Heathrow T5 Parking Problem

Greg84

Hi all,

Hoping someone can offer me some advice with this, I booked parking for Heathrow T5, believing it to be the new pod parking, the website banner and description showed the following at the time of booking:

gfin.co.uk/heathrow-1.jpg

I turned up at the car park and the ticket machine printed a ticket with my registration plate, believing this confirmed I was in the right place I parked up & went off on my holiday thinking all was good.

When I arrived back 12 days later, I went to exit the car park only to be told my ticket was invalid and I owed £460! I went to the ticket office, and was rudely informed that I had parked in the wrong car park, so my original ticket was invalid. I had parked in the Pod Parking, but my booking was for Business Parking, a separate car park entirely. I spent the next hour arguing with the guy at the car park to try and explain how the website setup was misleading, and despite him admitting this happens a lot he assured me there was nothing he could do. Eventually managed to get his manager/supervisor to the car park, he gave me the same responses, with the additional option of being allowed to leave the car park and return in 24hours to pay the outstanding amount, without my car.

Having just flown for 12 hours, standing arguing with them for an hour whilst a friend waited in my car wasn't ideal, so I took the only viable option of paying the difference £327,55 and resigning to the fact I would need to try and continue my argument once home. Once I got home I sent multiple emails to the parking company but just had the same response, there was nothing they could do and they believed the charge to be fair, they weren't willing to discuss it further or hear my case.

For comparison purposes I checked the price of the POD parking with a booking and it came back at £163.70. When I booked, there was no separate options for both POD parking & business parking, and having seen the banner on the previous page I believed them to be the same thing!

Do you think there's any chance of me getting any of the money back? I have Virgin Travel Insurance but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't cover this, and the company who runs the car park is APCOA... who seem to have a track record for car parking fines on the forums!

Thanks in advance for any help,
Greg

Quentin

You probably need to post this in the consumers rights forum for best advice.


On the face of it you are responsible for parking in the expensive car park, and saying you got a ticket with your reg on it lead you to believe you were in the right car park is a poor "excuse" as all tickets would have the reg number printed on it.

Greg84

Hi Quentin,

OK thank you, I thought the fact it printed my reg was confirmation, I didn't realise it would also print the booking reference. I don't hold out much hope of getting any money back, but I do feel that the website is misleading (I included a link to a screenshot of the website but had to edit it out as I don't have permissions to post links yet).

Thanks,
Greg

EDIT: Is it possible to get this thread moved, to avoid double posting it?

Quentin

Greg84 wrote: »

Hi Quentin,

OK thank you, I thought the fact it printed my reg was confirmation, I didn't realise it would also print the booking reference. I don't hold out much hope of getting any money back, but I do feel that the website is misleading (I included a link to a screenshot of the website but had to edit it out as I don't have permissions to post links yet).

Thanks,
Greg

EDIT: Is it possible to get this thread moved, to avoid double posting it?

Your link:
http://www.gfin.co.uk/heathrow-1.jpg


PM a board guide and ask to have your thread moved