'They wasted two hours of my time': Man who bills $300 an hour takes on AT over $70 fine
Wednesday, 24 June 2026
Oliver Harris’ time is expensive - he charges his business development clients $300 an hour.
So when he spent two hours battling Auckland Transport’s broken payment system - without success - to pay a parking fine, there was an opportunity cost.
“The broader question is whether it is acceptable for a public agency to admit its systems failed, apologise for an appalling customer experience that left a customer significantly out of pocket through wasted time, and then continue debt collection action against that same customer,” Harris said.
Harris got the $70 parking fine outside Remuera Library in February while dropping off books. There were no other parks and so he stopped in a loading zone for, he says, less than five minutes.
Read more:
City Rail Link's $3.4 million marketing and PR bill questioned
A New Era for Auckland's Roads: Aligning Transport with Economic Growth
He initially appealed it because he believed it was unreasonable, but the appeal failed so he accepted he had to pay.
But when he attempted to do that, the payment system repeatedly failed.
“I tried multiple credit cards and contacted customer service several times, but nobody could identify or resolve the issue.”
Harris knows how to escalate a complaint - he wrote the book on it. Literally. He authored a short guide which he sells on Amazon titled: Get What's Owed: Get the compensation you deserve from a poor customer experience.
So Harris practised what he preaches and got in touch with AT’s customer engagement manager, Phil Wratt, directly on LinkedIn.
Auckland Transport subsequently investigated and confirmed the payment problem was entirely its fault. Its head of customer experience, Guarin Coetzee, sent Harris a written apology acknowledging the issue.
“I’m genuinely sorry for the frustration and the amount of time you’ve had to spend trying to resolve this,” Coetzee said in an email to Harris on April 15.
“I want to reassure you that we are actively working with our technology teams to identify and fix the issue affecting your online payments, so that payment can be completed easily and reliably. We acknowledge that this situation is not acceptable, and we appreciate your patience while we work through the resolution.”
Coetzee said AT would keep Harris updated on progress and that “our focus remains on ensuring this can be resolved without any further unnecessary effort on your part”.
Two days later, Wratt emailed Harris to let him know they’d investigated the issue and AT’s payment gateway provider, Windcave, had confirmed there were timeout issues within their platform, along with an issue with Mastercard. Those had now been fixed. Wratt said.
“Unbelievably, despite admitting responsibility for preventing me from making payment - and for wasting over two hours of my time - AT still expected me to pay this $70 infringement,” Harris said.
“I explained that after the inconvenience and waste of time there was no way that I was going to pay this infringement; I pointed out that my hourly rate is $300 so if anything AT owes me money.”
His case has now been moved to debt collector Baycorp, which is pursuing Harris for the fine. He says collectors have called him repeatedly - including three times in one morning.
But Harris is putting his foot down.
“I’ll happily pay the $70 infringement if they pay my $600 + GST invoice for the two hours I wasted dealing with this nonsense.”
He took it to the top and messaged the organisation’s acting chief executive, Stacey van der Putten, on LinkedIn and threatened to take his story to the media if it wasn’t resolved. The Post has seen a copy of the exchange.
She replied that she was “sorry to hear” Harris had a poor experience and that she would be keen to understand his case further.
Harris has not heard back, which is why he’s now following through on his threat to take his experience public.
Auckland Transport’s group manager of parking services, John Strawbridge, told The Post that Harris was parked illegally.
“This is an essential loading zone for businesses in the Remuera shops, enabling trucks to safely supply local businesses in a very busy area.”
Strawbridge said AT apologised for the technical issues Harris experienced and that there may have been other issues with the credit card that it was unaware of that prevented him from successfully paying his fine online.
“He has also refused to pay his infringement using any of the other four payment methods offered by AT.
“Although we appreciate it is frustrating the man’s credit card payments were not initially processed, this does not mean the man is no longer liable for paying his fine.”
Strawbridge said he would “strongly encourage” Harris to promptly pay the fine using one of these payment methods before it is referred to the Ministry of Justice in late July, after which time an additional $55 court cost would be added.
But Harris refuses to back down.
“I'm not paying it. So as it stands right now, this is going to go to court because I'm not paying the fine.”