Manchester Airport Meet & Greet T2 — Attraction in Manchester

Title: Appalling Manchester Airport Meet & Greet Service

If you're considering using Manchester Airport's Meet & Greet service, do yourself a favor and don’t. Booked direct with the airport.

Our recent experience was an absolute nightmare from start to finish. What should have been a seamless and convenient service turned into a chaotic mess, with a complete lack of professionalism, courtesy, and care for customers' vehicles.

Outbound drop-off was the only smooth part of the process: we left our car at the top of the Terminal 2 car park, handed over the key at reception, and received a barcode for collection. Simple, right? Little did we know this would be the last time we had any semblance of good service.

A few days into our holiday, I received a notification from the vehicle tracker that the ignition had been left on and the doors unlocked. At the time, I assumed the car was being moved and didn't think much of it. Big mistake. Fast forward to our return – after a long and exhausting flight, we headed to the Meet & Greet reception, only to find our barcode invalid.

Cue our first interaction with the staff, and it was dreadful. We managed to speak to an incredibly rude and dismissive staff member who showed zero concern when we brought up the tracker alert, confirming they had left the ignition on and the car unlocked for two entire weeks. This wasn't just ignored – it was flat-out shrugged off.

We were then informed that our car battery was completely dead, and, to add insult to injury, it wasn’t even parked at the airport but in a hotel car park. Their solution? I was told to walk over there myself to see if I could start it. So, there I was at 5 AM, leaving my wife and luggage behind in reception to hunt down our car, exhausted after our flight. Upon finding it, I immediately noticed the wing mirrors hadn’t been folded in – another red flag confirming what the tracker had warned me about days earlier: the car had been left on and unlocked the entire time.

Naturally, the battery was completely dead, and after 20 minutes of fumbling in the dark, a staff member finally turned up with a booster pack. We managed to get the car started, but the ordeal didn’t end there. I was told to follow a staff member through a staff-only lane to get back into Terminal 2 to collect my wife and luggage. You’d think they'd have this part under control after all the mistakes they had already made. Nope.

I got to the staff-only barrier, only to find no intercom, no way to call anyone, and no assistance whatsoever. After sitting there for several minutes, another car pulled up behind me, and the driver, clearly annoyed, yelled that the lane was for staff only. When I explained the situation, he sighed and said, "Yeah, this happens all the time," before using his pass to let me through. The fact that "this happens all the time" tells you everything you need to know about the shambolic state of this service.

Finally, I collected my wife and luggage and got out of there as fast as I could. The sheer lack of organisation, respect, and competence was staggering.

In short, avoid Manchester Airport’s Meet & Greet service. The convenience they advertise is a complete facade. Instead, you’ll be left with a dead battery, a car left unlocked for weeks, and a team that couldn’t care less. A disastrous end to what should have been a simple airport parking experience. One star is...

Great idea but a terrible experience - almost missed flight and damaged car. Firstly the directions are misleading - they tell you its at the top of the T2 multi-story car park so you follow the signs for that and end up in the drop-off zone where you can see the Meet and greet through fences. My bad, £3.50 to get out quickly. Try again, this time carry on round to the multi-story because it's at the top of that right? Wrong! at the top you can still see the Meet and Greet but it's still across a fence! Have to get out climb over the fence and ask the guys who say it's on a completely different exit from the roundabout! I have to wait 10-15 minutes to get out of the multi-story without paying and drive round the block yet again! So you don't come off the roundabout at the multi-story entrance, there is a special M&G exit further round that you can't see until you get there!! Please can we have a map or some decent instructions?!

OK found it at last! drive up the ramp and stopped behind the queue at the entrance barrier. They're not moving, why? because they don't know what to do. Why's that? because the instructions are on a screen about 10ft up in the air and they haven't noticed it! You have to open your sun visor and strain forward over your steering wheel to see it! You have to wait while it takes photos of your car. Then you're in another queue to park your car in a lane. Nobody there, I'm already late for my flight! I get out lock it and run to find a guy and then in to the key drop off desk. This is supposed to be automated but it doesn't work so yet another queue to drop off the key! Last person to board the flight - thanks!

Oh well, at least pick up will be easy right? Wrong! Do I go back to the same desk? No! you have to get out into the car park again where they have an office. You have an card with a bar code that you just scan in the machine and a locker opens with your key in it. Except it doesn't because that doesn't work either! (never has apparently but there's nothing to tell you that!). Again you have to queue to get the guy at the desk to find and give you your keys. Once you find your car you have to get out of the narrowest exit I've ever seen in a car park which is at a weird 45 degree angle (requiring a 135 degree turn in a tight space) and surrounded by kerbs. Judging by the amount of scrapes on the top of the kerbs I am not the only one to scrape the underside of my car on them. After a multi-point turn I can still hardly line up my car without hitting the kerb! Might be just passable with a Ford Ka at most! Finally, I leave this God-forsaken car park...

It's reasonably good. But once again, they've moved the entrance to M&G T2. And at 03.40am on Monday 12th Sept 2022, whilst queuing to go through the barriers on the multistory car park, the barriers failed. Not only did we have to wait for over 30 minutes before someone came to deal with the fault, but because it's practically single lane traffic on Palma Ave, until you are almost at the barrier entrance, it meant anyone that needed to go beyond to the other car parks/ staff car parks, couldn't get past the bottleneck. Hopefully that doesn't happen too often. But with all the building work going on at Manchester Airport, especially T2, shouldn't they have widened said stretch of road? The travelling public don't need such stress just parking their vehicles, when they've got the rest of the 'organised chaos' that is the rest of Manchester Airport. Sept 2022, and security is not only a mess (even fast track), but it's stupidly arranged. You queue at the security belts to put your carry ones etc into trays, before you walk through the usual scanners. But they have you queuing in rows of 4 or 5 at the belt, with several people queuing behind you. So you pick up a tray to put your items in, and so do 4 other people practically at the same time. And you all put your tray on the belt, but there's still a backlog of the previous trays from those previously in front of you. So the security personnel on the other side are struggling to make sure those trays go in some sort of order. What numbskull came up with that idea? It was pure Fred Karno's. If I could get a TUI flight to Naples, Italy from Liverpool, I go there without hesitation. I really hate travelling through Manchester Airport, bad enough charging for the 'privilege' of dropping someone off for a flight (thieving gits), but the whole experience is rubbish. And don't get me started about the absolute incompetence of their recruitment after the pandemic lockdown in early 2022. The world and his wife knew we were going to come out of it months before. But these thickos in charge didn't start recruiting until weeks/months after we started travelling again. AND they should start paying a proper salary for those working there doing a tough job, and taking flack from annoyed passengers for decisions made by those promoted above their capabilities. In 2021 the CEO (Charlie Cornish) was paid £2.5 million! Given what I've seen, I wouldn't pay him in washers, nor his equally incompetent Managing Director, Karen (not so) Smart. Who was paid a...