One of the vehicle’s door frames was completely ripped off

George Sloan’s badly-damaged car(Image: Supplied)

A holidaymaker has spoken of his horror the moment he returned to a car park at Bristol Airport to discover extensive, expensive damage to his vehicle.

George Sloan was on cloud nine on January 3. He was returning from soaking up a bit of winter sun on the Costa Blanca in Spain, and his beloved Rangers had beaten hated rivals Celtic 3-1 in that day’s Old Firm Derby.

But his mood soured dramatically when he went to pick up his Range Rover Evoque from Bristol Airport’s Silver Zone car park after landing that evening.

The entire frame of one rear door had been ripped off in an accident which occurred while the car was in the airport’s care.

“The guy who was the manager that night said it was the worst he had ever seen in the four years he had worked there,” Mr Sloan said. “I was absolutely gobsmacked.”

The Silver Zone car park is Bristol Airport’s cheapest parking option, but it still costs about £100 a week. Users of the car park drop their keys off before an airport driver moves their car to a ‘secure, on-site car park’.

Mr Sloan was told his car was driveable, despite the fact it was effectively missing a door(Image: Supplied)

Mr Sloan, who splits a lot of his time between working in his native Scotland and with being his partner who lives in the South West, said a customer service representative initially told him his car was driveable.

“That was just absolutely ridiculous when you see the state of the car,” he said. “I’m surprised it wasn’t written off.”

Bristol Airport offered Mr Sloan a replacement vehicle from a rental car company while his Range Rover was fixed. However, it took three visits to a rental car company before he was given a four-wheel drive, which he needed for his work.

On the first two visits to the rental car office, they told him nobody at Bristol Airport had made them aware of his need for a four wheel drive.

Although the airport has offered to cover the cost of repairing the damage, Mr Sloan was left thoroughly dissatisfied with how the matter was handled.

The shell of the door frame was being kept in an airport office(Image: Supplied)

“I’ve had to make all the phone calls running up and down from Scotland to change cars, not even being offered my money back for parking or any compensation,” he said.

“It’s absolutely disgusting beyond belief, a customer service manager we spoke to thought it was actually funny, they said it was their best driver and he had done nothing wrong.

“And you know what? It’s not about the money, it’s the principle of the damage they’ve done to my car and all the inconvenience of sorting it out.”

A spokesperson for Bristol Airport said the accident occurred when a member of staff reversed a much larger vehicle into Mr Sloan’s car. The tow bar of the larger vehicle then caught the side door of the Range Rover, pushing it into another vehicle before taking the side door off, the spokesperson said.

Mr Sloan said he was ‘gobsmacked’ at the state of his car when he returned from holiday(Image: Supplied)

“We are genuinely sorry the customer’s car was damaged while on our site and agreed to pay for the damage caused,” the spokesperson said. “A replacement car was provided, and this was changed to a larger 4×4 vehicle, at the customer’s request, which unfortunately took longer than expected to source. “Unfortunately, there have been delays to the repair due to a part being on back order, but we have kept the customer informed throughout and apologised for the inconvenience caused.”

Bristol Live requested CCTV footage from the car park so that we could review the accident. The airport did not respond.

Mr Sloan appears to be far from the only person to suffer damage to their vehicle after leaving it in the Silver Zone car park.

In the past six months, at least 20 people have left negative Google reviews making claims of damage allegedly done to vehicles left at the Silver Zone. The airport said there were over a million ‘car movements’ at the Silver Zone car park each year, the vast majority of which experienced no issues.

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