A Manchester man thought he was losing his mind when, on returning to the car he had left in a free space, he found a yellow line and a parking ticket waiting for him.
Nasser Khan, 28, was the victim of a jobsworth council contractor who painted the line right under his parked car. A passing traffic warden then issued him the ticket.
Luckily for Khan, office workers in a nearby building had caught the incident on camera. They left a note on his windscreen explaining what had happened.
"I thought I was lucky to get the space but I didn't think I would get a ticket because it was a legitimate parking area," said the marketing consultant.
"I couldn't believe they painted a line underneath my vehicle."
The parking fine was written off when Khan presented his evidence to Salford City Council, but nobody has reimbursed him £550 for a set of new tyres after road-marking machinery partly melted the ones on his car.
"I took the car to a garage and I was told the tyres were unroadworthy," he said. "I could have had a blow-out at any time."
Khan can barely afford the expense himself after shelling-out on performance car insurance for his Toyota MR2.
Mike Page, spokesman for the cheap car insurance experts at Hoot, said "What would it have taken to stop this crazed line painter? Perhaps if Mr Khan himself had been lying in the road he'd have been painted over like a road hump.
"Parking violations shouldn't affect your cheap car insurance premium," he added, "but they're murder on your bank balance."