You may want to hold on to your parking passes from Wrightsville Beach

Anyone who goes to Wrightsville Beach in the summertime knows parking can be challenging. Four months later, one woman is getting charged for two parking tickets she said she never received. Now she has a word of advice for people who pay to park in Wrightsville Beach.

Sherri Parker has been coming to Wrightsville Beach her entire life, and said she knows just as well as anybody about paying for parking, and always follows the rules. That is why she was surprised to receive a letter from the Wrightsville Beach Parking Office, saying she owed $100 for two unpaid parking tickets from august.

“My issue is I didn’t even receive the ticket on my windshield to know about it,” said Parker.

She said she was at the beach on the days the letter says she got tickets, but that she paid for the parking stubs to put on her dash, over her sun shade.

“There’s no way I couldn’t have received a ticket on my car two different times, and then my husband was with me, so there’s no way both of us could have missed a ticket sitting on my car,” Parker added.

But the parking office’s records show differently. Two tickets, issued 11 days apart, for overtime parking.

A spokesperson for the parking company, hired by the town said it’s highly unusual that tickets from two different days are unaccounted for. The best parking officials could do was to waive Parker’s late fee for a total of $40, which she begrudgingly paid.

For this peeved parker, there’s a lesson learned. “Be sure to not throw those passes away. Hang onto them because you never know when you’ll get a letter like this in the mail and not know nothing about it,” Parker said.

Parker also said she is concerned this may be happening to other people, especially out-of-town visitors.