Website error causes major problems for Manchester Airport car park
09.01.08
We received an e-mail from a reader describing problems at a Manchester Airport car park last weekend. The car parks owner has told us that there was a problem with the BCP website that meant it continued to accept bookings even though the Manchester Airparks Meet and Greet Airport Parking facility was full up.
We are told that around 1000 passengers were affected. Some of the passengers who arrived to drop off their car were sent to the on airport car parks instead, and so were not too badly affected by the problems. However, some of those who were attempting to collect their cars suffered significant problems, with our reader only receiving his car 55 hours after he landed at the airport (and made his own way home). He tells us that others waiting at the airport for up to 7 hours for their car to be returned.
Holiday Extras, who took over BCP late last year, have offered to cover any extra costs (for example, for those sent on to airport car parks) and to give all of the passengers affected 8 days free parking. However, many passengers, including our reader, are not happy to accept this and have vowed to take matters further.
Below we share the experience of our reader, with details from his e-mail:
Having booked the 'Meet & Greet' service over the Christmas holiday to park my vehicle at Manchester Airport, I can only say that the service I received on my return to the UK was negligent, poorly administered and wholly without care nor consideration for the customer.
I arrived at Manchester Airport at 07:30 on Sunday 30th December. I telephoned the Customer Services number on the car park receipt as I was asked to do. The Customer Service representative, Ron, asked me to remain at the airport where a driver would soon return my vehicle.
As I stood in the terminal, I soon realised that I was not alone in waiting for a car to be returned from this 'Meet and Greet' service, and was alerted to a problem by other Holiday Extras customers. I again called the customer support at 08:32, when it was categorically stated that my vehicle would be returned within the next 10 minutes.
When this did not happen, and following further investigation at the airport, I discovered that there was a severe backlog in the provision of the 'Meet and Greet' service, with some travellers having already waited at the airport for over three hours.
An officer of the British Transport Police informed me that the previous day, there had been a near-riot due to the same problem, with some passengers waiting up to seven hours. He gave me the address at which my vehicle was parked and advised to make my own way there to retrieve it.
When I arrived at the car park, Airparks Gold at Thorley Lane, Manchester, I was astonished to see the number of vehicles. They were on absolutely every spare piece of road, pavement and grassland in the car park. I asked a service representative about retrieving my vehicle and was informed that Airparks Gold:
a. did not know where it was parked;
b. did not know where my keys were stored; and
c. could not estimate a possible time for my vehicle to be retrieved.
As I had been travelling since 19:00 UK time the previous day, I was by this time concerned about the situation that Airparks Gold had left me in, having still to travel to North Wales.
I stood in line in a cold portacabin with luggage waiting to speak to a customer services representative, whilst my travelling companion scoured the car park for my vehicle. After 60 minutes of searching, he discovered it parked on a car park slip road, blocked in by four other cars.
No representative from Airparks Gold was available to attend to my situation due to the ever-increasing number of disgruntled customers arriving, and the situation soon degenerated into a free-for-all to attempt to find both the keys to their own vehicles as well as the keys to vehicles that were blocking their vehicles in.
Representatives of Airparks Gold freely encouraged disgruntled customers to search through a mass of keys for their own key and the keys to other peoples vehicles. I was escorted to another portacabin where a desk was laden with keys. Hundreds of keys had no means of identification to either their owners or the registration of the vehicles, and the keys were in no order as to where they were parked. It is little wonder that no one could tell me where my car was and where the keys to it were.
Luckily, I had left my spare key with Airparks Gold and had another copy with me. Unluckily I still could not access my vehicle due to it being blocked in by other vehicles to which Airparks Gold had no means of identifying the keys to. In fact, whilst I was trying to retrieve my vehicle, an employee placed a fifth car in front of it.
After waiting for three hours at the Airparks car park to resolve the situation, I was left with no alternative, at great anxiety to myself, than to make my own way back home to North Wales. I eventually received by vehicle over 55 hours after it was supposed to be returned to me at Manchester Airport.
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