A BAFFLED driver was charged more than £6,000 to park her car for one hour in the town centre.

Ruth Ritchie, of Thresher Drive, used her credit card to pay for an hour’s parking in the Granville Street car park, usually costing £1.20.

The 60-year-old had called mobile parking app PayByPhone, which handles remote payments for the council-owned car park.

But Ms Ritchie said she was “horrified” to receive a call from the fraud section of her bank one hour later informing her £6,561.20 had been taken from her account by PayByPhone.

“I know parking prices have gone up in the town centre but this is ridiculous,” she said.

“I very clearly paid for one hour of parking. There must be a fault on the system as it kept cutting off when I was trying to pay. I don’t see how this could have happened, I just hope no-one else has been stung by this.”

Luckily, the accountant said she was able to keep her cool during the phone call.

“I deal with issues with money all the time so I managed to stay calm, I have to laugh about because that’s the only way I can deal with it.”

Ms Ritchie contacted PayByPhone for an explanation as to the pricey parking. She claims they told her she had purchased more than 4,000 parking hours and would have to wait up to 10 working days for a refund.

“I told them, of course I wouldn’t pay six and a half grand for car parking, I was horrified that this could have happened,” she said.

“The man on the phone’s reaction was an instant ‘oh my god’ and he said I had paid until May next year,” she said.

And the 60-year-old said the mammoth withdrawal could have harmed her plans to buy a house.

“That is my deposit for a house and I would have been absolutely devastated if I had lost my house as a result of this. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

A frustrated Ms Ritchie contacted her ward councillor Gemma McCracken and has been told the money will now be refunded in three to five working days.

A Swindon Borough Council spokesman attributed the mammoth withdrawal to Ruth mistakenly keying in a request for 4,000 parking hours, which she denies.

“Unfortunately, the customer made an error in keying in her details and asked for over 4,000 hours of parking instead of 1 hour. The system always asks drivers if they want to authorise any payment before money is taken, and approval was given.

“PaybyPhone log all transactions, including all the details that are sent to them by customers, so they can trace clearly what has happened. They have systems in place to spot very large transactions that are outside the normal range and would have contacted us, but on this occasion the customer spotted what had occurred fairly quickly and raised it with us.

"We have been advised the money will be refunded very shortly, if it’s not there already.

“This does happen from time to time, although seldom for such large amounts.”

But Ms Ritchie said: “I’m an accountant so I’m used to keying in numbers. It’s absolute rubbish. Plus how can someone even pay for 4,000 hours of parking upfront?

“To say that and there not be a one day maximum car parking limit is outrageous, this needs to change.”