‘Cheap’ parking at Stansted airport cost me hundreds of pounds

I have ended up hundreds of pounds out of pocket after paying £66 for a week’s parking at Stansted airport.

I booked through the website compareairportparkings.co.uk for our car to be collected at the short-stay car park, parked off-site while we were away, and then returned to us at the short stay.

On our arrival back in the UK, we were kept waiting for four hours before being told our car was ready for collection. It had evidently been in an accident, and I’ve since been quoted £4,000 for repairs to the smashed front.

The short-stay car park had no record of the car ever having left, so I had a £477 parking ticket to pay on exit. Stansted staff reduced this to £250 when I explained.

I later received a £100 charge notice from Stansted for breach of parking conditions.

Compareairportparkings has refunded me the £66 booking fee and told me to take up the case with the operator, which is not responding to calls or emails.

The police have said that it is a civil matter and not their problem.

RGW, London

Holidaymakers planning to drive to any UK airport should beware of alluring parking deals on price comparison websites. Some of these, which come top of a Google search and boast five-star reviews, may not be all they seem.

Some reviewers report dirty or damaged vehicles, lost keys, unexpected fees and PCNs for parking or driving breaches. One reader’s car was lost by the “meet and greet” parking company he had booked to use.

The companies providing the service sometimes operate under generic, ever-evolving names, and may be one and the same as the comparison sites that recommend them, according to an investigation by the consumer group Which?. Unscrupulous outfits which promise secure parking sometimes dump customers’ cars on roadsides, on building lots or in official car parks without paying.

Your booking enmeshed you in a web of overlapping companies. You originally booked the services of Swift Meet and Greet, although the link to the terms and conditions in the booking confirmation connects to Airport Parking Deals.

Your payment went to Travel Extra Deals, which trades as compareairportparkings and gives as its contact email the name of another comparison site, Parking4u.

You were then informed that your booking had been amended and would be provided by Nation wide (sic) Parking, although the receipts you were given at drop-off and collection named yet another company, Safe Meet and Greet. This makes it nearly impossible to work out who your contract is with. Its website has since disappeared.

I had no more luck than you in getting a response out of any of these companies.

Stansted is making tidy sums from the overstay fees and PCNs charged to unwitting customers, but it told you that because your contract was with a third party, it was impotent.

It changed its mind when I questioned it. It cancelled the £100 PCN as a “gesture of goodwill”, reviewed ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) footage and concluded that your car tailgated another vehicle through the car park exit barrier to avoid payment after you dropped it off, then returned to the car park shortly before your flight landed. It has now, therefore, refunded the parking fee.

The airport says it has issued a cease and desist letter to Safe Meet and Greet which, it claims, is operating an unauthorised meet and greet service from its car park, and that it is liaising with trading standards. Essex trading standards declined to confirm whether it was investigating and advised customers to report concerns to Citizens Advice.

Travellers should book through official airport websites and check reviews on independent platforms. But you still have to suffer the costs of the repair bill, which could mean higher insurance premiums in future.

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