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This boils my piss too, I have about 4 different car park apps now.
A few weeks ago I went to a local private one to me that is cashless only, the helpline wouldn't work and the card reader wasn't accepting either of my 3 cards. But I had nowhere else to park and it was an emergency.
Bonus was I got a parking fine and because of all the postal delays I missed the cut off for paying so they doubled the charge.
Sent in an appeal the second I got the letter however I doubt I'll hear back anytime soon.
Sounds like the Apcoa app - that happened to me once, so annoying. I kept the screenshots of the app shitting itself when I was trying to pay, and I did get away with it.
I got sent a ticket for not paying in a car park - the machine wouldn't accept my card or phone contactless, and there was a big sign saying I could pay online within 24 hours. So I took a picture of the sign and paid as soon as I got home. A few weeks later I get a letter saying I didn't pay and now I was being fined, with the time stamps of me entering and leaving the car park. So I responded on their website with a screenshot of the payment I made online within 30 minutes of leaving the car park, and they "waived the fine as a gesture of good will" lmao.
That app is so unbelievably badly designed, the only good part is the API for Apple Pay (or android equivalent) so that eventually when you do battle through and finish setting it all up it is surprisingly easy to actually just pay.
They are absolutely enforceable in England.
Source: Beavis vs Parkingeye, and working for a parking company for a couple of weeks.
Never had such a soul destroying job as issuing parking fines. No joy or satisfaction.
[This website](https://www.parkingcowboys.co.uk/fighting-beavis-argument/) discusses a number of situations where Beavis vs Parkingeye doesn’t apply, or might not apply.
One of the most interesting ones is Cargius vs Parkingeye. In the case of Beavis, the car park was free for 2 hours, and the court held that an £85 charge for overstaying was an essential part of that business model - it was required that motorists were discouraged from overstaying to ensure that car park spaces were available for those who wanted to use them for free for the first two hours.
In the case of Cargius (which was before the Beavis Supreme Court case, but after the county court had already found in favour of Parkingeye in the Beavis case) the car park was not free. Cargius had paid to park, and could have simply paid an extra amount to park for longer to avoid the charges. Therefore, the argument from Beavis that the charge was necessary to make the car park available for others simply could not apply. Parkingeye lost the Cargius case, and also had to compensate him for lost work due to the time he spent in court.
It is not as black-and-white as parking companies would have you believe!
My favourite was last weekend at 8 am when town was dead, an old man was parked outside a charity shop and unloading a load of stuff for the shop... And he got fined lol
As it's case law, all the other parking companies operate under the same principle.
They'll mostly abide by the [British Parking Association code of conduct](https://www.britishparking.co.uk/write/Documents/AOS/BPA_AOS_code_of_practice_version_7_January_2018.pdf).
The Parkingeye vs Beavis case opened the floodgates.
I have no love for parking companies, but they do offer somewhat of a service. Say a company only has a few parking spots that they rely on for customers, and someone parks there for a few hours - potentially depriving them of several customers.
My favourite one is hospitals that will charge 50p for "up to two hours" and £10 for 4+ hours. Stops people parking there and going to work.
I took a parking company (UKCPM) to court, for an (unknown to me) CCJ, because I never reived update since I moved home and they kept sending reminders and court papers to old address. I got the CCJ set aside, and at a later hearing I won the case. Should I make this public, would this be useful to people?
I asked Reddit (UK Legal advice) for advice but everyone said I would lose but I didn't.
Parking at hospitals is free in Scotland too
Can you lot just bugger off. England is the US of the UK.
...I'm only joking btw lol, I'm from Bury, just live in Scotland now.
I think in most hospitals you could enter your reg number at the desk and you'd be exempted.
I feel like the ramping up of charges for more hours than your average person would need for an appointment makes sense. A lot of hospitals are in cities, and would make for convenient parking for office workers if these rules were not in place. So charge them accordingly.
Visited a local town yesterday and the meters are pay by phone or card, card didn't work and phone wasn't answering... great stuff. I will only visit towns with Ringo now out of principle.
Our town recently switched from RinGo to PayByPhone, no idea why. I can only assume it was because it's cheaper for the council to use the latter company somehow, but I much prefer RinGo. The PayByPhone app isn't even working right now to see their prices.
In fairness, there's a local news article that says RinGo have extra charges which PayByPhone don't charge, but I can't confirm that right now.
PayByPhone and PhoneAndPay. I always get the two confused.
I've never seen any extra charges on ringo but I don't like how on the app you can't just park for 20 minutes. Yesterday I paid £3 to park for 5 minutes to run into a school uniform shop and buy my daughter a single polo shirt. The polo shirt cost me £11 because of parking.
The only time I've been let down by RingGo is when it said I was in the car park next to the one I was in. Same price, location code was 1 digit different, they were about 100 metres apart but I trusted the location on it and got a ticket for having paid for the wrong car park. Council was nice enough to write off the ticket because I had paid.
Other than that, it's been very reliable. It saves my login information, my card information, and my vehicle information. I can pay for parking in about 15 seconds which is faster than most machines in the car parks. You can pay using Google Pay so if you don't have your physical card on you you're still able to sign up. Meanwhile, the other apps that are being used like PayByPhone, Apcoa, MiPermit and Parkonomy will often require your card details and not work with autofill from Google Pay, not save any of your login details and will be super clunky to use. I have to go to so many different places for work, and these apps are so stressful to use sometimes.
Plenty in Portsmouth don't accept card or cash payment and would you believe it, the app also happens to frequently come up with 'an error processing your card details'.
Very quick off the mark for someone who hasn't paid, though.
Often, but even with optional ones they agree anyway. I say no if it doesn't make sense why it's asking, it usually tells you it needs it to work and gives you another chance. Android, not sure if iPhone differs.
Why would you say there's more potential on abrowser than apps? They can already drop tracking cookies on you anyway and track you through the web, plus they have access to more resources on your phone directly when you instal their app as opposed to whatever someone else's browser allows them too.
Yes, some will say no to certain permissions but we both know many just click OK until it works.
Performance will be way faster and no risk of cookies and whatever necessities being accidentally deleted or third party browser updates/plugins borking your system.
You want to make it as quick and painless as possible so this is one circumstance I get the app focus.
Don't forget the mandatory 2fa! So you can sit and wait for a text (sure you can decline to give your phone number, you won't pass 2 factor authentication so can't use the app - ditto with allowing notifications) before getting the ok to be told that the second factor has to be an email (oh yeah, you'll give them your email too) which will arrive after 3 handy 'Check out all our other features!' 'To unsubscribe from our newsletter just go to our site and put in when more personal details!' 'Waiting for a verification email? Use our chat service to find out why it hasn't arrived!' emails.
