Huddersfield man charged £638 for 50-minute pick-up from Manchester Airport

A Huddersfield man was left stunned when he was billed £638 for a 50-minute layover at Manchester Airport.

The staggering sum was demanded after he parked his Peugeot in Terminal One’s short-term car park to pick up family members. After contacting the MEN for assistance, he was able to recover his money.

James, from Huddersfield, said: “I parked at Manchester Airport Terminal 1 for 50 minutes from about 12.35pm to 1.25pm ​​on Wednesday 15 May. It’s an ANPR system, no tickets, no receipt, no paper trail other than my bank. statement.

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“The charge should have been £12 to exit 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 on it. But I thought, well, I know that. it’s £12 and I put in my card and pin and left when the gate opened.”

Not realizing he had been overcharged, James explained: “I thought I had paid £12, then I checked my statement the next day and saw the damage. 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. There was nothing they could do about it and urged me to contact the airport,” reports the Manchester Evening News.

“I have tried to call the airport several times and it is impossible to get through the automated system. He directed me to their website with a complaint form to fill out, which I did immediately. I got an automated response saying not replying to you. reference number is this – someone will get back to you. Then I waited two weeks.

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He went on to say: “I went to the airport on a Wednesday and the transaction was pending on Thursday and it went through on Friday. That’s a lot of money to be out of pocket and it’s quite a random amount. How many other people has this happened to. I can’t be just one case there was a short term multi-storey car park near arrivals, I asked if I had booked a place, I explained I was only there for an hour and was directed to the second level and it’s still ANPR .”

After questions from the Manchester Evening News about the case, James indicated he received an email from the airport saying the money had been refunded to him just an hour later.

In response to the incident, a Manchester Airport spokesperson 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 do occur. to our attention, we rectify them immediately”.

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The airport issued a statement explaining the situation: “Our customer feedback team attempted to contact Mr Flack on several occasions, including on the day he lodged his complaint, but due to a typo in email address he sent (“hotmil” rather than “hotmail”), 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’.

James added: “I filled in the complaint form twice – in one day. I noticed I made an error with my email the first time, so I did it again and double checked that it was correct. I would like to thank MEN for the follow up. this for me, because before they did it I was getting nowhere”.

This is not the first incident of overcharging at Manchester Airport. In January 2023, a Cheshire woman was hit with a staggering £580 charge for a 20-minute transfer to Terminal 1 that should have cost £6.

In her case, the airport’s email indicated that the mistake may have been due to the parking system not registering the driver’s exit from the parking lot after a previous visit on December 23, resulting in a ten-day parking charge. After looking into the matter, the airport apologized, reimbursed the woman and promised to “review its systems to prevent the issue from recurring”.