Airport car park cowboys dump Audi in a muddy field
Holidaymakers’ plea to police
WHEN exhausted holidaymaker Chris Holl flew back to Britain at 3am after a week in Turkey, all he wanted to do was retrieve his car and drive home.
But he was forced to call police after waiting fruitlessly for four hours for his £12,000 Audi A3 when a meet-andgreet firm failed to return it.
He eventually found the vehicle covered in mud in a boggy field more than a mile from Manchester airport where it had been dumped by a rogue parking firm.
Car Park Manchester claims to have Park Mark accreditation – a scheme run by police and the British Parking Association.
But the firm had been stripped of the security certificate after complaints that it regularly used unsecure premises.
Police said they could not intervene because it was a civil matter, but told Mr Holl where the car was likely to have been parked.
The civil engineer and his wife, Louise, said they arranged a lift and found the mud-splattered car in an unsecured field alongside hundreds of others.
He even photographed two workers appearing to hose his mucky car down frantically before handing the keys over.
Mr Holl, a 45-year-old grandfather from Tipton, West Midlands, paid £52 for ‘safe and secure’ parking with Car Park Manchester, which is not linked to the airport.
Yesterday, the firm’s website still claimed it had a Park Mark Safer Parking Scheme award for the security of its premises. But this was withdrawn on September 7 – more than a week before Mr Holl’s experience on September 16. A
‘My car was in a right state’
description of the firm’s ‘ secure and safe’ car park on its website boasts how it is ‘fitted with security cameras and CCTV, is fully lit with flood lights and is manned 24/7 by staff members’.
But council officials said the company also used fields for parking without planning permission and it faced enforcement action.
Mr Holl said: ‘I was very angry when I saw the state of my car and where it was parked. I kept think ing, “Who in their right mind would dump cars in a field?”.’
He feared his car had been stolen when a car park worker claimed they could not find his keys and offered him a taxi home, adding: ‘For all I know, cars could have been taken from there as there were keys hanging around in tubs on tables and nothing to stop someone just driving off.’
When he complained to airport police, they told him where the cars were parked. He said: ‘There
tyre tracks all over the place. The mud was deep – it was absolutely ridiculous. My car was in a right state but thankfully there were no scratches.’ Mr Holl said he booked Car Park Manchester through the price comparison website Ezybook. A spokesman for Ezybook said it had refunded Mr Holl’s money, adding: ‘We have taken Car Park Manchester from our website and were have initiated the investigation.’
The British Parking Association said it withdrew Car Park Manchester’s Park Mark after investigating complaints.
Manchester council and Manchester airport have repeated their warning against people using unofficial meet- and- greet car parks, saying: ‘All too often, rogue firms leave cars in muddy fields or residential streets. In the worst cases, vehicles have been stolen.’
A man who refused to give his name but claimed to be the driver despatch manager for Car Park Manchester said of Mr Holl yesterday: ‘He can claim what he likes, he has no proof.
‘These are false allegations.’