Well you may be onto something.

When Jessica Fisher parked on the Subway-side of Williamson Street last week, she did the usual thing and bought a $1.50 parking ticket to cover the next hour or so.

The time was 11.19am, according to her phone.

But on the parking ticket the time was 11.14am. That meant her parking expired five minutes earlier than it should have.

Ms Fisher was not happy.

“It ripped me off five minutes,” she said.

“I even made sure my phone had the correct time by checking it with our iPads of different brands. They all had the same time.”

Ms Fisher texted the fault to the City of Greater Bendigo’s parking meter text line, and was told she had the incorrect receipt ID. After several more attempts, nothing was done.

“They didn’t seem to care. I also got an automated response that said the parking restriction still applied,” she said.

To test the veracity of the claim, the Bendigo Advertiser took a handful of 20 cent pieces down Williamson Street on Monday afternoon and found several machines had their time set in the past.

Twenty cents was put in a machine near the Music Man, and the machine showed the ticket expired that very minute.

A ticket machine in front of Bicknells sports store was also five minutes off. The printed time said it was 4.21pm, the actual time was 4.26pm.

Not to be outdone, the machine in front of the Shamrock Hotel was six minutes in the past.

The one in front of the post office was three minutes behind, and one near Subway – the machine Ms Fisher had her problems with – printed its ticket four minutes in the past.

Of course there were also several that displayed the correct time. None gave the driver extra minutes, however.

The phone used to give the correct time was cross-checked with Australian Eastern Standard Time and found to be correct to the very second.

City of Greater Bendigo Parking Services staff have checked parking meters in the Williamson Street area.

Parking and animal services acting manager Caroline Grylls said the inspection, this morning, showed there was a “small time discrepancy”, which has since been corrected. 

“The city responds as a priority to any concerns raised about ticket machines,” Ms Grylls said. 

“These machines will be monitored to ensure they are functioning correctly as part of the ongoing maintenance schedule.”

The city has more than 160 ticket machines which run on solar power with battery back-up. 

A battery voltage check and regular battery replacements are included in the ticket machine maintenance schedule.

Ms Grylls said the time on ticket machines and printed tickets was checked regularly by parking services staff. 

The car parked in a one-hour parking space in front of the Shamrock Hotel didn’t quite reach the 100-day mark.

The Toyota Camry was first spotted in the parking space on Williamson Street on February 28, and remained unmoved for the months of March and April, and some of May.

The space is free after the car was removed in recent weeks, and is instead full of beautiful Bendigo autumn leaves. And a few empty beer cans.