straight away and I heard nothing from them.

They were harassing me and sending me letters saying that I had to go to court.

“They were trying to make me scared.“You have to give people the time. I told them exactly what my problems were.

They could see on the cameras that I was trying to sort it out.

“I am their customer, how can you treat your customer like that?”

He contacted the debt collectors and says they went back and forth for four months until the case was put ‘on hold’.

Rafal heard nothing for a year and a half until November 2025 when he got a letter from a different debt collection company.

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 allegedly offered to drop the fine to £60, but Rafal refused.

On 25 September, 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 courts.

“I won the war without the final battle.”

Rafal says his victory is 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 says 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 defense 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.”