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I spent a decade in the parking technology space. (Co-founder PayByPhone -- don't hate me, I genuinely tried to make things more civilized and convenient, I swear!). Anyways, I miss hearing about hilarious and genius hacks and escalations like this. The brilliance deployed to work around parking regulations is amazing.

Not condoning, but here's a (naive?) though experiment if the Barnacle shows up in use again... Park your car and cover it. Many car covers have cable locks to prevent removal and openings to expose plates for legal/bylaw reasons, so this should be permissible. This may provide protection from sun, frost, birdshit, and now Barnacles(tm)! My assumption is that parking enforcers don't have permission to modify, remove, or damage property on a parked car like this.

Of course, there's always a tow-truck. Or you could pay for the parking you use, but I respect the hacker spirit!

11 comments

The problem is not paying for the parking I use. That is an easy problem to solve, as long as the price is "reasonable".

The problem I have with parking authorities is fraud. When the meter employee gives me a ticket for a different meter, or when the parking ticket fine is $200 instead of say $30, or when the restrictions are absurd/vague ("You can park here for 2 hours m-f except holidays except 9-11 except in green spots except you have to display the ticket in your window except you need to be 6 inches but not 12 inches from the curb except except except except")...

... then this is the part where I start to suspect I'm not paying for the parking I'm using, but instead I am paying for someone else's large and undeserved profit.

The other day I went to a concert and parked my car at a parking lot. When the concert ended, of course there were masses of people trying to exit the parking lot. There were only 2 cashiers to pay the parking ticket — no automated machines. So we waited over an hour to pay our ticket. Time that we ended up paying with our ticket (per hour parking). The cashier didn’t want to refund us for the waiting time. If the law doesn’t require any standards requiring waiting times — why would a parking operator ever be incentivized to have an efficient checkout system? Especially if they are the only parking in town. Anyways lots of sketchy consumer violations in this space.

Had an attendant try to pull a similar stunt once. I simply told them that I was willing to sit at the booth until it was resolved to my satisfaction, or the cops showed up, while cars piled up behind me. A few moments of hemming and hawing, and out I went no charge. I was willing to pay what was owed, but I imagine “the system” couldn’t handle that, so write it off.

There's an entire Frasier episode based on this exact scenario.

Awesome. If more people stuck to their guns like this, the whole system would fall apart, and this racket wouldn't work. It does work though, because most people are pushovers and seek to avoid confrontation. If more people would stand their ground against obvious fraud, the world would be a better place!

Complain. Pay by credit card, issue a charge back for “service not rendered”.

While I agree that's a hassle, I don't think this should result in a refund. It's like ordering dinner, eating it, and then wanting a refund for the meal because you waited a long time for the meal.

No it's like renting a car for a daily rate to be returned any day by midnight, coming back to return the car at 11:45pm and having to wait till after midnight to pay and being expected to pay for another day. ( yes not perfect analogy, but same idea. You were ready to return it, and they were not )

I think the OP meant they were charged for the extra hour they spent waiting in line trying to exit.

Oh I see, thought that they didn't think they should pay just because there was a long line to get out.

Incidentally, if you go to a restaurant, and you waited a long time for your meal (that is longer than their required service time) most restaurants will comp your bill, or at least give you free bottle/desert for the inconvenience. For reference, I've worked in half a dozen restaurants over as many years, and they all did this.

What? No it's not.

It's like if you were paying for a meal by each minute taken to eat it, then the waiter left your food on the counter for an hour before bringing it over because they were busy, then they charged you for that hour because "it already left the kitchen"

Adding insult to injury caused by their own lack of preparedness.

Much better example. Thanks.

It's more like eating dinner, finishing, and then no one being willing to take your money for an hour after you're ready to leave. A scenario that I've been in, and considered walking out, but the restaurant was too close to my house and I wanted to avoid any unpleasantness in the neighborhood.

i like it when i am asked to pay up front. on one side it feels pushy, like "you don't trust me, or what?", on the other it feels like a relief. it means i can relax, take my time as i want, as i don't need to account for additional check out time. also no more attempts to upsell me on more drinks, etc...

Until the food arrives, you don’t know how long it will take. When it arrives then you just... what, leave hungry?

I’m not paying just for food. I’m paying for the entire dining experience. I also probably have plans after the restaurant that are now delayed or a babysitter waiting at home for me to return. If you not only don’t deliver on a good dining experience but also inconvenience me I should get a refund. In my experience, restaurants generally understand that and I don’t even have to ask for the refund.

The point was that you shouldn’t be charged for the hour you spent waiting in the line to pay.

Hear hear! My favorite idiotic parking ticket story: back in grad school (at Stanford, so valley people watch out!), I got a $75 parking ticket once at 3am, in a lot for which my car had a valid permit (in student housing)... because I hadn't changed the DMV registration sticker. Mind you, my registration was renewed, I just hadn't put the new sticker on the plate.

Also, it was pouring with rain that night. So they seriously had someone at 3 am, in the pouring rain, shining a flashlight at the license plates of every legally parked car with a valid permit just to try to find an excuse to get people.

As a story with a different outcome, my mom parked in a BART parking lot at around 2:30pm one day. This particular lot became free at 3pm, so she had to pay for that half hour, but couldn't figure out where to pay. She went to the station agent to ask. The agent replied, "Eh, it's really hot out today. There's no way I'm going out there to check people's parking. Don't worry about paying." She did not get a ticket.

