A man charged £638 for 50 minutes parking in the airport car park

A motorist has been charged £638 after parking in an airport car park for less than an hour. James Flack left his car at Manchester Short Stay Airport Terminal One for 50 minutes.

The airport has a number plate recognition system, which means you don’t buy a ticket or pay and show, but put your card in when you get to the barrier to leave.

James said: “The charge should have been £12 on the way out of the car park. I could not clearly see the digital display on the payment machine at the exit gate due to the height, angle and glare of the sun. But I thought, well. I know it costs £12 and I put in my card and PIN and left when the gate opened.”

The next day, James checked his bank statement and saw the huge charge. MEN told him: “I called the bank because it said transaction pending. They said that unfortunately because I had authorized the payment with my PIN they could not stop it as it was a legal contractual agreement to pay the amount. They couldn’t do anything about it and urged me on. to contact the airport.”

James tried to contact the airport through an automated system, then used the website’s complaint form. He then kept two weeks of silence without a trace at the airport.

“It’s a lot of money to be out of pocket and it’s a pretty random amount. How many other people have had this happen to them – I can’t be a one-off. It was a short-term multi-storey car park. near arrivals, just I drove in and was asked if I had booked a seat, I explained I was only there for an hour and was directed to level two and it’s all ANPR.

James has since received a refund. A Manchester Airport spokesman said: “We apologize to Mr Flack for the inconvenience caused by this technical error and have refunded him in full. We can assure customers that issues of this nature are extremely rare and whenever they are brought to our attention, we rectify. them immediately.

“Our customer feedback team attempted to contact Mr. Flack several times, including on the day he submitted his complaint, but due to a typo in the email address he sent- oh, these messages may not have reached him. We have processed a full refund of the £638.00 he paid and as a courtesy this includes the £12.00 parking fee that was due”.