Newton Mearns driver hits out after Glasgow Airport car park charge

Jeff Miller says he had to pay the extra charge on Tuesday, December 26 after cameras didn’t pick up on him leaving the NCP short stay car park at Glasgow Airport on a previous job earlier in the day.

As a result, he was charged £40 on top of the standard £5 fee which he had to pay up front when exiting the car park after picking up a customer.   

Jeff said: "It’s bad enough to be charged £5 each time even though I may actually be in the pick-up/ drop off zone for less than a minute, though the charge is passed onto the customer.

"But on my third pick up [of the day] at 11am I noticed on leaving that I was being charged £45 on my credit card instead of the usual £5.

"After dropping off my customer, I went back to the airport car park to query this.

"I pressed the intercom button and was told ‘the camera on entering and leaving the airport car park doesn’t always pick up the registration number’.

"So, the extra charge I was given is because the system thinks I had been at the airport for a couple of hours or more."

Jeff, from Newton Mearns, was given a phone number to contact NCP right away but says he did not hear back until Wednesday, January 3.

NCP has since apologised and told Jeff they will be refunding the £40 and will be looking into the incident.

Jeff says while he appreciates the incident occurred over the festive holiday period which led to a delay in response time, he is frustrated the mistake occured in the first place and raised concerns about what he could have been charged if he hadn’t returned to the airport until the next day.

The 60-year-old said: "Luckily it was on my credit card so I wasn’t in arrears but I’m sure I won’t be the only person that it's ever happened to.

"The other situation is if I hadn’t been back at the airport until the next day, it wouldn’t be £40, it probably would run into the hundreds so I was very upset with it all.

"I think it’s a disgrace."

He continued: "I appreciate it was the holiday period but the fact it took over a week to get back in touch with me I thought was a bit of bad show."

A spokesperson for NCP said: "NCP apologises for this matter, and for the inconvenience caused to the customer as a result. 

"We are looking into it to understand what happened and will be putting signage in the car parks with the direct phone number for each site, so customers can reach the local team as quickly as possible."