A man has issued a warning to people hoping to use one of Manchester Airport’s “safe and secure” car park.
Brian Askew booked to park his blue Vauxhall Corsa in the Jetparks Ringway car park in October 2022 directly through Manchester Airport’s website. But after returning to Manchester from his three day break to Guernsey, Brian realised something wasn’t quite right as the shuttle bus drove past the car park.
He got off the bus and walked around the car park, but his £2,500 Vauxhall Corsa was nowhere to be seen.
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Brian told The ECHO: “I was walking around thinking ‘did I park is somewhere else?’ and I got a little bit disorientated trying to find the car. I wrote down what bus I got and double checked I was definitely in the right place.
“I realised the car was gone and went up to the barrier and told them ‘It looks like my car’s been stolen’. The woman told me it had left at 9pm the night before.”
Brian was taken back to Manchester Airport where Greater Manchester Police were informed of the theft. He then got a £72 taxi back to his home in Northwich.
He said: “I contacted the insurance on October 24 to say the car had been stolen. The police found the car two weeks later in Manchester, luckily they wrote the car off because I wouldn’t have wanted it back.
“£2,500 [the price of the car] might be peanuts to other people, but it was everything to me. I have lost my independence and it’s been stressful to deal with.
“I have been asking for compensation [from Manchester Airport] ever since but it’s not accepting liability. I’ve had a gesture of goodwill from the booking site [£200], Holiday Extras and the insurance have paid out, but I lost £300 excess.
“I’m not asking for for the world here, I’m asking for a gesture of goodwill and to draw a line under it.”
According to the Jetparks Ringway website customers park their vehicles “at their own risk”, with the entry and exit being controlled at a barrier via automated number plate recognition (ANPR). Brian said he now wants to warn other people looking to use the Jetparks Ringway car park about his experience.
He said: “I want people to know what happened to me so they can think about using Jetparks Ringway. They’re saying park at your own risk then they say it’s safe and secure, has 24 hour patrols and has a safety award with ParkMark – it’s a huge contradiction.
“Someone has failed by letting somebody leave with my car and all the advertising turned out to be misleading. If I knew my car was going to be stolen I would never have parked there.”
A Manchester Airport spokesperson said: “We regret the inconvenience caused to the customer by this incident and are working with Greater Manchester Police to investigate the circumstances surrounding it. We take security in our car parks very seriously – more than 1.4 million customers have used our parking services in the past year, and incidents of this kind are extremely rare.
“As a gesture of goodwill, the customer was offered a refund of his car park booking, taxi fare to his home address and an additional payment to reflect the inconvenience caused.”
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Robert Johnson is a UK-based business writer specializing in finance and entrepreneurship. With an eye for market trends and a keen interest in the corporate world, he offers readers valuable insights into business developments.