Parking technology must be full of fascinating stories. It's pretty much everyman against the faceless administration.

I once parked at a smart meter, but it wouldn't take my coins. I put a note on the windshield, went inside for a short bit and came out to a missing note replaced by a parking ticket.

I came to realize that the "smart' meter wasn't registering a car in the spot, so it would just eat the coins. I took a video of this and wrote to the parking authority (rejected), then took the video to the parking authority, then finally gave up and paid it. I think I was entitled to a final hearing but I didn't have the time. It was a little like wrestling a pig.

It depends on how ruthless the city is about parking enforcement. AFAIK Some places have laws against parking at broken meters. Then again some places say it's legal.

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/parking-tickets-bro...

Edit: The university I went to gave me parking tickets twice. Once because I forgot to hang my permit and once .. I have no idea why, but they ticketed everyone in the lot lol. Both times when I stopped by the office they immediately dropped them. Sometimes parking enforcement can be downright reasonable, so I wouldn't necessarily assume the worst of them.

> laws against parking at broken meters

that leaves me... speechless.

The idea is that the repair vehicle needs to have it open in order to fix it, but IMO it’s some BS.

Back in the days of coin meters, civic-minded individuals would inject some two part epoxy in the slot, giving unlimited free parking to everyone. Problem solved (until they made parking at broken meters illegal).

I want you to know that I extended my parking space from my treadmill at Barry's today. Your company is great, bro. The Android app is less great, it just keeps crashing, but the functionality from the company itself is great (since I can just use the website).

It definitely is more civilized and convenient. Great service. Totally happy. You should be proud.

I find PayByPhone pretty convenient, especially now that it's got a few years of polish on the app. The key thing is that the signs are legible, and have the number you care about (parking zone?) right there in bold print. And hey, - at least that money isn't going to Impark.

They recently implemented PayByPhone at my apartment complex to the extreme chagrin of many residents including myself.

We had a guest parking lot where your guests would simply park. No sort of registration, but if the car stayed for 3+ days without notifying management it would be booted.

Now if I want a guest to visit, they have to download an app and enter their credit card info and license plate number for the pleasure. Every time I have a guest over, instead of the normal pleasantries I have to warn them to register their car lest they be ticketed by the overly zealous parking enforcement officers. The process takes around 10 minutes for someone unfamiliar. It is absolutely infuriating, though I blame apartment management more than PayByPhone.

Atleast with impark you can just deposit their idiotic overzealous tickets I'm the garbage with no repurcursions.

Wait, the British PayByPhone app? That works pretty well actually, never had issues with it, honestly. Nothing to be ashamed of.

Thank you. :-)

> don't hate me

No hate warranted at all! Thank you for your contribution to the world.

You’ve routinely enabled me to park when I didn’t have the change, or avoid standing outside on hot summer days coaxing a semi-functional parking machine to spit out the right ticket.

On one occasion it even helped me pay for my SO’s parking from hundreds of miles away.

I thought people hated me when I worked at Ticketmaster.

I can't imagine what your life is like...

I understand where you're coming from! It's tough to be connected with a company associated with bad will or unfair cash grabs. I hope PayByPhone isn't in that territory, even if there are historic bad players in its industry. Measuring the thank-you's versus screw-you's I get, I'm happy to be associated with the company.

Hi, I'm a fan of PayByPhone! If you're partying with friends, you can exchange PayByPhone QR codes and pay each others' meters when the time is up without moving your cars.

@emptybits

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE do an AMA somewhere (even in this thread)

1. What do you think about products like SpotHero & others? (Can those comp

2. Do you think parking lots will be an attractive investment in the future? (Autonomous or bet on it for next while)

Hi. Thanks for the interest!

1. Having left PayByPhone and the parking sector years ago, I don't think I'm one to comment intelligently on current innovators. Quick observation... I still see too much capital being spent on custom, vulnerable, armored, escalating, and gratuitous hardware solutions when simple solutions are already in hand. But that's the classic bias of a naive "software guy" looking at an old-thinking industry, isn't it? :-)

2. re/ parking lots ... Depending on the city, zoning, taxation, and its appetite for redevelopment, a parking lot may be a path for a landowner to pay property taxes and flow a bit of cash while the awaiting the right time to develop it into a new use. The new use may push the same parking, or more, underground. IMO automating parking into something ultradense in urban centres makes sense, but I can understand reluctance to pour capital improvements into land that may change form radically if it's in the path for commercial or residential redevelopment. This is part of the reason we found it easy to sell a low/no-capital solution to parking operators, compared to paystations and hardware solutions. Roaming driverless shared cars that are highly utilized and rarely need to park ... that's an attractive vision, I think. But maybe that starts to look a bit like public transit?

Me, I try to ride my bicycle, walk, and take transit everywhere. :-)

I've worked for Spothero before. It's a tough business. But I think they're one of the rare companies where people actually like them.

The parking lot would just tow you then

Using a car cover daily will do a lot more damage to your paint than a parking ticket is worth, very quickly.

It would suffice here to run a strap of webbing across your windshield, through the doors and tie the ends together on the inside. You don't need it to be tight, won't damage the paint.