CARS worth more than £100,000 have gone missing from disgraced airport parking firm Pink Meet and Greet.
West Sussex trading standards say that three customers of Gatwick-based Pink Meet And Greet returned from holiday, expecting to find their "top-of-the-range" cars, but were told there was no record of them ever being left at the airport.
Police are now investigating the disappearance of a £50,000 Range Rover and £30,000 Mercedes, both less than a year old, as well as a £25,000 three-year-old Alfa Romeo.
Two owners fear their homes could also be at risk as they handed over keys to both their cars and homes to the company.
Gatwick operators BAA were trying to reunite owners with their cars after the unlicensed company ceased trading last week and dumped a box filled with scores of holidaymakers' car keys with them.
Another parking firm NCP were called in to help return the abandoned cars with their owners, and said three Pink Meet And Greet clients had come asking for their cars, but they had no record of them.
A Gatwick source said today: "Three people turned up expecting to have these cars, but there was no record of them at all.
"They have been reported to police because it may well be that these cars have been stolen.
"When this company decided they were going to go out of business, someone might have thought they would just go home with one of the cars.
"The ones that have been reported missing are all expensive - all three are top of the range.
"Two of their customers also said they left their house keys with the company. They were on the keyring when they handed their car keys over to them to be valet parked.
"It's very worrying because the kind of people who would think nothing of stealing your car, would also not think twice of taking a look around your house and walking off with a plasma TV or a computer.
"This just shows the danger of trusting your car to unlicensed firms."
Pink Meet And Greet hit the headlines last month after BBC consumer show Watchdog exposed its staff damaging cars and joyriding in them while they were supposed to be securely parked.
Surrey County Council's trading standards department received several complaints that an airport parking company was not parking consumer's cars in a secure compound as it advertised. Instead, cars were being parked on the street.
Spokesman Simon Eden said: "We can confirm that three cars have gone missing after they were left with Pink Meet and Greet and are presumed stolen. The matter is now in the hands of the police."
Officers launched a probe and Pink Meet And Greet Ltd company director Steve Kittle, then told them the company had stopped trading.
Customers of the unlicensed firm were being directed to the NCP Valet building, who say they have now reunited most customers with their vehicles.
NCP Spokesman Tim Cowen said: "We have now reunited something like 40 customers with their cars, which amounts to most of them.
"We have been approached by three car owners who said they had left their cars with Pink Meet And Greet, but we have no record of them and have passed their details on to police."
Source: Life Style Extra
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