How do we pay for parking?
cohost.org
cohost.org
This is one of those things that tech really didn't "fix" and now I have to select from one of 20 apps instead of just paying with cash or even a credit card.
Consider an AWD BMW without badges. If it's a 3 series or above all you know is that it's either RWD or AWD.
If they tow it by the rear wheels you blow up your transfer case. But try and prove that it was THAT action that blew it up.
Criminals are quite efficient at getting things done
In New York it has gotten so bad that even first responders have been subverted
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/gang-members-and-others...
Also, tow operators are generally pretty shady. Because they operate in a second responder capacity, they have personal relationships with cops and sheriffs, repair garages, etc.
It was only a couple of pounds or so. I haven't been to these parts of town for years so I have no idea if this practice still goes on.
You know that what you said isn’t true. Or you are really badly informed.
It's not just money you pay to shady people. If he charged you $5 for parking, but allowed you to pay when you came back, but it would be $10 instead, you could say the additional $5 was the vig as that represents a 100% interest on a short term loan.
Not so much the guys that insist on spraying your windshield with soap at every traffic light.
"Party A pays 1 Pound Sterling for the item owned by Party B"
Crime: Party A blackmails Party B into selling them the item at a discount
Commerce: Party B offers the discount to entice Party A to try the item out, so that they can sell more at full price in the future
Altruism: Party B wants to give the item to a good home rather than destroying it (if that would cost them, then it's even mutually beneficial altruism from both parties)
Clearly it is the context about how the contract was made that distinguishes the situations. It would be a mistake to try to classify every possible contract as legitimate based on its semantics alone.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/44749/inside-the-tow-truck-maf...
All industries who's generous profits depend on monopolizing a fixed pie, they need to tightly control the amount of competition in order to maintain their profits, so they eventually devolve into a maifa-like organization, regardless if they're blue collar or white collar.
The only difference is the blue-collar mafia is way more visible as they solve their difference with valence, while the white-collar mafia doesn't need to resort to barbaric acts but simply lobbies their political friends in power to put enough laws and regulations in place to stop any newcomers entering their turf.
If only the towing industry could have taken a page out of Canada's telcos' book and lobby their way.
Ah, Brujah vs Ventrue.
My pet peeve is hearing how I don’t understand corruption because I live in a functioning country now.
It solved a very real problem of surveillance/advertising and skimming a little cream off the top in the process
As a computer programmer, I love it when technology allows us to automate things and do more with our time. But I also love the human connection that being greeted by a service professional offers; I don't mistake it for friendship, but it is valuable to me in its own way.
Socially, these kinds of jobs fill an important hole in contemporary western economics. The lower end of the pay-scale is being squeezed out of existence, gambled away on the slim chance of saving megabucks at scale from automation. Possibly the only downside is the unpleasant behaviour that members of the public might show towards service professionals. However, maybe a culture of mutual respect can be promoted more effectively when companies are not always data-harvesting, corner-cutting and penny-pinching as side-hustles.
That would be a bad business decision - the cash would be stolen daily without consequences and if the person you hired was harmed in the theft, you would be liable as a business.
I'm sure people would be much happier with paying for parking via the internet if it was done with an open, reliable and secure protocol with plenty of easy-to-use implementations. But given how impossibly far that is from the digital systems that are used for parking currently, human parking attendants seem to me to be an attractive option. My original comment was 'radical' when seen from the current standpoint of industries being so 'anti-human' that they won't employ workers even when labour is cheap, the work is humane, and it improves the experience for the customers.
So I've no idea if it would be a good decision for Perfectly Profitable Parking LLC, but I think it would be a good decision for the world :)
The app was slow as f - and only really worked if you brought up and scanned the shoes.
Was there any instruction? No - you had to figure it out yourself. To be honest if felt like you were playing myst.
Why was this done? IDK - to stop shoplifting?
Why was the old way so bad that you had to add all this crap. They're goddamn shoes - put them in boxes and let people try them on like we've been doing for 40 years. Creating an app is not going to improve the experience 10x.
If it's not going to improve the experience 10x - why are you doing this? WTF?
These are the instances where I understand a Steve Jobs type blowing their lid.
… the best shoe store I even went to, hands down, just had all the boxes laid out in stacks upon stack on the floor, where you could go through them.
