A teacher from Asturias, who lives in a village in the Picos de Europa mountains, recently received a notification from his bank: a charge of €3,43 for parking in Maspalomas, in southern Gran Canaria. Between his car and the supposed parking location are more than 2.000 kilometers and an ocean. There was no doubt: it was impossible. An isolated case, but it raises a larger question: how many users are paying for parking they never used?
“It’s not about the three euros, it’s about the principle: they can’t just use your money like that,” says Francisco Miguel Domínguez, an affected user, in a conversation with Consumidor Global. The El Parking app, used to pay for parking in blue zones and access public parking lots throughout Spain, had charged him for a service he never received.
An app that was forgotten… and a position that crossed the ocean
Domínguez installed El Parking months ago, when he lived in Tenerife. He used it to pay for parking in blue zones. When he moved to the rural area of Asturias—where there aren't even parking meters—he deactivated the app, but left his bank card linked.
That seemingly minor detail was the trigger. Just over a week ago, his bank notified him of an automatic charge for parking in Maspalomas. He, meanwhile, was at his home in Asturias, and his car hadn't been moved for days.
“I haven’t been to the Canary Islands. Neither has my car. How can they charge me something like that?” he asks.
The key: a service activated without explicit consent. The source of the problem, as has been determined, lies in the Go&Fast function, a system that opens the parking barrier by reading the license plate and automatically charges the linked card.
Domínguez insists he never activated this feature. “Supposedly it’s activated by default. I think that’s outrageous,” he says. He compared his settings to his wife’s, who has been using the app longer: in her case, that service wasn’t active. “It must be a recent change: now it comes activated and you have to deactivate it yourself,” he maintains.
The license plate: a game of Russian roulette. The explanation that El Parking usually offers users—and which fits what happened to Domínguez—is a reading error in the parking cameras. A single confusing letter or a reflection is enough for the system to confuse two different license plates.
If the number read matches that of a registered user, it doesn't check anything else: not the phone's location, history, or usage consistency. It simply charges.
“If I give you my bank details, it’s so you can protect them. If the margin of error allows this, the technology isn’t ready for use,” he criticizes.
A slow refund and a system that breeds distrust. After filing the complaint, El Parking responded quickly to confirm the refund. But the solution came with fine print: the refund could take up to two weeks to appear in my account.
“It amazes me. They hold onto your money for days. If this happens to thousands of users, it's a cash flow that benefits them,” Domínguez complains. “Three euros may seem like nothing, but multiplied… it's a perverse model.”
The Parking system normalizes the fault
What worries the user most is that the company already has a specific section on its website for this situation: “I’ve been charged for parking I didn’t do.” The company admits it could be due to an incorrect license plate reading and asks the user to send an email for review.
For Domínguez, the message is clear:
"The system fails, and it's up to you to make sure you're not charged for something you didn't do."
The online magazine Consumidor Global requested a detailed technical explanation from El Parking. Their only response was:
“We already issued a refund to the customer.”
