‘Cheap’ parking at Stansted airport cost me hundreds of pounds

I paid £66 for a week’s parking at Stansted via compareairportparkings.co.uk, arranging a meet-and-greet service to collect the car from the short-stay car park and park it off-site. On our return we were kept waiting for four hours before being told the car was ready; it had evidently been in an accident and I was later quoted £4,000 for repairs to the smashed front.

The short-stay car park had no record of the vehicle leaving, so I faced a £477 parking ticket on exit that staff reduced to £250, and I subsequently received a £100 charge notice from Stansted for breach of parking conditions. Compareairportparkings refunded the £66 booking fee and told me to take the case up with the operator, which has not responded to calls or emails.

The police said the matter was civil rather than criminal. An investigation by the consumer group Which? found some providers operate under generic, ever-evolving names and may be one and the same as the comparison sites that recommend them.

United Kingdom, Stansted

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