Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport promises to retrain and remind its customer service personnel about its 45-day refund policy for parking issues after NBC 5 Investigates’ Consumer Unit brings one woman’s big billing error to its attention.
Duncanville resident Sherri Cheshier said she was charged $109 after she parked at the airport for less than a half-hour last May. When she called to report the problem months later, she was told the charge was a mistake but that it couldn’t be reversed because it was beyond the time outlined in the airport’s 45-day refund policy.
“It wasn’t a $2 mishap. It was $109,” Cheshier said.
Cheshier said she discovered the error while she was doing her 2014 taxes this month. She was scrolling through her TollTag bill when the $109 charge caught her eye.
The TollTag allows customers to skip getting a ticket at the entrance gate of the airport and pay using the TollTag when they exit. But when Cheshier parked on that trip, she said there was a glitch.
“I entered the airport with no problem,” she said.
But when she tried to leave less than a half-hour later, the system couldn’t read her TollTag. An airport worker helped her.
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“I had to use my debit card for the $2. I never thought anything more of it,” said Cheshier.
Months later, she spotted the charge. So she called DFW and spoke with a representative in the finance and parking department.
“She could pull up my debit card number, and she had proof that I had exited the airport and had to pay $2,” said Cheshier. “She said, ‘I’ll have to send this to claims but they should be sending you a check within five to 10 days.’”
But Cheshier didn’t know that the airport has a policy stating that “parking refund requests must be submitted within forty-five (45) days of the date and time of exit.”
So shortly after she was told she would be getting a refund for $109, Cheshier got an email saying she wouldn’t get her money back because she made the request outside of the 45 day window.
It read: “Due to the DFW policy on 45 days from the current date of request made, it was not approved. I am sorry for any inconvenience.”
“And that’s what irritated me more, because they could tell that there was an error on their part,” she said. “I was mad.”
That’s when Cheshier called NBC 5 Investigates’ Consumer Unit.
David Magaña, DFW Airport’s spokesman, said TollTag errors are rare. Of the 50,000 daily transactions at the airport’s parking control towers, proper TollTag reads occur 99.97 percent of the time.
But in Cheshier’s case, there was a system misread from several weeks before, and as a result Cheshier was charged $109 when she should have only been charged $2, Magana said.
He said this error was not Cheshier’s fault.
“As for the 45-day policy, we do have that policy in place (per the DFW Schedule of Charges) for refunds on issues that are not the Airport’s fault,” said Magana. “If the error is DFW’s error, as it evidently was in this case, then there is no 45-day limit.”
Cheshier received a refund.
“DFW pledges to do everything possible to ensure any transactions are settled quickly and accurately if they are found to be in error,” Magana said.
But Cheshier believes she may not have gotten a refund if it weren’t for NBC 5 Investigates’ Consumer Unit.
“Unless you have someone like you guys who will fight for me, you’re not going to get your money back,” Cheshier said.
She said this ordeal taught her a valuable lesson.
“Check your TollTag charges regularly,” she said.
