A Colorado man was charged nearly $20,000 for less than half an hour of parking at Denver International Airport — the second such error in two months at one of the nation’s busiest airports.
Jim Boyd, of Glenhaven, said he parked for 27 minutes at DIA’s garage Thursday while dropping off his wife for a flight to Germany. The standard fee should have been $7.
Instead, his credit card was charged $19,824 as he exited the garage.
“I heard the Chase Bank notification that $19,824 had been charged to Denver parking,” Boyd told NBC affiliate 9NEWS.
“My immediate thought was, oh no, this is just like what I heard on 9NEWS a month ago.”
Boyd’s receipt showed his car had supposedly entered the garage June 6 — nearly four months earlier — and logged more than 169,000 minutes.
“I went back and looked at my calendar, and there’s no way that was me,” Boyd said. “I was not at DIA on June the 6th.”
Airport officials said Friday that Boyd’s massive bill was the result of a system glitch that confused his license plate with another vehicle’s.
The two plates differed by only one character — a “B” instead of an “8.”
DIA said it was alerted to the issue Thursday and immediately worked with its parking contractor, LAZ Parking, to issue a refund.
The airport said the $19,824 charge was reversed that day, along with Boyd’s actual $7 fee, and apologized for the mistake.
The airport admitted that Boyd’s case was not an isolated incident.
In a statement to 9NEWS, officials disclosed that DIA had logged four such cases since June 1.
Last month, another driver, a Denver woman, was billed more than $2,300 for 14 hours of parking after the system incorrectly showed she had left her car there for more than two months.
In that earlier case, DIA attributed the problem to an “entry ticket that had not been closed out in the system.”
The airport had said at the time that the error was not widespread.
DIA now says its parking system vendor, Flash Parking, “has corrected this system error and has updated the parking system software.”
A fix was deployed to all parking kiosks Friday afternoon, one day after Boyd’s charge.
“It appears these four instances were the only ones of record out of approximately 1.5 million transactions since June,” DIA said.
“Our review indicates this is not a widespread issue.”
Boyd said he and his wife were fortunate they had enough credit to cover the $19,824 hold while awaiting the refund.
“Other people, you know, that might have totally maxed them out and created all kinds of problems,” he said.
“Somehow, there’s got to be some safeguards, and they need to figure out what’s going on with their system.”
The airport advised travelers to double-check the amount displayed on kiosk screens before paying.
If the total appears incorrect, customers are urged to press cancel, rescan their ticket or press the help button to reach an attendant.
DIA said it plans to install a new camera-based system within six months that will not only read license plates but also capture full vehicle descriptions — a step it says should prevent future mismatches.
Boyd said the ordeal has left him wary of returning to the garage.
“I’m supposed to go back and pick my wife up in two weeks, and I am definitely a little bit hesitant,” he said.
“I’m going to be watching that screen really carefully when I put my credit card in.”
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