If you're flying abroad for half term, the chances are you'll be leaving your car at the airport. Long stay car park full? Too far from the terminal? Or just too expensive? You might choose one of the many meet and greet services instead. They take your car off you, and promise to keep it safe and secure while you're away. Take one last look before you board, though. The car could look very different when you come back...
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You can find companies offering meet-and-greet valet parking for travellers at all the major airports - Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton, Manchester... they all have different names but one word always turns up in their blurbs - security. They know we want to be reassured that they'll look after our cars as well as we do.
(Do you have something to say about this story? Tell us what you think by emailing us here. Don't forget to include 'Airport parking' in the subject line. Watchdog will publish a selection of viewers' comments underneath each story, both throughout and after the programme is on air. Please remember to include your name as you would like to see it published).
Well, here's the bad news - some of them don't. Ask Dean Dolling. When he flew from Luton, he left his car with one of the largest valet operators, Airparks, and why not? They have a secure, gated compound, with 24 hour security. But when he returned to collect it seven days later, it seemed the car had been on a journey too.
"There was paperwork scattered all across the back seat... CDs were moved... satnav was moved and basically the car wasn't how I left it."
Dean complained to Airparks, who insisted the car hadn't been anywhere. But then he got a mysterious call from a man named Greg in Australia:
"He rung me actually one evening, I was coming in from work... I thought somebody was on the phone winding me up."
It wasn't a wind up, Greg told him that he'd recently visited England, and had arranged a hire car at Luton Airport, but when he took delivery, it was obvious the vehicle belonged to someone else. It was clear the vehicle Greg was given was not a hire car... it was Dean's. Airparks offered Dean £500, which he rejected. Since Watchdog became involved, they've increased that offer to £2250.
But perhaps Dean was lucky. If he'd have flown from another airport he might have ended up with Gatwick Meet and Greet. They also offered travellers secure parking - performed by drivers who were all fully insured. Not true, says Ashley Wood who worked for them until last month.
"I was picking cars up from terminals like a 2010 Freelander, BMW X5s, Jaguar S-Types... it kind of hit home that I wasn't insured and could lose my licence."
Insurance companies insist that the minimum age for a valet driver is 25, but Gatwick Meet and Greet gave Ashley a job, even though he told them he was 23.
"I came to understand that if you're under 25 and you haven't got your licence for more than a year then you are not legally meant to be driving other people's cars... I've only had my licence eight months now."
Young men driving expensive cars that they don't own as fast as they like. Now how's that likely to end? Andy and Nicola had handed their £12,000 Audi A3 to Gatwick Meet and Greet and while they were flying to Tenerife, an 18-year-old valet driver had crashed and abandoned it. Andy told us:
"It was about 3 in the morning, I believe it was, we had a phone call, turned out that it was some PC ringing us to find out why our car was on the fast lane of the M23 against the central reservation with no driver present."
They soon received another call from the owner of Gatwick Meet and Greet. Nicola answered the call:
"He said it, I'm afraid it's a write off. We were just in complete shock... I dropped the phone."
Andy also spoke to him:
"I spoke to this guy and he said I'm ever so sorry, I've got £8,500 sitting in my bank ready to transfer to your account so I can buy you another car. I said no way on this earth that he could replace that car for that price."
Since the crash, the couple's insurers have paid the full cost of replacing the car and the valet company has recently ceased trading, but we found that their website has recently changed from Gatwick Meet and Greet to Gatwick Meet and Greet Service.
So a car hired out to a stranger, a car driven around at speed by uninsured drivers, a car left damaged beyond repair on a major trunk road and car left damaged beyond repair on a major trunk road. None of this would happen if all the companies do what the best ones do: put your vehicle in a safe and secure car park, and leave it there till you come back for it. But this isn't always the case.
If Gatwick-based valet company RS09 have one, then its news to some Watchdog viewers. One returned from holiday to find parking charge notices from Tesco. Its number plate recognition cameras had filmed her vehicle in one of their car parks for longer than the three-hour limit.
