City of Coral Gables Parking Time left on meter but still fined; out of state, so can't appeal Coral Gables Florida

I was in the Miami area the first week of May 2013 for business and had rented a car for 3 days.  One evening I took a client to the Coral Gables area on Miracle for dinner.  I used PayByPhone for the first time to put money in the meter so-to-speak and mis-entered one digit of the six digits on the rental car's license plate, which I only realized when I logged into the site that evening after receving my parking citation.  Oh yeah, it was dark, raining and traffic was whizzing by as I tried to listen to the automated prompts, such as "Press 1 for the letter A, Press 2 for the letter B, etc."

So, basically, I was issued an $18 citation even though I had over an hour left on the meter and 5 of 6 digits on license plate were correct.  Oh yeah, perhaps randomly a car with 5 of the same digits was illegally parked at the same meter with time left on it?!?

I called PayByPhone the next morning and they were very nice.  They gave me an email address for Coral Gables and instructed me to email a copy of the citation and the PayByPhone invoice they emailed to me.

I promptly emailed to the parking division of Coral Gables all the applicable information to show that I had made a simple typo and that I had in fact paid for the parking space.  As instructed by PayByPhone, I requested a one time forgiveness.

Although, I sent the email within less than 24 hours of receiving the citation, I never received a response from Coral Gables.  I sent a second email two weeks later and, again, no response.

I finally got a phone number from Miami-Dade after submitting an online request.  They were helpful.  I then called Coral Gables and was told that they can't help me b/c my citation is out of their system now and that I should've contacted them within 48 hours of receiving the citation.  Of course, I mentioned to the gentleman that I had in fact emailed them in less than 24 hours.  He responded that they check the email account periodically; however, he didn't apologize to me for never receiving a response.  He then suggested that I either pay the ticket or schedule a court date.  Of course, I can't fight the ticket b/c I live in Atlanta!!!

Is it too much to ask that a parking officer use a little good judgement and be mindful of visitors to their town?  Yes, they will now be paid twice for the same parking space, but there is plenty of bad PR to go with it.  I will never shop or dine in Coral Gables again.