Few weeks ago I returned from a trip to Bordeaux in France. My flight had been delayed for 4 hours, without much explanation from Aerlingus. We were basically wandering around the airport, like zombies, without information. Aerlingus is getting used to delaying flights and not much of an explanation given.
Anyway, today I didn't want to talk about Aerlingus, but about the Parking QuickPark.ie. I have been a customer with this company for many years. I was used to parking there and despite it is much farer than other parkings, habits are difficult to break so automatically I used them again and again, 4 or 5 times a year. The only perk ever received as a loyal customer was a voucher for dog racing.... thanks but no, respect for animals (and your customers) please.
So, between the landing delay from Aerlingus, landing, collecting my baggage, mega passport check queue, waiting for their bus (no longer at Terminal 2!), waiting on their bus for new unexisitng passengers (even though the bus was already fully packed and I had to go standing all the time), locating the car and so on,... my parking time had expired for a bit more than one hour (1hr and 15 mins aprox). Once at the barrier to try to exit, the code would no longer open the barrier.
I was absolutely exhausted from the delay and the trip and I had to ring the bell at the barrier. After a while and some more waiting, someone answered, I explained the situation thinking that after checking my code, they would immediately open the gate. No way. The man who was working was not understandable at all. I explained that so many more times I had booked for full days which I had used only half day. I gave them my mobile number and email but it seems that their useless system could locate only 2 previous bookings (even though I had in my email proof of many more). So even though he could see that in my previous bookings I had used less than the full 24 hours paid for, the man insisted that I had to pay. Totally unable to understand the situation, how tired I was and that I had been a customer for so many years.
He just cared about charging me 1 full day again, for 1hr and 15 minutes used. I was so tired and after seeing what kind of personnel works there, that I paid the full day. I accepted that I was being ripped off but I will never go back to QuickPark.ie parking. I am flying again next month and they will never see me again.
P.S: A lawyer should look into the situation that customers are being charged for time in parkings that is not used. For example 2 EUR 50cents an hour, when you have only been there 27 minutes, not an entire hour.
I am from Catalonia and I remember well that by EU legislation parkings can only charge for minutes or fractions actually used.
