Colorado man charged nearly $20,000 after parking just 27 minutes at Denver International Airport

This Colorado man was hit with a nearly $20,000 parking fine after parking just 27 minutes at Denver International Airport.

Jim Boyd was dropping off his wife for a flight and was slapped with a $19,824 fee after leaving the car park.

If that sounds like an outrageously high fee for 27 minutes of parking, you’d be right to think that.

It turns out that this was all part of a big misunderstanding.

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Why was this Colorado man charged nearly $20,000 at Denver International Airport?

Jim Boyd had driven to Denver International Airport to drop his wife off for her flight.

He spent a total of 27 minutes in the airport’s car park before leaving.

Before he knew it, he’d received a notification from his bank indicating that he’d been charged $19,824.

This wasn’t the first time that the airport had hit a driver with a huge charge – another driver had been hit with a $2,300 fee for 14 hours of parking.

Obviously, nearly $20,000 for barely 30 minutes of car park time sounds ludicrous.

Well, it turns out that this was all down to an error in the airport’s camera system.

According to airport officials, the software-powered camera system had confused Boyd’s license plate with another that had a similar set of characters.

Because of this mix-up, Boyd’s car was logged as having entered the lot on June 6.

That was four months before the date he actually went there, which explains the nearly $20,000 charge.

Did this man get his money back from this parking fine error?

Fortunately, the error was put right and Boyd received a full refund within a day, along with the unwaived, yet correct $7 fee he was due to pay.

Despite the mistake being rectified, Boyd said he was still unsure about using the airport’s parking lot again.

“I’m going to be watching that screen really carefully when I put my credit card in,” he told 9News.

We’ve seen plenty of people being hit with parking fees before, and it’s never fun for any driver to go through.

This Koenigsegg Jesko got slapped with a parking fine whilst its private jet mogul owner ate nearby.

And then there’s the Italian guy who was fined after the free parking space he’d left his car in transformed into a paid parking space whilst he was on vacation.

Talk about rotten luck.

Airports can be somewhat infamous for pricey parking spaces, though – analysis found that it was cheaper to park a private jet at this UK airport than it was to park a car.

It makes a good case for Ubering to your airport, doesn’t it?

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