ECHO readers have had their say after a driver left his car parked in a family's driveway for four days without their permission.
The ECHO reported on Wednesday that Zekarias Haile, who lives near Manchester Airport with his wife and two children, woke up one morning to find a stranger had parked on his property. Zekarias, 51, said he had to wait four days for the driver to return.
He doesn't know who the Range Rover belongs to but believed the owner must have been going on holiday from the nearby international airport. Zekarias told the Manchester Evening News : "Someone, without my permission, had put the car there and they didn’t care."
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The car blocked access to his garden and bins. Zekarias called the police, who said it was not a criminal offence and there was nothing they could do as his car, which he’d parked on the road, was not being blocked in.
The family have been living in the home for 14 years and are aware that rogue parking companies operate in their area, offering parking for the airport. They suspect that whoever left the Range Rover could have been working for one of these cowboy outfits.
A number of readers took to the ECHO's Facebook page to react to the story and suggested ways that they would have dealt with the parking fiasco.
Tanya Jacqueline Laverty said: "I would get someone in to remove the car and send the bill to the owner of the car." Scott Gavin added: "I’d have built a brick wall around it."
Madelaine Walker's suggestion was: "I'd block it in for months!". Sophie Brennan's advice to the homeowners was: "Get a gate that can be locked or bollards".
Lisa Crowley said: "I had this problem on several occasions in Birmingham, I rang the police and they said it's illegal for me to clamp it, that's gotta be done by the police or DVLA, but they could arrange to get it towed if it happens again."
Chris Glover had a suggestion which would see the driver having to pay for his parking. He wrote: "I'd either have had it towed, or clamped it and charged exactly what he would have paid to park at the airport to remove the clamp."
Allison Metcalf thought that it might not be the driver's fault and it could have instead been an error. She wrote: "I’d be raging. But this might not actually be their fault.
"You can now advertise your driveway to rent to people. So they could have made a mistake and parked on the wrong drive. Or as has been reported in London. Someone dodgy has rented out your driveway to them."