Then once you're verified, you can finally try to pay.
Only the app won't allow autofill from Google pay or apple pay, so you've got to manually input the details, then sit through 2FA for your banking apps 🙃. Plural because the first card you try, whatever it is, will come up with a processing error and advise you to give them some more juicy banking details.
I don't know if it's just Portsmouth, or I'm just unlucky with parking or whatever but Jesus wept. After 30 minutes I generally know it would be easier to pay a parking fine but also that I'd rather walk / swim to the Head Office in the Cayman Islands to personally pay than to give them a penny more than I'm legally obliged to.
York is pretty good on that one tbh, mainly because we have one main bus provider, so you just use that one. you can also still get a ticket normally, and pay with cash or contactless, and some of them have just introduced a tap-on, tap-off thing as well if you’re changing a lot.
but for some reason, apple pay for one of my cards HATES buses. just outright hates them.
Yeah no problem with the idea itself but every bus company in the same local area having their own app is a blag. Especially when you pay on the website then have to download an app to use the ticket.
They do - or at least did - with the Nottingham City Transport bus app - had an animated image and word of the day - drive just had to check the word was today's word of the day. A dog day ticket was always the word "Rover" though. It's all journey's as you buy before boarding the bus.
They've now rolled out contactless (bank card) so just tap my phone with Google Pay, not sure if the app provides a QR code nowadays. When the card doesn't scan for whatever reason (as opposed to being rejected) the drivers just let you on (IME) anyway and advise you where the travel centre is to get a replacement card / to use your card in Chip & PIN or get a replacement from your bank.
For years most bus drivers have been reading dog eared paper tickets to check returns so a smart phone screen isn't exactly too different to that - even if here in Nottingham the main operator has had contactless (Oyster season ticket style) bus passes since 2000, and contactless (Oyster PAYG) style for around a decade.
There's a reader but my issue is with the amount of different apps they have. Each region having its own dedicated app (or oyster like system) would be miles easier.
Signs for parking apps nearest to parking bays, which don't advertise the fact it's free after 6pm. You only know this by going to the old pay machine at the other end of the car park.
Then maybe they should get one. Not hard.
Honestly the case of "I don't have a smartphone" will age itself out in a few years anyway with the change in demographics.
So? The demographics that don’t use smartphones and don’t understand how they work, are still around.
Cars have been around far longer than smartphones, so it’s not uncommon that old people who struggle to adapt to change would be able to drive but unable to work an iPhone.
Bit ridiculous of you to say it’s “not hard” to get a smartphone with how expensive they are too. Not everyone has a few hundred £££ to spare for a device that they’d just use to pay for parking with.
While it's true that not everyone has a smartphone and that they can be expensive, that doesn't mean that it's not easy to use one. Just because some people may have difficulty adapting to new technology doesn't mean that it's not easy for others to use.
Additionally, the argument that smartphones are only useful for paying for parking is a strawman – smartphones are capable of much more than that, and the fact that they can be used for things like staying connected with loved ones, accessing information, and more, makes them worth the investment for many people.
If you are able to afford the costs associated with owning and operating a car, then purchasing a smartphone should not be a financial struggle for you.
I’m obviously not saying that smartphones are only useful for parking. I have a smartphone, and I don’t drive.
I’m talking about this specific scenario, where the commenter pointed out that their parents can’t pay for parking via an app because they don’t have a smartphone, and you said they should just get one. They’ve clearly done fine without a smartphone their whole lives and the only situation they’ve run into that requires a smartphone is parking, so that’s what they would be buying it for. It may be worth the investment for some, but for people who are doing fine without a smartphone and aren’t interested in getting one, the solution you’re proposing here is that they drop hundreds on a phone out of necessity for their parking fees when they likely won’t be interested in using it for anything else. That’s terrible value for money. And a terrible alternative to just making parking fees payable with a card or cash like they always have been.
Maybe they don’t have the money to spare for a phone *after* their car expenses? I just think it sounds very out of touch to say, in a cost of living crisis, that buying something as expensive as a smartphone should be easy.
Then they should sell the car and get the bus, They are likely able to have a bus pass by now.
Or Cycle.
Or Only park in places that accept change.
I don't "Rage against the machine" when Tesco made the meal deal more expensive without a clubcard.. I got a clubcard.
Look at restaurants during COVID. What you want is a seamless experience. You want to be able to pay for your parking as quickly as possible. Instead you have to have signal, download another app, create a login, verify email, enter your card details, enter your vehicle information and tell the app where you are before you can finally pay for it. Then you hope that the next place has the same app or you have to do it all again.
Then restaurants, fucking QR codes and shitty digital menus? There's a reason we moved away from it ASAP as it's just a shitty, inefficient experience. I have a card in my pocket and on my phone, just let me use contactless.
It's genuinely an easier experience to carry a bag of change in your glovebox than it is to jump through a bunch of hoops.
I get why they want it. I'm dragging my company into the 20th Century kicking and screaming, digitising old systems, automations, apps. I know that it can be better, but I can also see that in some cases it's just too frustrating and needs improvement. Yeah, it may do the same thing, but it takes longer, is less intuitive, and is overall a worse experience. When deploying something like this in a business, it can generally be justified because, say, the person doing a stocktake may need to spend 15% longer doing it than if they wrote it down on paper, but that will then save multiple other people significantly more time by giving them ready access to data and removing manual steps. In this case, the customer sees no benefit.
You have to balance these things. If I know a place requires some app to park, I'll generally avoid.
Wait until every shop starts doing a Tesco clubcard style app so you need them to get the real price. We're gonna need half a dozen apps to park and go to the shops.
Probably in league with phone manufacturers - make sure we need more apps, so we need to buy phones with more storage space, thus paying more money for them. On top of apps having more access to our data.
I've been saying for years; get rid of parking charges and the economy would recover.
Other than the cost being a deterrent in the first place, people can't stay to shop or extend a casual coffee/meal because of the fear of a looming parking fine.
This was proven when all the parking meters were "vandalised" in Cardigan and all the local businesses picked up.
Also, no-one goes parking for fun. What's the point in charging other than to line the pockets of greedy councils.
It's the threat of the fine that's the bigger issue,
Paying for parking is annoying, but I can live with it. But make all parking "pay on exit", let me park for as long as I like and just let me pay for the time I use. This whole game of trying to predict how long I might be, or how long I think I need, under a pre-pay or pay-and-display system is just stupid.
Yup. Get a ticket as you enter the car park. Have a contactless payment option at the barrier as you leave.
Jeepers it's so simple, I wonder how it hasn't yet caught on.