… stores should be destroying online purchasing in this category by allowing me to try the damn thing on. If I can't … might as well order online? It's just as much of a gamble. (And sometimes, Amazon retailers provide a size chart with a conversion to mm. Although sometimes they also provide multiple size charts with conflicting information, too.)
(Also, a.) America, can we start measuring shoes in some actual unit, like mm or cm? … that there's a kids system, and women's is just inane. b.) Shoe companies would do well to have a standard sizing. You'd think that would be a thing. And yet, as someone with an odd foot, I can tell you that for some companies, it is, and for some, it isn't. I bought Nike for a while, since it was, and I knew any shoe in my size would fit comfortably. It was a magical few years … until Nike changed something. Why?)
Signing up for school or doing anything effectively required for school? Third-party terms should not be relevant.
Parking? If the parking lot itself has legal terms, okay (whether any such terms should be allowed is a different issue). But the app? No terms should be valid. If the app collects location data, it should be liable, full stop.
Eating at a restaurant? Toast’s terms should not matter.
So chargebacks for bullshit "fines" is a great solution to teach them not to charge those.
they could easily ban you nationwide, at all the parking facilities that payment processor serves. or if their ToS doesn't allow banning, your payments will just start failing their fraud checks, and you'll be effectively banned. if that's an acceptable consequence then go ahead and do a chargeback, but don't recommend it to others who don't know the consequences.
Billing the actual parking time down to the minute is pretty trivial, so having to reserve a specific time means they are intentionally trying to defraud you by either a) making you pay for time you won't use, or b) fining you for not reserving enough time.
Actually, I don't love it at all.
I always forget to stop the timer when I get back to the car and pay the Max so I hate it. YMMV
Maybe it’s me but I prefer the allotted time. I only regret that when paying at a meter at least if I have excess someone else can use it.
- The requirement to have a smartphone and mobile data service.
- The requirement to run untrusted code (granting whatever "permissions" it demands) on her personal device.
I think it's important that necessities and other basic services (including parking) remain equally accessible to everyone, not locked away behind expensive, often burdensome, usually exploitative technology products. I don't know if legislation is the best way to keep our society from being pushed toward the latter, but if that's what it takes, I would support it.
Note: I work at PBP
- Having an app store account of the country you are visiting.
Some of this apps are geo restricted and can't be downloaded with foreign app store accounts. Sometimes they can't process foreign cards or foreign phone numbers.
Explaining this to Google Play and Google One customer support led to nothing, they just told me to wait out the full year essentially. I'm just stuck with it for now.
Edit: Just tried and you can't do that, all accounts are in the same country and you even need a payment method for the new country!
I can just see it now, I go on an international trip and make a trail of Google Accounts for myself, all named the same, but in the local language. Heehee, can't wait!
Software greed has made life hell.
Anyone who works with such software at work (like SAP) knows it's UX is garbage and it's not for them. But now the same model is being foisted on the masses.
Edit: system described here- https://www.chargedretail.co.uk/2022/08/26/4-stand-out-examp...
I struggle to understand what would motivate it, from the perspective of the parking lot owner. I would presume the up-front cost of the old terminals was already paid off. And they certainly are more user-friendly.
Is it that the new smartphone payment providers are taking a smaller fee? That they are easier to switch between if the fees increase? Or what?
Physical infrastructure is to be avoided.
It’s a market like hotel WiFi. Early on, fancy hotels signed long contracts for shitty WiFi. Remember when you’d pay $10 for some awful WiFi service at the Marriott? Those parking things are the same.
I consulted for an entity that was paying $7.50 for a $25 dip. There’s hundreds of competing smartphone apps… you can even buy a square reader in a trivial scenario and pay 3%. In the government space, stuff like EZPass at airport parking costs $2-5 per transaction!
Interestingly, the move to place the POS in front of the customer rather than handing our cards to the cashier, is a valiant effort to make things more secure and efficient, I suppose, so I kind of approve of this change, although it sometimes gets crazy to figure out a new POS terminal for myself, and that's the most stress-filled point of shopping when the whole line and the cashier are all waiting for you to pay and checkout and GTFO ASAP.
The self-checkouts are the greatest waste ever. They never work, but most stores have a single, actual checkout line these days. Things literally got worse, no matter how you slice it. The real checkout line is long, and the self-checkout is incapable of being useful for anything other than a couple of items. Even then, it just yells at you every step of the way.
