gorps1

I was caught up in last weekend’s weather disruption at LHR and, thankfully, I was only delayed by 3 hours.

When I book with Heathrow Parking, I was always give my estimated departure time as 2 hours after the ETA of the flight. In this case, I estimated my departure time as 1800, and I eventually exited at 2100. Today, a charge has been made to my credit card for a full day’s parking, which the Heathrow Parking call centre confirmed was for exiting the car park 3 hours later than advised and they wouldn’t be refunding the charge in the circumstances. They suggested the airline would reimburse me!! I have emailed Heathrow Parking and asked them to reconsider their decision.

I was always under the impression that Heathrow’s parking charges were calculated for each full 24 hour period. I did a dummy booking for the same period in January and if I had said on the booking my departure time was 0600 on the Monday, rather than 1800 the day before, the parking charge is the same. The call centre confirmed that if I’d given my exit time as 0600 on Monday, I would not have had to pay for an extra day’s parking and my parking fee would have been the same.

My takeaway from this is in future to always provide an exit time which takes full advantage of the 24 hour booking period. In the meantime, anyone using Heathrow Parking caught up in the disruption should check their credit card statement.

xenole

I thought they gave a grace period for things like delays? Sure it mentions that on the website or somewhere I've seen.

I booked over the weekend, arriving at 4:30am, and my plane having a 9am arrival time. Put down 10pm as it made no difference to the price seeing as they charge a day extra for an hour after your entry time anyway. Gives some protection and I was going to do some other things but put them off due to the weather.

Heathrow parking does mention a little bit about some leniency, but pretty much says that if you're later than your estimated time, you pay a full day, or if you leave a day early, you still pay up to the time you were going to leave..
Goodtogo seem to imply, "Tough. We're responsible for nothing and won't be generous in the slightest"

You would have thought they might be a little bit flexible considering. Wouldn't have expected too many people driving to LHR to park for flights considering the situation.

msm2000uk

This seems like a rather poor decision by Heathrow Parking - especially as there must have been quite a few people who were caught up in the same situation as you.

Now the devil in me, says this is money-grabbing, while the other side, says they were within their own rights to charge you.

I'd write to them formally, and then use the power of social media to try and get a refund.

M

andrewkeith5

Your takeaway point is always good advice - always book the full extent of the 24 hour period you've paid for.

The parking system is all automated, so I don't imagine they'd have any process for manual intervention. From their perspective, it is a parking space that should be earning them money being filled...

Normally, I would have thought this would be part of the costs to recover from the airline or possibly travel insurance, if there's no luck with Heathrow themselves. That said, I'd expect a goodwill gesture on their part to waive the cost - ultimately, Heathrow failed to keep their airfield open. The lack of recognition of weather in airline compensation is a source of confusion and frustration for me!

I assume their assertion of "recover it from the airline" would be because Heathrow would have already paid the compensation to BA for the delays incurred?

Oxon Flyer

On the occasions where genuine IRROPS have delayed my carpark exit beyond the booked time, I've just called into the office on the way out to explain and have always been successful in leaving without paying a surcharge.

andrewkeith5

That's fair enough and a sensible course of action I will change my advice to that - didn't think of it before for some reason!

I assume most people wouldn't put that much effort in though and would just leave the car park - what I was trying to say (and admittedly I didn't!) is that I can't imagine there's any way for Heathrow to be able to automatically stop issuing extra payments for pre-booked parking for IRROPS because they can't really know whether you were subject to IRROPS or not...

WorldLux

They were within their own rights to charge you though I suspect it would be wiser to to not charge the extra fee when Heathrow is in meltdown. With regard to refunds by the airline, I have successfully claimed the cost of an additional day of parking when the flight was delayed due to weather. Strictly speaking this isn't however included in the duty of care. YMMV.