{"id":54925,"date":"2025-09-10T10:21:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T10:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/54925\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T10:21:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T10:21:07","slug":"dublin-airport-apologises-and-promises-parking-refunds-after-overcharging-thousands-of-customers-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/54925\/","title":{"rendered":"Dublin Airport apologises and promises parking refunds after overcharging thousands of customers \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The authority that runs Dublin Airport<\/a> has apologised and promised to issue refunds totalling almost \u20ac350,000 after it overcharged thousands of customers for parking earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Almost 4,500 customers paid more for parking during two so-called flash sales in March and May than they would have when the parking spaces were not discounted.<\/p>\n

The overcharging emerged when impacted consumers started making contact with the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission<\/a> (CCPC) helplines.<\/p>\n

The commission welcomed the DAA<\/a>\u2019s decision to refund customers who were overcharged during the \u2018flash sales\u2019 and thanked those who had alerted it to the overcharging.<\/p>\n

It also noted that under the Consumer Protection Act 2007, it is against the law to provide incorrect or misleading information to consumers about price promotions.<\/p>\n

The flash sales advertised car parking at a promotional rate of \u20ac10 or \u20ac12 per day but in some cases, airport car parking was priced at a lower rate in advance of and after the promotion.<\/p>\n

One consumer who contacted the CCPC reported that on March 9th, the day before the sale, the price for 10 days\u2019 parking was \u20ac83. However, this rose to \u20ac110 for the same dates and duration in the sale. <\/p>\n

When the so-called sale ended, the price reverted to \u20ac83.<\/p>\n

Another consumer booked parking for a five-day stay during the sale at a cost of \u20ac60, and the price for the same parking was \u20ac56 after the sale ended. A third person alerted the commission that a 12-day stay was priced at \u20ac94 during the sale and cost \u20ac80 just a couple of weeks before the sale began. <\/p>\n

When the DAA was contacted by the CCPC, it confirmed that over the supposed sale periods, a total of 14,854 transactions were made with 4,405 of these transactions found to be an overpayment.<\/p>\n

The total amount overpaid in those transactions was \u20ac25,838 with the average overpayment of about \u20ac5.90 while the maximum overpayment in respect of any one payment was \u20ac64.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe welcome the swift action taken [by the DAA] following contact from the CCPC alerting it to potential breaches of consumer protection laws,\u201d chairman of the commission Brian McHugh said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe CCPC was able to take this action thanks to consumers who took the time to report concerns about misleading sales pricing. All calls to the CCPC helpline are screened for potential breaches of consumer protection law and drive our enforcement and compliance activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr McHugh said the flash sales coincided with the addition of a new competitor in the airport car park market and said that active competition among businesses \u201cis vital to drive choice, better service and innovation. However, any promotions need to be grounded in real benefits to consumers\u201d.<\/p>\n

A DAA spokesman told The Irish Times that a flat \u20ac10-per-day rate was applied across all eligible dates during the sale, \u201cunintentionally overriding lower offpeak prices\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said that once it was flagged by the CCPC, the DAA opened a full internal review and will take \u201cimmediate voluntary action\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is issuing full refunds to all affected customers of the total cost of their booking, not just the overcharge amount, totalling about \u20ac350,000 and offering a 20 per cent discount on future car park bookings as a goodwill gesture. System corrections and additional safeguards are being put in place to prevent recurrence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got this wrong, and I want to personally apologise to every customer who was overcharged,\u201d said chief executive of the DAA Kenny Jacobs. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t have happened. We\u2019ve moved quickly to fix the issue and are now reimbursing everyone affected, automatically and in full. No forms, no hassle,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve also put new checks in place to make sure this doesn\u2019t happen again. Our customers expect better, and rightly so. We\u2019re proud of the high satisfaction levels we\u2019ve built up, and we\u2019re determined to maintain that trust by doing the right thing, every time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The authority that runs Dublin Airport has apologised and promised to issue refunds totalling almost \u20ac350,000 after it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,7771,38997,26,18,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-54925","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-competition-and-consumer-protection-commission-ccpc","10":"tag-daa","11":"tag-dublin-airport","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}