Airport parking company stranded families – refused to return cars they’d been secretly parking in fields People returning from holidays to Bristol Airport over the weekend found themselves stuck without cars for hours, and it later […]

People returning from holidays to Bristol Airport over the weekend found themselves stuck without cars for hours, and it later emerged that the cars had been left in a variety of non-secure locations across Bristol.

The company, offering a “meet and greet” service, started failing to return cars when holiday-makers returned on Friday afternoon.

Some were stranded at the airport for up to 24 hours to get their cars returned, and others needed to find their own way home, before returning to collect their car the next day.

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This was our 2 year old and 5 year old left stranded without their car at Bristol Airport. Plane landed at 11:20am on Friday morning and our car was retrieved (by us!) from a non secure farmyard at 12:00pm on the Saturday! pic.twitter.com/QTYpk4TLTs — Karen Middlemore (@MiddlemoreKaren) April 8, 2018

A variety of issues were said to have caused the problems

The parking company was Absolutely Secure Airport Parking, but people had actually booked through a variety of different companies that all used Absolutely Secure Airport Parking as a partner. These included airport-parking-bristol.com, and Park and Go.

The first issues occurred on Friday afternoon, when passengers returning from trips abroad discovered that no one answered the phone number they had been told to ring to have their cars returned. One customer, Daniel Morgan, said that they later discovered a worker was “just pressing the red button” and cancelling the calls.

After the police were contacted, a staff member came to the airport and told customers that their cars could not be returned. Initially, customers were told that there had been an accident on a nearby road, or some that drivers were on strike.

Mike Wood of Park and Go, one of the booking agents that used Absolutely Secure Airport Parking told the i that a variety of issues exacerbated the problem, including drivers not turning up for work, communication issues and one driver suffering a heart attack.

After hours of trying, customers were able to find the office in taxis, which they described as a mobile home with no security. Retrieving keys required searching through all the keys stored in the caravan. Morgan told the i that while they were there, one worker at the company had even found a key outside on the ground next to the car that it belonged to.

As a result of some of the staffing issues, there was confusion over where the cars were parked.

Cars not parked in secure compounds

It was then discovered that the company, which had promised a “secure compound,” was in fact parking some cars in different locations across Bristol, including fields, lay-bys and even a pub car park, meaning it took even longer to find and retrieve the cars. Cars were reported to be scratched, or covered in bird mess.

One of the ‘ABSOLUTE SECURE’ locations people had to try and find by themselves to retrieve their vehicles…between 9 and 32hrs later!!! #SCAM #RETWEET pic.twitter.com/3j56fSr5wQ — Lee Drinkwater (@DrinkRM) April 8, 2018

“We are aware of a number of passengers on their return to Bristol Airport experiencing difficulties in contacting an off-site car parking provider,” a Bristol Airport spokesperson said.

“The company is an independent business and is not connected to Bristol Airport.”

Ongoing issue for returning passengers

Passengers returning to the airport now are being assisted by teams from the airport, however, though people still need to travel to the off-site office to retrieve keys, and track down cars.

Morgan said that keys found in the mobile home were labelled until late April, so it’s likely to continue to be an issue for some returning passengers for some time.

Mike Wood said that as booking agents, they “weren’t yet 100% clear on the situation,” but that they were in contact with all their customers, and had moved future bookings away from the company.

When contacted for comment, a worker at Absolutely Secure Airport Parking said that no one was available for comment.