A regular prepaid parking customer at Auckland Airport is questioning how his credit card was charged thousands of dollars after using it as tap-and-go verification of his booking to raise the entry and exit barriers.
The man, known as Clay, told the Herald the most recent instance was the third time his card has been incorrectly charged, yet the system error cited in the past had still not been rectified.
An airport spokesperson said it was clear “an error has taken place” with the booking, and vowed to process a full refund “as soon as possible”.
The latest bill came after Clay spent $96 on prepaid parking at the airport for a four-night trip to Napier at the end of February.
After returning on March 1, he was inadvertently charged another $2643 when tapping his card to verify and log his exit time.
“I purposely haven’t asked for it back, because I’m just waiting for them to be active and chase me up,” Clay said.
“I told the guy at the kiosk, ‘You know, I’m sick of emailing you guys and having to chase up the money. There’s obviously a system fault, I know about it, because you guys have told me about it before’.”
In early 2024, Clay experienced similar parking woes at the airport, with two charges totalling $441 taken out of his account just weeks apart when using the services on separate occasions.
Despite allegedly being assured his latest complaint would be escalated to the relevant team, Clay said he hadn’t heard anything from Auckland Airport since being billed.
“There could be a lot of other people who are just missing this and getting charged a fortune,” he said.
“In normal circumstances, you would just tap ... the gate would open and you would leave. That’s how it’s supposed to happen.
“But when the machines are playing up, as soon as you leave, you just get charged and you can’t do anything about it.”
Having used the airport’s parking services for years, Clay said he knows their machines “inside out”.
With the aim of supporting ticketless access, prepaid bookings for domestic parking zones usually require individuals to scan the card used to purchase them as verification for entering and exiting.
The international terminal’s parking zones predominantly use Licence Plate Recognition (LPR) for the same services, after upgrading the system in conjunction with the opening of its new transport hub in 2024.
“But it did used to have the same problem, because one of my older charges are from international,” Clay said.
In the first two instances in 2024, Clay said the airport moved quickly to process the refunds.
“To me, that just shows they recognise that there’s a wider problem here,” he said.
“I know I’m being a bit silly just leaving it, but I just want them to bloody do something about it, you know?”
In a statement, a spokesperson for Auckland Airport apologised for the concerns raised by the charge “and for not responding more quickly to resolve the issue”.
“The error occurred when the customer’s vehicle was not properly checked out of the carpark following a short visit in January,” they said.
“As a result, the system incorrectly calculated the days between two visits to the airport as part of a single stay.
Our team is reviewing what occurred in this case and why the January exit was not properly recorded. We can see from our records that they were manually released by an operator from the carpark, rather than tapping and going, which may have created the issue."
There were strict processes in place to ensure charges were fair and accurate, the spokesperson said.
An overcharging error had been spotted late last year following a vendor software upgrade, affecting 0.8% of airport parking customers, but affected customers had already been contacted to initiate refunds and apologise.
“Any customer who has a question about their parking charges can contact our customer service centre on 0800 247 767 or send a message through the contact page on our website,” the spokesperson said.
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