Posted on Tue, May. 06, 2008

Watchdog: When airport parking tab is $870, it's time to seek answers

So what would you do if you dropped off a friend at DFW Airport, staying all of eight minutes, and you were told at the exit that you owed $870?

Euless resident Sue Cresswell demanded answers, figuring that a charge of more than $100 per minute was a bit steep.

She went to the airport Jan. 31 to drop off her neighbor and his two young sons for a flight to Utah, then stopped at a south exit tollbooth and presented the parking ticket she had been given minutes before. But the parking agent seemed puzzled after entering information from her ticket into a computer.

"He asked did I have another ticket. I told him I had just given him one," Cresswell recalled. "He said I owed $870. I said, 'What?'"

Cresswell was baffled. Her ticket showed the correct time she had entered the airport. But, as the parking agent pointed out, it incorrectly listed her license plate number. In fact, the number wasn't anywhere near what's on her plates, so the agent called his supervisor over.

Long story short, the supervisor asked her several questions, including whether her car been stolen recently. He also asked for her driver's license to verify her identity. He explained that, according to the computer, the license plate number on her ticket matched a vehicle that had been at the airport for 15 days. He apologized for the error, said the situation would be researched and that the parking department would contact her, Cresswell said.

"But what bothered me most was that [the supervisor] said, 'Next time, I bet you'll pay attention to the number on the ticket,'" she said.

Does anyone pay attention to the license number on the parking ticket?

The next day, she said she called the airport's parking department numerous times before someone answered. But she was put on hold, then disconnected and "attempted on several other occasions to no avail," she said.

No one from the parking department ever contacted her, Cresswell said.

The legal department did, though, via a "Final Notice" collections letter on March 26. The letter stated that when she "submitted" her driver's license, she "promised to pay" the parking charges. For good measure, the airport tacked on a $15 delinquency charge.

So how does something like this happen?

I never paid attention to this, but when you enter the airport, the tollbooth agent types your vehicle's license plate number into the parking system. It is recorded on your ticket and in the airport's computer. If you have a toll tag, your vehicle information is automatically entered.

What I can't figure is why the numbers and letters apparently keyed in were so different from the numbers and letters on Cresswell's plate. It's not a case of a switched letter or number, as you'd expect.

Cresswell was so concerned by the egregious mistake that she tracked down information about the vehicle with the license listed on her ticket. It turns out the plates match a black SUV, which is what she drives, albeit a different make and model.

Statistically, what are the chances?

In an e-mail response to The Watchdog, Ken Capps, DFW Airport's vice president of public affairs, said the bottom line is "this was a computer error."

"When you process 11 million transactions per year (30,500 per day), it occasionally happens," he said.

Capps dismissed the notion that there was any significance to the error. The airport only records license plate numbers and does not "record vehicle make, model or color. We do not have significant data to investigate this correlation."

She eventually connected with the airport's legal department, which determined that the airport's computer system had mistakenly "tied two trips together," according to a letter Cresswell received from Patricia Moody, legal department administrator. The $885 in parking charges were dropped.

Capps said Cresswell's situation would have been resolved faster if she had made contact with the guest relations department. According to his records, it sent three letters to Cresswell: on Feb. 11, Feb. 26 and March 14.

"If DFW makes a mistake, we fix it fast and issue a refund," Capps said. "In [Cresswell's] case, the parker paid nothing at the time of her exit and did not respond to several inquiries from the airport to clear up the matter. When she did finally make contact, we waived all our fees."

And "it never hurts to read the tickets when they are printed to ensure that everything is correct," he said.

Cresswell was emphatic: She never received any correspondence from the airport, except for the final notice.

"That's something I would have taken care of," she said of the purported correspondence.

In the case of this mistaken vehicle identity, the lesson seems to be this: Start paying attention to the license plate numbers on your entrance ticket. And have your money in hand when you get to the toll booth. And don't forget to keep your eyes peeled for the terminal exit. And allow plenty of time before your flight. ... Yeah. Right.

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