Airport car park pirates
Meet and greet firms leave tourists’ cars outside pubs and in side streets
AIRPORT parking firms claiming to keep holidaymakers’ cars in ‘100 per cent secure’ sites are actually leaving them unattended outside pubs and on residential roads.
Customers of the ‘meet and greet’ firms at Manchester Airport also complained their cars were returned damaged – despite promises of 24-hour security.
Officials have slammed the ‘cowboy companies’, which lure customers with cheap prices, and warned they will tow away cars found in unmanned sites.
But one parking firm boss who admitted using a pub car park as a ‘holding site’ has hit back, saying customers ‘get what they pay for’. An investigation found
‘Clamping down on the cowboys’
that five pubs in nearby Wythenshawe had vehicles in their car parks with signs showing dates when they needed to be returned to the airport.
Footage by the Manchester Evening News allegedly shows firm Cheshire Meet and Greet dropping cars off at the Cornishman Pub. On its website, the firm says it offers ‘the safest and most secure service’ at the airport, with ‘24 hour security on site’. They charge up to £57 for a fortnight.
It is understood the firm does monitor the pub’s CCTV – but the newspaper claimed reporters spent three days at the site and witnessed times when the pub was closed and the car park unmanned. Landlord Phil Osborne said the car park had been used as an ‘overspill’ by the firm since May. He said: ‘They are here overnight sometimes for a couple of nights.’
When approached, a staff member reportedly insisted the site was only a ‘holding area’.
Last night Cheshire Meet and Greet was unavailable for comment. Another firm, VIP Parking, admitted using a pub car park to store cars – but insisted it was a temporary measure for ‘hours only’. Costing £125 for a 15-day stay, its website offers ‘24 hour security ... to make sure your car is 100 per cent safe’.
A manager said there was always a staff member in the Woodpecker Pub’s car park and CCTV was always used. He added: ‘We have been forced to use the pub because the airport monopolises all the land and won’t give us permits.’ Yesterday Angie Edmonds, who lives a two minute drive from the airport, wrote online: ‘Fully aware of these car parking firms scams, due to the fact tons of cars are being left unattended on my street ... for days, weeks!’
The boss of another firm which uses a pub car park said: ‘If these customers don’t want to use this service then park elsewhere.
‘The customer who is using these sites... wants the cheapest product on the internet – why would [they] then expect £120 service?... You get what you pay for.’
Last night Manchester council said it was ‘clamping down on cowboy companies’, with threats to tow vehicles from land where they have the leasehold. Wayne Poole, of Manchester Airport, warned that ‘a number of operators imply they have links to the airport when they don’t’.