Pls advise: Car 'stolen' from Gatwick Meet & Greet - [Text deleted by Forum Team]

Puja_2

Official MSE insert:

This thread has been closed.

Looking4Parking have requested that we post the following statement:

"This was an isolated incident involving a third party supplier that was resolved swiftly. The supplier has been investigated and Looking4Parking are no longer working with the company concerned. Where required customers were fully compensated.

Since the incident Looking4Parking have made every effort to ensure that all of their suppliers car parks, insurance documentation and procedures are up to scratch and will endeavour to deliver a world class booking service."

purplejac

Hi, i would go to the c.a.b. (citizens advice) and get all the information together you can and take both car parking companies to the small claims court it covers you up to £3000 for your car and i would call trading standards and tell them as well they will give you a reference number and will advise you also.
hope this helps and good luck.

mdunlop

Hi Puja,
I had a booking with Looking4parking too, I dropped my car off on 1st June and returned on the 16th to no car, and to this date (4th July) still no car! They now have located it but no keys, it is outside the person they arrested house in Hounslow!! I now have to get back to my car and get an autolocksmith to cut a new set of keys at my expense. So my cheap parking is costing me taxi back to pompey £100 + new keys £125 + travel back up to london £35!!!
Live and learn, don't trust meet & greet!! Happy Holidays!

Puja wrote: »

Okay...this is long so please bear with me.

I booked Meet and Greet parking through a booking agent called looking4parking.com. The cheapest price came up for a company called Diamond Parking, and so after checking their reviews I made the booking.

We were due to travel on the 2nd June, and on the 31st May I received an email and text message informing me that the mobile phone number for the chauffer had changed and I should call the new number on the 2nd June to arrange for my car to be picked up. Unfortunately I did not think anything of it.

We travelled on the 2nd June, our car was picked up at Gatwick in the usual way, and nothing untoward was noticed.

We were due back at Gatwick on the 7th June at 2.45am, we received a text message on the 5th June that our car had been stolen on the 2nd June and we should contact Sussex police in relation to this.

To cut an even longer story short, after many phone calls to the police and booking agent the following has been established:

- Our car was placed with another company NOT Diamond cars as advertised by Looking4Parking.com, Diamond were at full capacity and so the agent transferred our car to a compnay apparently called uk-parking, the booking agent confirmed that full credit checks had not been done on this company. They did not inform me that my car was not going to be parked with Diamond Parking.

-The person(s) who were arrested by the police for some other crime were also responsible for the meet and greet and were basically taking peoples cars and parking them on residential streets around the airports and then returning them when the customers arrived back from their travels. Apparently over 100 cars have been 'stolen' in this way though the police have been able to recover most of them. Had these people not been arrested I would have got my car back, but since they have been arrested and are at the moment in custody the police do not know where my car may be.

I have notified my insurance company, but I want to know if looking4parking.com should be liable for negligence in the way they handled my booking. They went ahead and changed my parking service without informing me, and they have admitted that credit checks had not been completed with this new company that they used.

I am left without a vehicle for what seems will be quite some time. My car was not of high value, so even claiming on the insurance, losing my no claims bonus, is not going to get me very far.

Please could someone give me some advice as to what I should do? The police are not able to help me any further and have said it could take a very long time to locate my car. Are the booking agent looking4parking at fault?

Thank you in advance, sorry for such a long post.

Puja

Equaliser123

Interesting issue. I think - on the assumption that your insurers will pay out - you have a claim for the excess and any other uninsured losses.

dacouch

mdunlop wrote: »

Hi Puja,
I had a booking with Looking4parking too, I dropped my car off on 1st June and returned on the 16th to no car, and to this date (4th July) still no car! They now have located it but no keys, it is outside the person they arrested house in Hounslow!! I now have to get back to my car and get an autolocksmith to cut a new set of keys at my expense. So my cheap parking is costing me taxi back to pompey £100 + new keys £125 + travel back up to london £35!!!
Live and learn, don't trust meet & greet!! Happy Holidays!

Can you not order a new set of keys from your local main dealer, they will normally want proof of ID and the log book etc

mdunlop

dacouch wrote: »

Can you not order a new set of keys from your local main dealer, they will normally want proof of ID and the log book etc

Main dealer will do a set of keys for £110, but these will only be able to open the car not start it. I would have to get it transported to vauxhall where they would re programme it to the immobilliser, adding more cost I expect. my insurance say it is a grey area, as it is theft by deception i.e I handed the keys over. Hopefully what I pay out I should be able to claim back from the parking company.

Vomityspice

You claim against the people you had a contract with (Looking4parking.com ). Given the situation, I would be pressing my insurance company to resolve it, it there is nothing stopping you from making a claim.

Fill in your N1 form, pay the fee (depends on how much your claiming, google EX50 for current prices), and then be unsurprised when looking4parking issue a Part 20 claim against Uk parking (essentially claiming, it wasn't our fault, it was them).

The dispute is likely to be costly and protracted unless Uk Parking accept liability and pay out quickly, which is unlikely as their insurers (if they have any!) will be unhappy at shelling out for their stupidity. I would suspect Uk Parking's insurers will undoubtedly point out that the cover is not effective because of some technicality (i.e. the cars were parked on public roads, not is a secure compound as per the premium). This would then mean further difficulty in getting your car / money.....

Best bet, let your insurance sort it out. Sounds like a nightmare.....

dacouch

Their own Insurance is likely to have an exclusion for theft of the vehicle by deception as this if fairly standard these days

Jaxt

On another note for Looking4parking we just returned from a 4 day break after using them for Leeds long stay car park and was told that £49 was to be debited from my hubbys card after we had paid aready with this firm.Tried to ring both last night and this morning and they do not answer the phone.Useless. So I could have booked with Sentinel for 4 days and paid £25 instead its cost over £70. Really not happy especially as it cost more to park than our cheapo flights LOL

Jaxt

:TAfter posting my comments regarding our experience with looking4parking my hubby haad a personal phone call with an offer to refund his money this has now also been sorted to include the difference of what we paid extra for the ln the machine at Leeds.They are a new firm and it seems there has been a few teething problems but I am assured these are now sorted. I did book them because they was genuinely the lowest price and they have kindly gave me a code 5% discount to post on here for other users to use. Please use this discount code for 5% discount – L4PPAYMENT5. I will post the code on discount code post also.

unholyangel

Jaxt wrote: »

They are a new firm and it seems there has been a few teething problems but I am assured these are now sorted. I did book them because they was genuinely the lowest price and they have kindly gave me a code 5% discount to post on here for other users to use. Please use this discount code for 5% discount – L4PPAYMENT5. I will post the code on discount code post also.

Using companies that are basically committing fraud and customers cars going missing is a bit too serious for them to describe them as "teething problems".

TBH i would rather pay 20% more and know that my car is with a reputable company than use a cheaper service and take the chance of my car not being parked in a secure car park and me not knowing exactly where its parked.

IMO small mistakes are something that any company can make. Big mistakes are something that should never be made.They've made HUGE mistakes