And the first rule of vending machines is that user experience doesn’t matter. Who cares if customers’ sodas are getting stuck? Neglect is the business model. What money you lose to bad UX you make up for in volume due to physical presence.
All of that is what it is. But with the erosion of public goods like a public parking lot for critical infrastructure (hospitals) that is what we are left with.
On a personal level, I hate the way all of this busted and unfixable technology is allowed to proliferate. If a refrigerator is broken you send out a repair man to fix it. But if your printer stops connecting to wifi there’s basically nothing you can do.
Still I was just wondering about the author of the parent post that reported that he didn't have a cell phone.
2. If I did want people to contact me, a flip phone would work fine for that.
Without a smart phone with a data plan, it is becoming harder and harder to navigate the world made for advertizers and cellular providers. And these parking companies don't want to make it easy for you to pay for parking. They'd much rather you have a frustrating experience, take the risk of not paying and getting impounded.
I mean I would think you have a family and just to organize something you would need to communicate, even when you're outside.
>a flip phone would work fine for that.
Yes flip phones are indeed cell phones.
This seems to come as a shock to much of the HN crowd, but people did in fact manage to organize things before cell phones existed.
Believe it or not, they still do.
Why is that so hard for people to grasp?
First you gotta install their atrocious little app, which I've always avoided because it was buggy and Google Maps gave the same real-time info in a better interface. So then you purchase some passes. They're QR-based, they're not NFC. Ugh, why?
Then during your entire voyage you'll need to maintain both connectivity and battery life. I hear tell that NFC can even survive a dead phone battery, but not a QR app. I was pissed about the connectivity, because I tend to disable networking while traveling, and I have a 1GiB data plan. Also, it makes for one-handed boarding because they mean it when they say "Have Fare Ready" so I feel like fiddling with my phone onboard is like fishing in my pockets for a pass, but worse, and I've already had passengers complain at me.
Now they're revamping the fare system again, and they're introducing NFC-card-based payments as well as account-based rather than pass-based fares. The punch line is that the mobile app won't be compatible with the card, so you need to choose one or the other, permanently. Guess I know which way I'll go.
In the not so distant past, it was perfectly normal for a person not to be reachable at all times. Today it became a luxury. I choose to indulge in it.
If you have plenty of spare time in your life you could just park anyway, and dispute in court that there is no physical way to pay, and they can't force everyone to own a phone.
My city similarly has a city-wide app that runs the parking meters that is chronically bad and clunky. Even has a bug where no matter how long a duration one picks, it only puts 30 minutes parking on, while charging a 20p service charge every time one pays for parking. The only real option is to keep using it every 30 minutes, and paying the extra 20p every time. It’s just shockingly, laughably, horrendously bad badness.
They built (more correctly, paid) for the IO app for it to be the one touch point for interacting with the government, then started cutting off features from it in other apps. Now they want to aggregate everything again on CIE, which not everyone has yet. Then you have local governments (looking at you, Lombardia) which build random apps which technically support SPID (something like state-provided SSO) and CIE (SAME THING) but wrap them through their custom authentication system because what's better than multiple passwords for the same account? Which already has 2FA?
Man, I wonder if they ever use the crap they build.
> And the tech companies have convinced administrators that technology can proctor exams better than an eagle-eyed human.
This to me denotes complete ignorance on the persons that are supposed to evaluate the implementation of a particular technology.
Is it possible that the parking prices in the city of the author are legally capped and are not reflecting actual demand? This would mean that the parking lot is basically filled every day anyways, and the business doesn't see any ways to increase revenue by improving satisfaction.
fixing is in progress. just as redesign. just as upgrading to whatever next version, and so on.
but costs have already spiraled out of control, there are a lot of competitors, and all this doesn't make sense, but probably has some VC money in it somewhere.
And I'm not sure what country you're in, but in most US cities the competitive threat from public transit can probably be safely ignored.
Competition sucks when it's a race to the bottom. Those systems usually look like some early 1800s dude's idea of a parking lot system. The technology to make them secure AND nice to use has been there for at least a decade.
Wait there's another activity a global mega corp can monopolize and overcomplexify.
Incentives are nonsensicle when the primary task is not providing a service, but using the service as a vehicle to explore software.
Parking apps are a solved problem. Why are we submitting that class of problem to tech abuse?
Feynman was right, even smart people get on computers and begin to 'play'. Pointlessly so, in pragmatic terms.
