When you are travelling from Manchester Airport, the chances are pretty good that you will end up driving to the airport yourself and parking your car in a designated car park. It will then stay there for the amount of time you are away for.
Now depending on the service you use and the company you book with, the fee you pay could vary quite a bit. Most people book their car parking online and save money by doing so, but however you book you should take a recent event as a sign that checking your bank account is always a good idea.
A recent customer at Manchester Airport paid £51 in order to park at the airport while he went on holiday. Nothing much wrong with that, you might think; after all he paid for the parking and left his car just as everyone else would.
But the problem arose when he got back home again. That was when he discovered that a small additional amount of £842 had also been taken as payment. The airport has since said that this amount – plus the original car parking charge – will be given back to the customer.
But it does make you wonder whether we shouldn’t be a little more careful when we book our car parking spaces at the airport. And this is true regardless of whether it is at Manchester Airport or anywhere else.
It is obvious that these things happen from time to time – although thankfully not very often – but that doesn’t make the actual event any easier to stomach when it happens to you. It must have been a relief to know that the money hadn’t disappeared as a result of fraud or any similar problem, but at the same time losing that kind of money would have been a real shock to the system. And that isn’t the kind of welcome home you want after you have been on holiday!
What’s more, according to the story as reported in several sources on the internet, the airport only refunded the money (presumably rather quickly) when the Manchester Evening News got involved. Isn’t it amazing what the power of the press can do?
So where is the moral in this story?
Well firstly we should all be careful to make sure we are charged the right amount for airport parking in the first place. This did happen in this case but because you have given your details to the car parking company you are using, it does pay to make sure no extra fees have been taken once you arrive back home again.
In the end, thousands upon thousands of people use airport car parks every single day. The vast majority of those people don’t experience any problems at all. There are bound to be technical errors (and it seems this has been the case on this occasion) and these can never be completely eradicated. It’s also true of human error.
Thankfully he got his money back in the end – but no doubt the shock is still wearing off.