I once used a car park to store my car for several days, without taking it out, and it was cheaper to lose my ticket and pay the fine vs paying the full amount. Because the fine was the 24hr price, vs the actual duration of 5-6 days.

Was this before "automated" car parks or they don't have that where you live? Where I live, all car parks automatically registers every single car that enters, and if I lose my ticket, I get a "fine" (extra cost) + the duration I was parked, as they'll just lookup when I arrived via the license plate.

Why do they even have tickets if they can look up when you entered?

If you have the ticket you can "self-checkout" by going to the machine to pay, not involving others. If you don't, you need to speak with the person who "manages" the parking lot, the person who sits in the little booth.

Some cars also have (something like) a bank/credit card attached to their front windows near the top, those people can just drive out and the payment is automatic right before the barrier that blocks the exit.

It's an easier UI. I visited a car park recently that had switched to ticketless operation, and now in order to pay, you have to enter your car license number using the on-screen keyboard. It's not exactly hard, but it's an order of magnitude harder than 'insert ticket, insert payment card'.

so they can charge you a fee for lost tickets :)

Most of them let you prepay before you leave to keep the flow of traffic moving, but I figure you could look up the fee by tag too since they already record it. lol.

This was in London last year. I've used a mixture but more often than not they are just dumb issue the ticket at a barrier and let you in type car parks. Need the same ticket to raise the barrier on the way out, after paying.

Not set up with automatic license plate reading cameras (ANPR or whatever the UK calls it).