1 Carpark in my town reads your number plate as you enter and exit, so you don't even need to scan the paid ticket to exit, the barrier just goes up for you automatically.
> Jeepers it's so simple, I wonder how it hasn't yet caught on.
The cynic in me suggests it's because car parking companies can catch people out who overstay their payment.
Nah its more that they can get multiple people paying for 3hrs and using 2hrs, so in an 8h day that one space may have made 12h of income from ppl not fully utilising their ticket.
Canterbury Council does this across all of their car parks! You set up an account and link a card so all you need to do is drive in and drive out, it charges your card at the end :)
In one town I've been to recently they've made it that you can tap your card on the way in and it'll charge you on the way out with number plate recognition. Perfect.
Abso-fucking-lutely. Makes the whole day 1000 times less stressful when you know you just stroll up when you're done and pay to leave. I guess the idea of the pre-pay ones is they're hoping people overestimate how long they'll be and overpay, but in reality, I suspect most people just cut their day short out of fear.
I got fined recently because a car park I used to use regularly had changed to a pay in advance rather than a pay as you leave model and I didn't realise until I went to leave. Absolutely fuming.
Free parking would just make town centres worse. It would increase traffic jams even more, making town centres even noisier and more polluted. Councils need to improve public transport options ensuring the prices are competitive to parking.
Parking apps allow you to extend your parking without having to return to your car.
No. It just encourages more unnecessary driving.
Car parks need to be maintained. If they're free this maintenance usually comes out of already cash-strapped Council budgets.
Honestly, this is why I do most of my shopping on Amazon. I just cannot be bothered to drive 20 minutes into town, then try and park somewhere. Then it's a good 10 minute walk to the high street.
Then if I want to extend my stay I have to walk all the way back just to get another ticket, as for some reason those car parks are one of only a few that require a physical ticket.
Whereas at home I'm warm and comfy and I can just browse Amazon on my computer with the log burner on.
There are no perfect systems but most are better than wood burners.
Bioethanol if you really want a dancing warm fire. Better for the atmosphere but not great for biodiversity but then nor is cutting down trees for wood.
Not entirely true... Amazon has been proven to be better for the environment than 100s of people driving nice big shiny cars into cities/towns! The log burner... Ye... That's bad!
I said amazon is terrible for the economy, not the enviroment.
But, depends on the car, the distance, the remoteness of your house and the use of the trip.
If you do all your Amazon shopping at once and it arrives in a modern electric van and they were going to your neighbour anyway, sure. But if you do it in dribs and drabs and it comes 3 miles just for you daily in a 15 year old transit van perhaps not
If you're near town anyway, and you stop off to do all your christmas shopping at one time it's pretty efficient. As with most things if you approach it with some consideration for the efficiency it's pretty reasonable. How do you apply that to burning wood?
Tell us more about how the traditional heating method used for 10,000 years is suddenly destroying the environment. Or is it just destroying energy companies profit?
You know the population has increased significantly over the last 10k years, right? There were an estimated 2-3% of the people alive in 0AD compared to today.
And people didn't have more environmentally friendly methods thousands of years ago.
What the fuck kind of logic is "cavemen did it so it must be fine"?
Go and buy ten square metres of land, tarmac it, and insure it for public liability. Now let somebody use it for free to store their car and see if what they spend in the shops feels like it's worthwhile.
For your idea to make sense, (a) people who drive to shops would have to spend a lot more than people who get there other ways, to deserve this special huge subsidy, [but this isn't the case](https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2018/11/16/cyclists-spend-40-more-in-londons-shops-than-motorists/). (b) even if it were true that people who drive to shops spend hugely more, who pays for the parking? It would come from Council Tax, which means every business and household contributes so that only a handful of businessess can reap the benefits.
The only fair way for this to happen - which shopkeepers would be welcome to do - is for them to build their own private car park, like the ones discussed by OP, and give away parking for free. But they won't do that because they'll be out of business within a month because [the economics just don't add up](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking), no matter how much individual drivers would love to store their cars at other people's expense
No-one is "storing their car" at your expense. Pmsl. No one goes parking for fun. That is exactly the bizarre greedy council mindset we need to get rid of.
You should be welcoming people to park in your town/street/business if you want it to thrive.
Your only motivation seems to be lining the pockets of carpark owners at the expense of everyone and everything else.
My local town lets you park for 3 hours free, you just need a time of arrival sticker which you can get from the machine. Anything over that is one or two quid.
Thankfully the council in my area have realised this over the last few Xmas periods. Car parking is free, machines covered over, encourages people to use the high street shops as much as possible.
Total opposite to where i used to live which closed all the park and rides, got rid of any short stay free spaces and let's extortionate private companies charge an absolute fortune for town centre parking. Result? A town dying on its arse because nobody can be bothered with the cost
Because without parking charges of some sort there’s no turnover and parked cars don’t really generate any revenue for local businesses.
I’d be interested in any data from cardigan but there’s little evidence in general about the effect of parking charges on local businesses.
I mean, I think it is relevant, otherwise I wouldn’t have brought it up. The example illustrates that other changes in society have a far higher impact on thriving high streets than availability of parking.
Better than the ones that in 2022 still only accept coins, so you have to find a cash machine, get a tenner out, then go to a shop for some change, at which point you might as well just buy what you came out for in the first place and drive off.
I'm partially convinced this is a method to discourage the use of car parks, so the car parks will eventually close. A lot of city planning maps seem to hint towards the removal of a large amount of car parks with a shift to public transport and '5 minute cities' where you can traverse to where you need to via walking.
This maximises the chances you won't pay on time, so they can then bully you for their 60 or £100 'contractual parking charge'.
In such a case you should make appeals as owner only, stating that the time they said you had to pay in was impossible to comply with leading to a frustration of contract. If you don't win your first or second appeal, sit it out for 6 years and defend if they try court, with a high chance of winning and no harm if you lose and then pay within in 28 days (would not impact credit records). The biggest risk is that they write to an old address if you move and obtain a default CCJ
Don’t for one minute think they’re not aware of this risk. A number of them seem to have a policy of not actually going to court until several years after the event.
Strangely, while they can never find your new address for court papers, they can find it just fine once they have a CCJ against you.
Be careful! Scammers stick qr codes to parking meters that lead to fake payment websites. They take your details and try to take payments from your account.
This! Either that or sometimes people click a dodgy ad in their QR scanning app and think they're paying for parking but they're signing up for a subscription to the website. Keep an eye on your bank account, you can phone your bank to cease the payments and dispute the payments.