So we decided to see what would happen to ours. Posing as a holidaymaker, a member of the Watchdog team left this BMW in the company's care, complete with a tracker so we could monitor its movements. They told us it would be put in their private car park. The first spot we tracked them to looked more like a field, then it was moved to a recreational ground car park where, although there was a sign saying the land had security, the gates were unlocked and there were no cameras. We later discovered the company didn't even have permission from the council to park cars at the recreational car park, and 24 hours later when they delivered our car back to us a ten pound note we'd left inside was missing. The final insult!
Airparks told us:
They've apologised unreservedly to Dean Dollings, the driver, and say a series of "highly unusual system failures" led to his vehicle being mistakenly identified as a hire car.
Airparks have now offered him a new like-for-like car.
RS09 say:
"They say they do have a secure parking facility, they never leave vehicles on their own, and there's always someone watching them. For the customer who got a ticket from Tesco, they say the car had been taken there for a valet service, but the supermarket hadn't been informed.
"They say the farmer's field was secure and they had permission to park it there. But they've apologised for leaving it at the recreation ground overnight - they say it should have gone to a secure compound. As for the missing £10 note they've denied any knowledge, but they're willing to refund it."
Watchdog viewers' response:
We parked our car at Airparks Birmingham in the summer. We paid on the day for their exclusive "summer pack", which included a wash/valet. We had the package where they were meant to drive to the airport to drop our car off on our return from holiday, which was ok, but we discovered that it had not in fact been cleaned, which we had paid for!
This was the least of our worries. The next day (in the light) we noticed that our brand new Honda Civic had a scratch across the front. We rang straightaway to complain about both issues and they referred us to an email address, as they did not deal with complaints over the phone.
A few emails went back and forth, but they kept saying that as the car was taken off-site before the complaint was made then there is nothing they can do about it. Of course it was taken off-site as we had paid for it to be brought to us at the airport!
No compensation or even an apology was ever made.
I would never use them again.
Regards,
Miss S Williams
Meet and greet-ed or mistreated?
In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.
You can find companies offering meet-and-greet valet parking for travellers at all the major airports - Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton, Manchester... they all have different names but one word always turns up in their blurbs - security. They know we want to be reassured that they'll look after our cars as well as we do.
(Do you have something to say about this story? Tell us what you think by emailing us here. Don't forget to include 'Airport parking' in the subject line. Watchdog will publish a selection of viewers' comments underneath each story, both throughout and after the programme is on air. Please remember to include your name as you would like to see it published).
Well, here's the bad news - some of them don't. Ask Dean Dolling. When he flew from Luton, he left his car with one of the largest valet operators, Airparks, and why not? They have a secure, gated compound, with 24 hour security. But when he returned to collect it seven days later, it seemed the car had been on a journey too.
"There was paperwork scattered all across the back seat... CDs were moved... satnav was moved and basically the car wasn't how I left it."
Dean complained to Airparks, who insisted the car hadn't been anywhere. But then he got a mysterious call from a man named Greg in Australia:
"He rung me actually one evening, I was coming in from work... I thought somebody was on the phone winding me up."
It wasn't a wind up, Greg told him that he'd recently visited England, and had arranged a hire car at Luton Airport, but when he took delivery, it was obvious the vehicle belonged to someone else. It was clear the vehicle Greg was given was not a hire car... it was Dean's. Airparks offered Dean £500, which he rejected. Since Watchdog became involved, they've increased that offer to £2250.
But perhaps Dean was lucky. If he'd have flown from another airport he might have ended up with Gatwick Meet and Greet. They also offered travellers secure parking - performed by drivers who were all fully insured. Not true, says Ashley Wood who worked for them until last month.
"I was picking cars up from terminals like a 2010 Freelander, BMW X5s, Jaguar S-Types... it kind of hit home that I wasn't insured and could lose my licence."