I nod along to this piece and yet I don’t want to be so cynical.
Pay-for parking feels like the kind of thing that should become a utility with one, easy, well-known way to pay for parking anywhere.
The trouble is that this either requires government regulation, or for one company to effectively become a monopoly, which can lead to different abuses.
- who should have access to the database linking license plates to addresses?
- what about people with vehicles other countries? Less of a problem in North America, but I recently was in Canada, and saw some vehicles with German number plates!
- what about false number plates? Or misreads? How does one defend against them?
For the last one - a hilarious example: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-somerset-58959930
Solves all the problems you’ve listed.
You have to write a law with it that says "rental car company's can't charge a junk fee of $25/day" or whatever. (Which is roughly what we were charged the last time we accidentally — there wasn't a toll booth! — took a rental through a toll. $25 from the rental car company for a $1 toll. We own an EZ pass now to avoid this very problem.)
(For those unfamiliar, the EZPass is associated with a set of plates. You can register a rental car against your account during the term of your rental, which helps ensure the charges go to the right place, if the EZPass itself fails to register during the drive.)
(Road tolls already do this in Norway.)
They timed the release of photo-rolling with a few years worth of defective, delaminating license plates, and many people deface or bend the plates.
P.S. my parents became the victims of a phone sex line. They had been receiving mysterious hangup calls in the middle of the night on a regular basis. Then my aunt was planning a trip and dialing a lot of airline (800) numbers, and she accidentally dialed (800) + my parents' number, and got an earful, and so thus my parents found out what all the callers were after.
The company then told me my license plate wouldn't register because there were multiple people with that plate number in the lot. They let me pay the regular price online.
Going to keep doing this.
Installing an app, entering my name, address and email, and then manually typing in the numbers on my credit card should not be allowed to be called “paying”. That’s more like a members-only club that you must join before you can use their services.
Any IoT and Web pulled upon daily routines is just pain all the way.
I wonder, whether if the internet goes out, modern "advanced" fridge won't unfreeze.
Jokes apart, I walk with my kid in stroller, and to navigate public transit, have to use the awful bus monitoring apps. It's a pain to use even with both hands free and without child to monitor. But 30-yo rich vice-something from the government (that never takes public transit) thinks it's how we must live in the future.
Lots of industries like this, frankly. Another one that comes to mind is recruiting. Hundreds of thousands of duplicated man-hours, for what? Are any of them really better than the other? How do you "innovate" in these kinds of industries?
What I dislike is that since charging is now as simple as putting up a sign. Every single parking can and do charge money, no matter how small, remote or ill-managed it is. Previously only the most heavily used lots in the city center would invest in a machine. Meaning now not only you have more to pay, also that parking company knows your every move.
I also find it surprising. UK has 1 "main" app that just works. Has simple UI, 1-2 features and that's it. Then there is a bit of a tail of 4-5 SMS-only providers, which I never used as you first have to "register", maybe call someone first...
I don't mean, UK consumer software is somehow better, I'm just surprised something as straightforward as a parking app becomes a pinch point.
I scan the code. It pops up a website with all the lot information known. I select a number of hours. I specify either a stall number or plate number. Then I pay with Apple Pay.
I have never had to download any kind of app. And definitely never need to grant location permissions.
This will become a huge problem / is already a problem. Whats the right way to solve this? some sort of https like trust relationship for the whole QR code interation?
You scan a QR code, that sends a text message. If you have a saved card, you pay in the text thread by replying 'pay now', if not you get a link to save a new card.
No apps required. Hoping that with enough adoption, it will obviate the need for experiences as bad as this.
It's quite possible that the third sign on OP's parking lot would have led them to a perfectly user-friendly app with a pleasant and simple payment flow. But with so many apps to choose from and each lot only supporting a random subset of them, it'd be basically luck if you get to use the "good" app, even if there exists one.
Definitely standard no. 15, but there's room for something better to win out here right?
Good luck nonetheless.
- That should take all of 4-16 hours to setup the software / web side and payment processing [processors who do cannabis / adult products].
- 1 hour to run to Staples and get some laser Av3ry pre-cut stickers.
- 1 hour to replace | supplement your 'real' stickers.
During the processing part, The scammers could very well just overbill the user by saying "Do you agree to $2 for parking?" and then charge the user $50. Then say a "We will hold $50 while the transaction is approved" just like a gas station.
