Woman takes on airport over ‘unfair’ parking charge

A woman who lost her Invercargill Airport car-parking ticket after a four-day holiday has slammed the airport’s “unfair” decision to make her pay $200 before she could exit the car park and drive home to Te Anau.

Following a four-day holiday, Wendy den Hertog was flying from Christchurch to Invercargill in December, saying the flight was delayed by 5½ hours before arriving in Invercargill after 9pm.

After getting off the plane, collecting her bag and and walking to the outside pay station to pay for her parking ticket, she was unable to find it, despite holding it inside the terminal just minutes earlier.

She walked back to the terminal to look for the paper ticket, but the terminal building had been locked to the public in the preceding few minutes.

Unable to drive out of the car park without her ticket, the Te Anau woman said she pressed the help button at the car park kiosk, and explained her predicament.

“They wouldn’t have a bar of it. There was no option but to pay $200 to get out of the car park,” she said.

She paid the mone, but later emailed the airport company and asked it to consider a refund.

Her email said: “I think it’s really unfair, given that the airport was closed so we couldn’t look for our ticket inside. The flights were delayed. This was out of our control. It was dark, we were literally the only people left in the car park.”

She received no reply, so sent the email again in March.

An airport staffer responded, saying the $200 charge would not be waived and it did not do refunds for car-parking charges once customers were out of the car park.

Den Hertog believed the airport’s stance was unfair and felt for other people unable to immediately pay the $200 charge after misplacing their tickets.

She believed a temporary free ticket should have been available so she could have driven out of the terminal and explained her situation the next day.

Also, the airport staff should not be locking the terminal doors before ensuring its customers were attended to and safely out of the car park, she said.

Following Stuff questions to airport manager Stuart Harris, den Hertog contacted Stuff to say the airport had phoned her to apologise and would refund her the $137 difference between the parking ticket price and $200 charge.

Harris confirmed he had reviewed the car-parking ticket charge following a conversation with den Hertog.

“She is happy to have reached a fair resolution to her parking issue and understands how the lost ticket issue is a delicate one to get right.”

The airport was aware its car park ticketing system was aged, with tickets getting damaged, and there being “difficulty in resolving lost tickets”, he said.

For that reason, the airport was investing in a more efficient ticketless system, which it planned to introduce later this year, he said.