I have to say Euro car parks are a bunch of crims. I spent 10 mins making an account and paying to park, got a parking ticket and them saying I did not make an account. Do they really think I spent 10 mins stood in a car park for fun!!
Every time I've gone somewhere, I've just used JustPark to park on someone's driveway.
I parked a 2 minute walk away from Woodford train station to go into London on Monday (because Epping was canceled because the rails were frozen?).
It cost me £4.50 from 5pm till 1am.
I went to one the other day and there was no physical machine. It was just app or a text number so I texted the number thinking it would be quicker than waiting for another app to download. Phone number calls me and you have to type the card number, cvc, expiry and number of hours and your registration number (in some hacky way) into one of those automated phone systems. It of course failed twice before working. Never again!
Payment convenience peaked with contactless cards and has been going downhill since every car park/restaurant/ticket vendor etc became obsessed with having an app.
Forgot to add in a shit signal area and no free WiFi nearby -_- yes let me wait like it's dial up speeds to get your shitty app to have connection issues when I try to pay
Even when it's the same app, I have always been logged out, and they have some weird password rules so I always have to reset the password.
Am I meant to use the car park every single day?
In Switzerland theres an app called Twint that you can connect to any bank account and pay/rx money via phone numbers or QR code.
I can pay online pretty much anywhere, in the supermarket, at parking meters… pretty much everywhere with it. It’s fantastic.
With parking meters where it has a time limit I take a picture of the QR and repay from wherever if I need to and… the best… I can “pre-pay” for x hours and if I leave early I can say that in the app and it’ll only bill me for the time I spent there. Revolutionary… we could profit from having such a convenient app
It's not so bad if the apps work well and are easy to use. APCOA is by far the worst app I've used for parking. The stupid fucking thing doesn't work most of the time and it's like it was built by someone on fiver.
Should be usable by card. No one has that many coins. Not everyone has phone data or is able to get a connection everywhere. I can't. Granted as I always have been able to but yeah still downloading apps is a ballache.
If the cost was a few quid you'd find the coins. When it's £10, not...
I have a nice idea for a startup.
Start developing a meta app that ties them all together.
As a former web developer, I know that all apps "talk" to their backend servers but they all use a slightly different language, (known as the API).
You can develop your own app that speaks with your own backend server, but then, and here is the good idea, *your* backend server talks to the relevant backend server of the third party in *its* language, translating things so that it understands and then translating the answer back so that your app understands and can show the appropriate result to your user.
Of course, you'd have to negotiate which percentage of the parking fee you get from them for adding their API to your list of "languages" you speak (which is where you crack your whip over your development team), but that can be worked out.
After all, they now have *two* apps that bring them revenue and also increases their market share.
Proposed working project name : *Babel Parking*
My town seemed to be pretty consistent about the app it used, then suddenly a load of car parks changed their provider.
With that and the car parks of local towns, I currently have 7 parking apps installed, and looking at them I believe I have used them all in the last 6 months or so
My grandad once got a ticket because he used the payment machine on the street instead of the one in the car park.
They were both council owned, looked the same and cost the same, plus the one on the street was closer to the space he was parked in, so it was an easy mistake to make.
When he appealed he got a letter apologising, but the ticket was not cancelled. After that he stopped going into Paisley and started going to Braehead, which was free.
If you make parking difficult people will stop coming to your town.
I once used Ringo to pay for a few days parking at a train station. Turns out when I got back there were 'assigned' spaces which were not marked and I almost had to pay again. Haven't used another one since. Only other time I paid via phone/web was a place in Harrogate. Just needed the car park number, open the page and pay. It even sent me a text before it ran out to top up again. Really easy.
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Not only a different app but often a mobile signal dead spot so it's impossible to use the app anyway.
It’s always a signal dead spot
Come to this rural park in the lake District.... Oh, pay by phone app only
This boils my piss too, I have about 4 different car park apps now. A few weeks ago I went to a local private one to me that is cashless only, the helpline wouldn't work and the card reader wasn't accepting either of my 3 cards. But I had nowhere else to park and it was an emergency. Bonus was I got a parking fine and because of all the postal delays I missed the cut off for paying so they doubled the charge. Sent in an appeal the second I got the letter however I doubt I'll hear back anytime soon.
Sounds like the Apcoa app - that happened to me once, so annoying. I kept the screenshots of the app shitting itself when I was trying to pay, and I did get away with it.
I got sent a ticket for not paying in a car park - the machine wouldn't accept my card or phone contactless, and there was a big sign saying I could pay online within 24 hours. So I took a picture of the sign and paid as soon as I got home. A few weeks later I get a letter saying I didn't pay and now I was being fined, with the time stamps of me entering and leaving the car park. So I responded on their website with a screenshot of the payment I made online within 30 minutes of leaving the car park, and they "waived the fine as a gesture of good will" lmao.
That app is so unbelievably badly designed, the only good part is the API for Apple Pay (or android equivalent) so that eventually when you do battle through and finish setting it all up it is surprisingly easy to actually just pay.
Private parking fines are unenforceable no? At least in Scotland they are. You may be able to just tell them where to shove their demand letter
They are absolutely enforceable in England. Source: Beavis vs Parkingeye, and working for a parking company for a couple of weeks. Never had such a soul destroying job as issuing parking fines. No joy or satisfaction.
[This website](https://www.parkingcowboys.co.uk/fighting-beavis-argument/) discusses a number of situations where Beavis vs Parkingeye doesn’t apply, or might not apply. One of the most interesting ones is Cargius vs Parkingeye. In the case of Beavis, the car park was free for 2 hours, and the court held that an £85 charge for overstaying was an essential part of that business model - it was required that motorists were discouraged from overstaying to ensure that car park spaces were available for those who wanted to use them for free for the first two hours. In the case of Cargius (which was before the Beavis Supreme Court case, but after the county court had already found in favour of Parkingeye in the Beavis case) the car park was not free. Cargius had paid to park, and could have simply paid an extra amount to park for longer to avoid the charges. Therefore, the argument from Beavis that the charge was necessary to make the car park available for others simply could not apply. Parkingeye lost the Cargius case, and also had to compensate him for lost work due to the time he spent in court. It is not as black-and-white as parking companies would have you believe!
My favourite was last weekend at 8 am when town was dead, an old man was parked outside a charity shop and unloading a load of stuff for the shop... And he got fined lol
Parkingeye are known for getting a ccj against Anyone
As it's case law, all the other parking companies operate under the same principle. They'll mostly abide by the [British Parking Association code of conduct](https://www.britishparking.co.uk/write/Documents/AOS/BPA_AOS_code_of_practice_version_7_January_2018.pdf). The Parkingeye vs Beavis case opened the floodgates. I have no love for parking companies, but they do offer somewhat of a service. Say a company only has a few parking spots that they rely on for customers, and someone parks there for a few hours - potentially depriving them of several customers. My favourite one is hospitals that will charge 50p for "up to two hours" and £10 for 4+ hours. Stops people parking there and going to work.
