Watford Asda has confirmed drivers were wrongly given parking tickets at its car park after introducing a new system.

The Odhams Industrial Estate supermarket, near The Dome roundabout, came under fire after a customer of 30 years was given a £70 fine earlier this week.

In a social media post, they claimed to have got it after staying just over an hour at the lower car park. Having complained to Asda’s customer services, they reportedly told her the car park had “recently been taken over by a new company and multiple people have been fined incorrectly”.

“According to the letter and online you can stay in the lower car park for ‘0 hours 0 minutes’!” she wrote. “Just thought I’d post on here in case anyone receives a similar fine through the post.”

Several people commented claiming to have also got tickets, with many contributors urging her not to pay.

She confirmed in follow-up comments that the supermarket has since cancelled the fine, but added “they have a whole list of people who recently received them”.

The Watford Observer understands Parkingeye now manages the site, which together with Asda introduced new rules last week to tackle antisocial behaviour between 8pm and 7am.   

An Asda spokesperson said: “We recently introduced a new parking system at our Watford store following complaints of antisocial behaviour.

“We understand that the system has not been working as intended and all tickets that have been issued in error will be cancelled.

“We're now reviewing this system and in the meantime customers can continue to park free of charge for up to three hours.”

The spokesperson was asked to clarify what the new parking rules were, and how many people were wrongly fined while they were in force. They declined to comment further.

Parkingeye describes itself online as having grown from a “pioneering provider with just 10 staff to the 380-strong market leader we are today”.

It says it provides “a wide range of enforcement and parking services to ease parking pain for businesses across almost every sector”.