Short Term Airport Parking

Matt_Nixon

What a Rip Off, this has got to be rip off Britain at it's worst, picking my wife & her sister up from Luton airport last night, not only was the flight 4 hours delayed, but to enable me to help them with bags etc. cost £6.50.

I know I could have lurked in a layby and waited for a call, but after a long delay, thought I would ease some of the pain.

BAA/NCP money making machine!

peterbaker

Hi Matt

You are completely right of course - this is Rip Off Britain and the airports in particular are taking the mickey.

But your Luton experience is not the worst.

Stansted surely must own that particular notoriety for their big change at the end of last year that trapped me ten days ago and again a week ago.

How could I be trapped twice?

First I stayed in their pick up car park for an hour and a bit and got charged £20!!! (I escaped, complained and gave them £5 to chew on). Evidently BAA don't want anyone to use it for a minute over 1 hour anymore, irrespective of whether it takes an hour to meet someone on a slightly delayed flight or delayed baggage reclaim, for example. The NCP/BAA guy I debated with would acknowledge no concept of such matters. He obviously didn't see the dumbness of signs suggesting it is THE area where you MUST park to meet arrivals, and then PENALISE anyone who is there for more than an hour.

Anyway, I used the same car park a few days later for what I thought would be a free 10 minutes because it has always been free for up to 15 minutes and some of the old signs are still there to fool you!

Wrong again! I got to the barrier and discovered my 10 minutes would cost £1. I 'Pressed to Talk' and with some matter of factness was told no my 10 minutes wasn't free and I should either put a credit card in or reverse back and use a machine to pay. I said "Oh wow! What a great job you have, informing the ripped off public of how much your company is stealing from their wallet today". He retorted "Yeah well I enjoy it, and I probably earn more money than you do!"

I also noticed that the charges seem to have risen for a second time since they revamped the entry systems last autumn. Initially it seems they changed the entry system from a single entry point and single exit point for all the (three?) Stansted Short Term car parks (plus bus station) so that each was given it's own entry and exit barriers but DID NOT change the charges. That was the "bait" in this "bait and switch".

Then, unknown to regulars like me, they introduced the HUGE RIP OFF in the area that used to be known as Zone D PickUp area. That's how I got faced with the £20 'Penalty' type charge for using it for just over an hour. NB I am not talking about the new "Fastrack" area which used to be Zone C I think, which has a minimum charge now of £16 and is for people with more money than sense I presume.

And now just this week I think, they have put all the charges up even more.

BAA/NCP are out of control with their charges and need smacking down fast by OFT or some such. The other airports are also in monopoly positions and should be controlled the same way. They only exist because we, the people, let them compulsorily purchase the land and allow them to use the tens of miles of lower airspace around our homes they need to operate. If they abuse our trust by being downright greedy and even menacing (it is not nice being told at midnight on a dark cold windy night that you must pay £20 to be let out when you thought you might have to pay £3 or £4 or a fiver as it now turns out to be if you choose the correct car park for your one hour and a bit) i.e. if instead of providing good stewardship they mislead and threaten, we should remove their right to run the airport and give it to someone else.

That would be one area of new legislation that I would happily applaud.

advent1122

Feel better now?

peterbaker

Just checked Stansted longstay rates for my next trip - now a WHOPPING £8.10 per day.

It is only about a year since it was £6 odd per day. This is the third increase since then.

This is an unscrupulous monopoly out of control, and OFT should already be making their presence felt, but they won't ...

OFT are into "let's pay market researchers to contact everyone who has emailed us to find out how useless we really are" mode at the moment. The OFT manager that signed the letters is .... er .... "off sick".

ckerrd

Tomorrow I will park at Glasgow Airport. It will cost me £12 from 0500 - 2100 (approx).
This compared to Taxi which would cost in excess of £25 round trip.
Convenient, easy, reliable and a bargain

peterbaker

...some of us may have lost sight of what is a bargain and what is a rip off. Thats what led to a surprise bank base rate of 5.25%, and future increases in the offing.

The price of alternative solutions to and from the airport are linked to the car park charges of course. It is all a greedy money making machine equally grotesque as speed camera strategies (you'll know all about those up north I think:-) )

aj3001

You can book online for cheaper for flights, I checked online and found short stay for 24 hours would be £15, thinking it wouldn't be anymore then £20 odd, I just paid when I got there, £30!!! Considering I only paid £40 for the flights for two to Milan!

peterbaker

The point is that it is a moving feast ... consumers are now completely lost about the norm in price-pointing. Same thing happened with the other huge phenomenum of the late 90s - mobile phones and the huge snowstorm of tariffs designed to confuse and deceive and push and pull until no-one realised that £25 a month is RIP-OFF and the £8 a month I have been paying last three or four years for a "£25" tariff is the price-point we should all look for.

It is a greedy marketing ploy to shake-up a monopoly volume market like this so no-one knows what to expect till they pay.

It is plain WRONG and the OFT are toothless wonders.