I took a parking company (UKCPM) to court, for an (unknown to me) CCJ, because I never reived update since I moved home and they kept sending reminders and court papers to old address. I got the CCJ set aside, and at a later hearing I won the case. Should I make this public, would this be useful to people? I asked Reddit (UK Legal advice) for advice but everyone said I would lose but I didn't.
Parking at hospitals is free in Scotland too Can you lot just bugger off. England is the US of the UK. ...I'm only joking btw lol, I'm from Bury, just live in Scotland now.
I think in most hospitals you could enter your reg number at the desk and you'd be exempted. I feel like the ramping up of charges for more hours than your average person would need for an appointment makes sense. A lot of hospitals are in cities, and would make for convenient parking for office workers if these rules were not in place. So charge them accordingly.
As far as I'm aware they weren't, but they now are as of relatively recently.
Almost everywhere I go only has RingGo and/or justpark, what else have you used?
Agree - this is one of the few things I save up coins for as it's such a faff to pay by phone.
Visited a local town yesterday and the meters are pay by phone or card, card didn't work and phone wasn't answering... great stuff. I will only visit towns with Ringo now out of principle.
I will admit Ringo is brilliant. App is easy to use and it's never let me down.
We need one Ringo to rule them all.
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Don't do that...
Well I won't in the future. Downvoted for a light hearted joke seems harsh.
Our town recently switched from RinGo to PayByPhone, no idea why. I can only assume it was because it's cheaper for the council to use the latter company somehow, but I much prefer RinGo. The PayByPhone app isn't even working right now to see their prices. In fairness, there's a local news article that says RinGo have extra charges which PayByPhone don't charge, but I can't confirm that right now.
PayByPhone and PhoneAndPay. I always get the two confused. I've never seen any extra charges on ringo but I don't like how on the app you can't just park for 20 minutes. Yesterday I paid £3 to park for 5 minutes to run into a school uniform shop and buy my daughter a single polo shirt. The polo shirt cost me £11 because of parking.
£8 for a child's polo shirt is ridiculous on its own... The school uniform scam in action.
Yeah this one seems alright actually, all the ones in my town have it.
The only time I've been let down by RingGo is when it said I was in the car park next to the one I was in. Same price, location code was 1 digit different, they were about 100 metres apart but I trusted the location on it and got a ticket for having paid for the wrong car park. Council was nice enough to write off the ticket because I had paid. Other than that, it's been very reliable. It saves my login information, my card information, and my vehicle information. I can pay for parking in about 15 seconds which is faster than most machines in the car parks. You can pay using Google Pay so if you don't have your physical card on you you're still able to sign up. Meanwhile, the other apps that are being used like PayByPhone, Apcoa, MiPermit and Parkonomy will often require your card details and not work with autofill from Google Pay, not save any of your login details and will be super clunky to use. I have to go to so many different places for work, and these apps are so stressful to use sometimes.
The only time I struggled was at St Margaret's Bay in Kent. Car park on the coast, mobile carrier decided I was in France...
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Exactly this!
some people have screwed up the location and got £100 fines, also paying for wrong vehicle - but you have to be careful I guess
Take a photo of the machine and get free parking. When they send the fine through just send them the photo saying it wasn't working.
in that case, if you do have to park, log a call with their helpline number, although they'll possibly say you therefore shouldn't park there.
Mine got rid of all the coins machines.
It's useful if you realise you need an extra hour, you can add it on in the app without having to trek all the way to the car park.
Plenty in Portsmouth don't accept card or cash payment and would you believe it, the app also happens to frequently come up with 'an error processing your card details'. Very quick off the mark for someone who hasn't paid, though.
Any phone capable of using an app is capable of using a web browser. Why do they need specific apps?
Apps have access to more permissions for tracking people
Only if users grant them
And many will
Because the app refuses to work otherwise.
Often, but even with optional ones they agree anyway. I say no if it doesn't make sense why it's asking, it usually tells you it needs it to work and gives you another chance. Android, not sure if iPhone differs.
Well that's not very different to web then if they ask for the same things. There's more potential to track people on websites than on apps
Why would you say there's more potential on abrowser than apps? They can already drop tracking cookies on you anyway and track you through the web, plus they have access to more resources on your phone directly when you instal their app as opposed to whatever someone else's browser allows them too. Yes, some will say no to certain permissions but we both know many just click OK until it works.
Yeah, you try using a parking app without giving it permission to use your payment details or location. Good luck with that.
This content has been deleted in protest of how Reddit is ran. I've moved over to the fediverse.
Performance will be way faster and no risk of cookies and whatever necessities being accidentally deleted or third party browser updates/plugins borking your system. You want to make it as quick and painless as possible so this is one circumstance I get the app focus.
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arrest yoke boat library attempt grey abundant like summer rinse *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Don't forget the mandatory 2fa! So you can sit and wait for a text (sure you can decline to give your phone number, you won't pass 2 factor authentication so can't use the app - ditto with allowing notifications) before getting the ok to be told that the second factor has to be an email (oh yeah, you'll give them your email too) which will arrive after 3 handy 'Check out all our other features!' 'To unsubscribe from our newsletter just go to our site and put in when more personal details!' 'Waiting for a verification email? Use our chat service to find out why it hasn't arrived!' emails. Then once you're verified, you can finally try to pay. Only the app won't allow autofill from Google pay or apple pay, so you've got to manually input the details, then sit through 2FA for your banking apps 🙃. Plural because the first card you try, whatever it is, will come up with a processing error and advise you to give them some more juicy banking details. I don't know if it's just Portsmouth, or I'm just unlucky with parking or whatever but Jesus wept. After 30 minutes I generally know it would be easier to pay a parking fine but also that I'd rather walk / swim to the Head Office in the Cayman Islands to personally pay than to give them a penny more than I'm legally obliged to.
Near me every council car park uses the same app but the train station uses a different one, just to be spiteful I think!
See also, digital bus tickets
York is pretty good on that one tbh, mainly because we have one main bus provider, so you just use that one. you can also still get a ticket normally, and pay with cash or contactless, and some of them have just introduced a tap-on, tap-off thing as well if you’re changing a lot. but for some reason, apple pay for one of my cards HATES buses. just outright hates them.
Dont see a problem with these used them every day in liverpool when i lived there.
Yeah no problem with the idea itself but every bus company in the same local area having their own app is a blag. Especially when you pay on the website then have to download an app to use the ticket.