Insurance companies insist that the minimum age for a valet driver is 25, but Gatwick Meet and Greet gave Ashley a job, even though he told them he was 23.
"I came to understand that if you're under 25 and you haven't got your licence for more than a year then you are not legally meant to be driving other people's cars... I've only had my licence eight months now."
Young men driving expensive cars that they don't own as fast as they like. Now how's that likely to end? Andy and Nicola had handed their £12,000 Audi A3 to Gatwick Meet and Greet and while they were flying to Tenerife, an 18-year-old valet driver had crashed and abandoned it. Andy told us:
"It was about 3 in the morning, I believe it was, we had a phone call, turned out that it was some PC ringing us to find out why our car was on the fast lane of the M23 against the central reservation with no driver present."
They soon received another call from the owner of Gatwick Meet and Greet. Nicola answered the call:
"He said it, I'm afraid it's a write off. We were just in complete shock... I dropped the phone."
Andy also spoke to him:
"I spoke to this guy and he said I'm ever so sorry, I've got £8,500 sitting in my bank ready to transfer to your account so I can buy you another car. I said no way on this earth that he could replace that car for that price."
Since the crash, the couple's insurers have paid the full cost of replacing the car and the valet company has recently ceased trading, but we found that their website has recently changed from Gatwick Meet and Greet to Gatwick Meet and Greet Service.
So a car hired out to a stranger, a car driven around at speed by uninsured drivers, a car left damaged beyond repair on a major trunk road and car left damaged beyond repair on a major trunk road. None of this would happen if all the companies do what the best ones do: put your vehicle in a safe and secure car park, and leave it there till you come back for it. But this isn't always the case.
If Gatwick-based valet company RS09 have one, then its news to some Watchdog viewers. One returned from holiday to find parking charge notices from Tesco. Its number plate recognition cameras had filmed her vehicle in one of their car parks for longer than the three-hour limit.
So we decided to see what would happen to ours. Posing as a holidaymaker, a member of the Watchdog team left this BMW in the company's care, complete with a tracker so we could monitor its movements. They told us it would be put in their private car park. The first spot we tracked them to looked more like a field, then it was moved to a recreational ground car park where, although there was a sign saying the land had security, the gates were unlocked and there were no cameras. We later discovered the company didn't even have permission from the council to park cars at the recreational car park, and 24 hours later when they delivered our car back to us a ten pound note we'd left inside was missing. The final insult!
Airparks told us:
They've apologised unreservedly to Dean Dollings, the driver, and say a series of "highly unusual system failures" led to his vehicle being mistakenly identified as a hire car.
Airparks have now offered him a new like-for-like car.
RS09 say:
"They say they do have a secure parking facility, they never leave vehicles on their own, and there's always someone watching them. For the customer who got a ticket from Tesco, they say the car had been taken there for a valet service, but the supermarket hadn't been informed.
"They say the farmer's field was secure and they had permission to park it there. But they've apologised for leaving it at the recreation ground overnight - they say it should have gone to a secure compound. As for the missing £10 note they've denied any knowledge, but they're willing to refund it."
Watchdog viewers' response:
We parked our car at Airparks Birmingham in the summer. We paid on the day for their exclusive "summer pack", which included a wash/valet. We had the package where they were meant to drive to the airport to drop our car off on our return from holiday, which was ok, but we discovered that it had not in fact been cleaned, which we had paid for!
This was the least of our worries. The next day (in the light) we noticed that our brand new Honda Civic had a scratch across the front. We rang straightaway to complain about both issues and they referred us to an email address, as they did not deal with complaints over the phone.
A few emails went back and forth, but they kept saying that as the car was taken off-site before the complaint was made then there is nothing they can do about it. Of course it was taken off-site as we had paid for it to be brought to us at the airport!
No compensation or even an apology was ever made.
I would never use them again.
Regards,
Miss S Williams
Meet and greet-ed or mistreated?