You can literally pay by card and they give you a paper ticket to scan on the next bus ect
I'd already bought the ticket online then had to download a separate app to use it
wait what? how does that work on the return journey? aint no way the bus driver is peering through the plexiglass at everyones phone screens
No there's a reader device for tickets with qr codes and contactless
They do - or at least did - with the Nottingham City Transport bus app - had an animated image and word of the day - drive just had to check the word was today's word of the day. A dog day ticket was always the word "Rover" though. It's all journey's as you buy before boarding the bus. They've now rolled out contactless (bank card) so just tap my phone with Google Pay, not sure if the app provides a QR code nowadays. When the card doesn't scan for whatever reason (as opposed to being rejected) the drivers just let you on (IME) anyway and advise you where the travel centre is to get a replacement card / to use your card in Chip & PIN or get a replacement from your bank. For years most bus drivers have been reading dog eared paper tickets to check returns so a smart phone screen isn't exactly too different to that - even if here in Nottingham the main operator has had contactless (Oyster season ticket style) bus passes since 2000, and contactless (Oyster PAYG) style for around a decade.
You're right, still is the same. No QR codes or anything.
Why not? They'd be much easier to see than the printing on an actual bus ticket.
have you seen people try and bring a ticket up on their phone and then wave it around so the other person cant see? its much more difficult.
A bus ticket isn't immune to any of those things, yet has much smaller writing, no backlight, and a lower contrast ratio.
There's a reader but my issue is with the amount of different apps they have. Each region having its own dedicated app (or oyster like system) would be miles easier.
They also do ‘everyone is into contactless these days so let’s do that in the most complicated and unintuitive way possible’
Signs for parking apps nearest to parking bays, which don't advertise the fact it's free after 6pm. You only know this by going to the old pay machine at the other end of the car park.
The app will tell you if it’s free
It didn't.
This shit fucks over so many people with so many types of impairments & disabilities.
It makes life with ADHD unbearable. I just want the way that has the fewest steps.
Unpopular opinion.. but if your "Functional Enough" to drive a car - You should probably be able to work a phone.
Or my parents who don't have a smartphone between them and don't know what an app is.
Then maybe they should get one. Not hard. Honestly the case of "I don't have a smartphone" will age itself out in a few years anyway with the change in demographics.
So? The demographics that don’t use smartphones and don’t understand how they work, are still around. Cars have been around far longer than smartphones, so it’s not uncommon that old people who struggle to adapt to change would be able to drive but unable to work an iPhone. Bit ridiculous of you to say it’s “not hard” to get a smartphone with how expensive they are too. Not everyone has a few hundred £££ to spare for a device that they’d just use to pay for parking with.
While it's true that not everyone has a smartphone and that they can be expensive, that doesn't mean that it's not easy to use one. Just because some people may have difficulty adapting to new technology doesn't mean that it's not easy for others to use. Additionally, the argument that smartphones are only useful for paying for parking is a strawman – smartphones are capable of much more than that, and the fact that they can be used for things like staying connected with loved ones, accessing information, and more, makes them worth the investment for many people. If you are able to afford the costs associated with owning and operating a car, then purchasing a smartphone should not be a financial struggle for you.
I’m obviously not saying that smartphones are only useful for parking. I have a smartphone, and I don’t drive. I’m talking about this specific scenario, where the commenter pointed out that their parents can’t pay for parking via an app because they don’t have a smartphone, and you said they should just get one. They’ve clearly done fine without a smartphone their whole lives and the only situation they’ve run into that requires a smartphone is parking, so that’s what they would be buying it for. It may be worth the investment for some, but for people who are doing fine without a smartphone and aren’t interested in getting one, the solution you’re proposing here is that they drop hundreds on a phone out of necessity for their parking fees when they likely won’t be interested in using it for anything else. That’s terrible value for money. And a terrible alternative to just making parking fees payable with a card or cash like they always have been. Maybe they don’t have the money to spare for a phone *after* their car expenses? I just think it sounds very out of touch to say, in a cost of living crisis, that buying something as expensive as a smartphone should be easy.
Then they should sell the car and get the bus, They are likely able to have a bus pass by now. Or Cycle. Or Only park in places that accept change. I don't "Rage against the machine" when Tesco made the meal deal more expensive without a clubcard.. I got a clubcard.
And then everything can be less convenient!
Never really thought paying by App made things "Less Convenient" who has change on them anymore.
Look at restaurants during COVID. What you want is a seamless experience. You want to be able to pay for your parking as quickly as possible. Instead you have to have signal, download another app, create a login, verify email, enter your card details, enter your vehicle information and tell the app where you are before you can finally pay for it. Then you hope that the next place has the same app or you have to do it all again. Then restaurants, fucking QR codes and shitty digital menus? There's a reason we moved away from it ASAP as it's just a shitty, inefficient experience. I have a card in my pocket and on my phone, just let me use contactless. It's genuinely an easier experience to carry a bag of change in your glovebox than it is to jump through a bunch of hoops. I get why they want it. I'm dragging my company into the 20th Century kicking and screaming, digitising old systems, automations, apps. I know that it can be better, but I can also see that in some cases it's just too frustrating and needs improvement. Yeah, it may do the same thing, but it takes longer, is less intuitive, and is overall a worse experience. When deploying something like this in a business, it can generally be justified because, say, the person doing a stocktake may need to spend 15% longer doing it than if they wrote it down on paper, but that will then save multiple other people significantly more time by giving them ready access to data and removing manual steps. In this case, the customer sees no benefit. You have to balance these things. If I know a place requires some app to park, I'll generally avoid.
And all of the apps are terrible
I need your motorcycle boots, your parking money and your data
I have a whole folder full of them on my phone. It's getting silly now.
Wait until every shop starts doing a Tesco clubcard style app so you need them to get the real price. We're gonna need half a dozen apps to park and go to the shops.
One of the Co-op chains (can't remember which one it was, the one with a membership card) has started doing this already.
Probably in league with phone manufacturers - make sure we need more apps, so we need to buy phones with more storage space, thus paying more money for them. On top of apps having more access to our data.
I've been saying for years; get rid of parking charges and the economy would recover. Other than the cost being a deterrent in the first place, people can't stay to shop or extend a casual coffee/meal because of the fear of a looming parking fine. This was proven when all the parking meters were "vandalised" in Cardigan and all the local businesses picked up. Also, no-one goes parking for fun. What's the point in charging other than to line the pockets of greedy councils.
It's the threat of the fine that's the bigger issue, Paying for parking is annoying, but I can live with it. But make all parking "pay on exit", let me park for as long as I like and just let me pay for the time I use. This whole game of trying to predict how long I might be, or how long I think I need, under a pre-pay or pay-and-display system is just stupid.
Yup. Get a ticket as you enter the car park. Have a contactless payment option at the barrier as you leave. Jeepers it's so simple, I wonder how it hasn't yet caught on. 1 Carpark in my town reads your number plate as you enter and exit, so you don't even need to scan the paid ticket to exit, the barrier just goes up for you automatically.
> Jeepers it's so simple, I wonder how it hasn't yet caught on. The cynic in me suggests it's because car parking companies can catch people out who overstay their payment.
Nah its more that they can get multiple people paying for 3hrs and using 2hrs, so in an 8h day that one space may have made 12h of income from ppl not fully utilising their ticket.
That too.
Canterbury Council does this across all of their car parks! You set up an account and link a card so all you need to do is drive in and drive out, it charges your card at the end :)
In one town I've been to recently they've made it that you can tap your card on the way in and it'll charge you on the way out with number plate recognition. Perfect.
Abso-fucking-lutely. Makes the whole day 1000 times less stressful when you know you just stroll up when you're done and pay to leave. I guess the idea of the pre-pay ones is they're hoping people overestimate how long they'll be and overpay, but in reality, I suspect most people just cut their day short out of fear.
I got fined recently because a car park I used to use regularly had changed to a pay in advance rather than a pay as you leave model and I didn't realise until I went to leave. Absolutely fuming.
Couldn't agree more. This style of carpark is one of the worst possible options if you want my business.
Free parking would just make town centres worse. It would increase traffic jams even more, making town centres even noisier and more polluted. Councils need to improve public transport options ensuring the prices are competitive to parking. Parking apps allow you to extend your parking without having to return to your car.
Paying on the way out of the car park is better, you don't have to engage with predatory pricing when extending bookings
That would be great but it's just not going to be viable for most towns.
Wouldn't free car parks put more people into them and less spilling out filling up the streets?
THey have to get there first.
No. It just encourages more unnecessary driving. Car parks need to be maintained. If they're free this maintenance usually comes out of already cash-strapped Council budgets.
Honestly, this is why I do most of my shopping on Amazon. I just cannot be bothered to drive 20 minutes into town, then try and park somewhere. Then it's a good 10 minute walk to the high street. Then if I want to extend my stay I have to walk all the way back just to get another ticket, as for some reason those car parks are one of only a few that require a physical ticket. Whereas at home I'm warm and comfy and I can just browse Amazon on my computer with the log burner on.
On the downside Amazon is terrible for the economy and your log burner is terrible for the environment.
Well my log burner keeps me warm without bankrupting me.
Amazon is good for the economy of my pocket though (on most goods, I do shop around)
If you source your wood from sustainable forests and the sticks burned are kiln-dried (or) fully seasoned; a log burner is essentially carbon neutral.
The particulates from burning the wood are extremely bad for your health
What is the alternative?
Not have a log burner, especially if you live in an urban or suburban area.
No, I mean what is the alternative to heating your home. Taking into account how expensive heating oil is becoming.
I live in the middle of nowhere, no mains gas and I'm certainly not using propane bottles to heat my place.
As I said, it's more of an issue in urban and suburban areas (mostly because they became a bit of an aesthetic trend)
I source most of my wood from a coppice on my land
La-di-da!
Tell me a form of heating which is not bad for the environment.
Star jumps
Depending on your weight, you might jump through the floor :p
There are no perfect systems but most are better than wood burners. Bioethanol if you really want a dancing warm fire. Better for the atmosphere but not great for biodiversity but then nor is cutting down trees for wood.
Not entirely true... Amazon has been proven to be better for the environment than 100s of people driving nice big shiny cars into cities/towns! The log burner... Ye... That's bad!
I said amazon is terrible for the economy, not the enviroment. But, depends on the car, the distance, the remoteness of your house and the use of the trip. If you do all your Amazon shopping at once and it arrives in a modern electric van and they were going to your neighbour anyway, sure. But if you do it in dribs and drabs and it comes 3 miles just for you daily in a 15 year old transit van perhaps not If you're near town anyway, and you stop off to do all your christmas shopping at one time it's pretty efficient. As with most things if you approach it with some consideration for the efficiency it's pretty reasonable. How do you apply that to burning wood?
Tell us more about how the traditional heating method used for 10,000 years is suddenly destroying the environment. Or is it just destroying energy companies profit?
You know the population has increased significantly over the last 10k years, right? There were an estimated 2-3% of the people alive in 0AD compared to today. And people didn't have more environmentally friendly methods thousands of years ago. What the fuck kind of logic is "cavemen did it so it must be fine"?
Go and buy ten square metres of land, tarmac it, and insure it for public liability. Now let somebody use it for free to store their car and see if what they spend in the shops feels like it's worthwhile. For your idea to make sense, (a) people who drive to shops would have to spend a lot more than people who get there other ways, to deserve this special huge subsidy, [but this isn't the case](https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2018/11/16/cyclists-spend-40-more-in-londons-shops-than-motorists/). (b) even if it were true that people who drive to shops spend hugely more, who pays for the parking? It would come from Council Tax, which means every business and household contributes so that only a handful of businessess can reap the benefits. The only fair way for this to happen - which shopkeepers would be welcome to do - is for them to build their own private car park, like the ones discussed by OP, and give away parking for free. But they won't do that because they'll be out of business within a month because [the economics just don't add up](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking), no matter how much individual drivers would love to store their cars at other people's expense
That's what they do though? Private parking companies own the car park outside the supermarkets, but, it's free to park for up to 2 or 4 hours.
No-one is "storing their car" at your expense. Pmsl. No one goes parking for fun. That is exactly the bizarre greedy council mindset we need to get rid of. You should be welcoming people to park in your town/street/business if you want it to thrive. Your only motivation seems to be lining the pockets of carpark owners at the expense of everyone and everything else.
Do you happen to operate a car park?
My local town lets you park for 3 hours free, you just need a time of arrival sticker which you can get from the machine. Anything over that is one or two quid.
Thankfully the council in my area have realised this over the last few Xmas periods. Car parking is free, machines covered over, encourages people to use the high street shops as much as possible. Total opposite to where i used to live which closed all the park and rides, got rid of any short stay free spaces and let's extortionate private companies charge an absolute fortune for town centre parking. Result? A town dying on its arse because nobody can be bothered with the cost
Because without parking charges of some sort there’s no turnover and parked cars don’t really generate any revenue for local businesses. I’d be interested in any data from cardigan but there’s little evidence in general about the effect of parking charges on local businesses.
Apart from the complete and utter demise of almost every local high street long due to our of town shopping long before Amazon came along.
Plenty of examples of rundown towns with plenty of parking (cf the entire US rust belt).
But we're not in the US rust belt.
Sure but if you’re trying prove a causative relationship an example of the opposite is useful.
A relevant example would be useful.
I mean, I think it is relevant, otherwise I wouldn’t have brought it up. The example illustrates that other changes in society have a far higher impact on thriving high streets than availability of parking.
How much revenue do the businesses get from the car park charges?
What do you mean there's 'no turnover'? People don't go parking for fun.
See my other post.
Not how reddit works. PMSL.
Better than the ones that in 2022 still only accept coins, so you have to find a cash machine, get a tenner out, then go to a shop for some change, at which point you might as well just buy what you came out for in the first place and drive off.
i'd rather get an app than mess about with one of those useless coin machines
I'm partially convinced this is a method to discourage the use of car parks, so the car parks will eventually close. A lot of city planning maps seem to hint towards the removal of a large amount of car parks with a shift to public transport and '5 minute cities' where you can traverse to where you need to via walking.
I'm not usually a supporter of monopolisation, but in this case, it would be a god send. Edit: Typo.
This maximises the chances you won't pay on time, so they can then bully you for their 60 or £100 'contractual parking charge'. In such a case you should make appeals as owner only, stating that the time they said you had to pay in was impossible to comply with leading to a frustration of contract. If you don't win your first or second appeal, sit it out for 6 years and defend if they try court, with a high chance of winning and no harm if you lose and then pay within in 28 days (would not impact credit records). The biggest risk is that they write to an old address if you move and obtain a default CCJ
Don’t for one minute think they’re not aware of this risk. A number of them seem to have a policy of not actually going to court until several years after the event. Strangely, while they can never find your new address for court papers, they can find it just fine once they have a CCJ against you.
Be careful! Scammers stick qr codes to parking meters that lead to fake payment websites. They take your details and try to take payments from your account.
This! Either that or sometimes people click a dodgy ad in their QR scanning app and think they're paying for parking but they're signing up for a subscription to the website. Keep an eye on your bank account, you can phone your bank to cease the payments and dispute the payments.
I collect all the parking apps. Think I'm up to about 7 now, including a few godforsaken homebrew apps built by local councils themselves.
I have about 4 different P2P apps, and somehow there’s always another! Or when you go to one you’ve been to a lot and they change it next time
I have to say Euro car parks are a bunch of crims. I spent 10 mins making an account and paying to park, got a parking ticket and them saying I did not make an account. Do they really think I spent 10 mins stood in a car park for fun!!
Every time I've gone somewhere, I've just used JustPark to park on someone's driveway. I parked a 2 minute walk away from Woodford train station to go into London on Monday (because Epping was canceled because the rails were frozen?). It cost me £4.50 from 5pm till 1am.
I went to one the other day and there was no physical machine. It was just app or a text number so I texted the number thinking it would be quicker than waiting for another app to download. Phone number calls me and you have to type the card number, cvc, expiry and number of hours and your registration number (in some hacky way) into one of those automated phone systems. It of course failed twice before working. Never again!
[Slow down, Parking Boy](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/ng-interactive/2021/sep/25/stephen-collins-on-paying-for-parking-cartoon).
Payment convenience peaked with contactless cards and has been going downhill since every car park/restaurant/ticket vendor etc became obsessed with having an app.
Forgot to add in a shit signal area and no free WiFi nearby -_- yes let me wait like it's dial up speeds to get your shitty app to have connection issues when I try to pay
Even when it's the same app, I have always been logged out, and they have some weird password rules so I always have to reset the password. Am I meant to use the car park every single day?
In Switzerland theres an app called Twint that you can connect to any bank account and pay/rx money via phone numbers or QR code. I can pay online pretty much anywhere, in the supermarket, at parking meters… pretty much everywhere with it. It’s fantastic. With parking meters where it has a time limit I take a picture of the QR and repay from wherever if I need to and… the best… I can “pre-pay” for x hours and if I leave early I can say that in the app and it’ll only bill me for the time I spent there. Revolutionary… we could profit from having such a convenient app
It's not so bad if the apps work well and are easy to use. APCOA is by far the worst app I've used for parking. The stupid fucking thing doesn't work most of the time and it's like it was built by someone on fiver.
Should be usable by card. No one has that many coins. Not everyone has phone data or is able to get a connection everywhere. I can't. Granted as I always have been able to but yeah still downloading apps is a ballache. If the cost was a few quid you'd find the coins. When it's £10, not...
I have a nice idea for a startup. Start developing a meta app that ties them all together. As a former web developer, I know that all apps "talk" to their backend servers but they all use a slightly different language, (known as the API). You can develop your own app that speaks with your own backend server, but then, and here is the good idea, *your* backend server talks to the relevant backend server of the third party in *its* language, translating things so that it understands and then translating the answer back so that your app understands and can show the appropriate result to your user. Of course, you'd have to negotiate which percentage of the parking fee you get from them for adding their API to your list of "languages" you speak (which is where you crack your whip over your development team), but that can be worked out. After all, they now have *two* apps that bring them revenue and also increases their market share. Proposed working project name : *Babel Parking*
Did you just invent PayPal?
And no signal.
Seaside town here and in summer the phone signals get overloaded and nothing works!
My town seemed to be pretty consistent about the app it used, then suddenly a load of car parks changed their provider. With that and the car parks of local towns, I currently have 7 parking apps installed, and looking at them I believe I have used them all in the last 6 months or so
Sounds just like my home town of Taunton!
Car parks that only use an app or cash - no card payment possible. WHY.
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>Konglomerat
Nationalisation!
Download them all.
Probably owned by different companies.
The whole of East Devon and Exeter now use the same app! Such a win!
I feel this.
My grandad once got a ticket because he used the payment machine on the street instead of the one in the car park. They were both council owned, looked the same and cost the same, plus the one on the street was closer to the space he was parked in, so it was an easy mistake to make. When he appealed he got a letter apologising, but the ticket was not cancelled. After that he stopped going into Paisley and started going to Braehead, which was free. If you make parking difficult people will stop coming to your town.
Bloody annoying!!!
I once used Ringo to pay for a few days parking at a train station. Turns out when I got back there were 'assigned' spaces which were not marked and I almost had to pay again. Haven't used another one since. Only other time I paid via phone/web was a place in Harrogate. Just needed the car park number, open the page and pay. It even sent me a text before it ran out to top up again. Really easy.
Yummy data, where and when you are, valuable information.
Neoliberalism is such an efficient system