Your service will get all the complaints and the scammer just gets the cash.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea or anything, however there are many bored smart teenagers and many hungry people with sliding ethics.
Hell, an even better scam is to copy your QR code from each unit and then bill the user for $X more as a "convenience fee" ... then auto-submit correctly to your service.
I mean, that might not even be illegal [in the sense that the customer agreed to the fee].
I also hope that your startup has been advised on the very significant TCPA liabilities this approach risks. Even if you do everything right, you're going to face lawsuits saying you don't. I have very mixed feelings about the TCPA, and it does hamper "innovation" in some circumstances, but I am delighted that it carries significant litigation risk for anyone who thinks it's a good idea to send me SMS messages. I. Don't. Want. Them.
What if I don't have my phone?
What if my phone doesn't have a camera?
What if I don't have a card?
literal thousands of engineers could do better, but may not, and are instead subjected to the profiteers.
That aside, I cannot be the only person shocked to be finding out through Hacker News that CathodeRayDude is a scaly.
The ParkMobile app I recall using in Monterey and it was fine too. Reminders around when to top up etc., which is nice but it was fine.
Google Goggles grew the functionality years ago, but even recently it will still deliver Artificial Idiocy level results: I scanned a QR code this year (I think it was?) and the AI thought about it and … told me it was a QR code. "Here are image results from the web of other QR codes!" sigh
So I have a dedicated app for this.
The camera app has grown built in support for them, but the UI is hot garbage. I'm not at all sure how one is supposed to discover it; there's no button for it, no label, nothing to really indicate it. You just point it at a QR code, but it's then pretty terrible at recognizing them, so even if you're doing everything right … you might just get nothing, with no feedback.
So I still have a QR scanner app, as it is far easier to work and more reliable at scanning than the camera app is…
I still don't think (in Android; I can't speak for iOS) the built-in app is viable. It only detects in insanely optimal conditions, and non-optimal scans produce no errors or diagnostics to the user: you can very likely be doing everything correct, be aiming the camera in such a manner that there is adequate lighting & pixels to scan a QR code, and get bumpkiss — and further, you'd have no idea the feature even exists … whereas a dedicated app will scan it instantly with the same image, and if you don't get it, you know that the app is capable of it and you probably just need to move closer. (Also, the app I have has a decent viewfinder showing you how much it needs, and it shows visible feedback about what it is finding, even if it can't make a full match.)
That experience aside, I don't believe there should be jobs where you simply don't think. Manual labour jobs are unfair because they don't reward the brain whatsoever, no creativity, no one loves to do them, and they create a market of labourers with little to no transferable skills thus putting them in an unfair situation if they want or are forced to get a different job.
An old lady in Seattle couldn't understand how to pay for parking using confusing parking apps.
The author helped her, but the process was complicated and not user-friendly.
He guided her through scanning a QR code and using parking apps, eventually helping her pay with the Park Mobile app using her credit card.
Edit: The parent has been edited since I commented.
I agree with the author, I just write it in a shorter way.
People are spending vast amounts of time fiddling with shit that doesn't work.
We not only have created a complex society on all levels, but now a very difficult world to live, even the most simple events is now a pain in the ass.
From restaurants to small markets, you now pay for a robot, you don't have a human to support you.
things that were simple, became full of friction, all to collect our data.
I always wonder who comes up with these full of friction "tech innovations".
Last time it took me about five minutes to order a soda from one of those machines in a hotel. It even required a phone number to complete the order.
Another day that machine failed mid transaction but charged my card so I had to email the hotel's accounting department to get a refund about a week later.
Omg. This is so stupid.
The same with parties/festivals: you have to create accounts to buy a fucking ticket, then you pay a "convenience fee".
That is, in addition to providing your data to a platform that you did not ask for, you still pay for the "convenience" lol.
So finally when you arrive at the party, then you have to pay for a "credit card" that works only in that place, where some 3rd party collect your data again.
It's: multiple competing apps, QR code scanners, advertisements, buggy apps, buggy payment taking.
"You wish to park on Lord Absentee's land? You must enroll yourself in his service, then, peasant!"
It is only a very slight exaggeration.
The other day I just wanted to update a dependency in my Python project and now it’s crashing in CI (doesnt locally) due to a missing C header file. No amount of git clean allowed me to reproduce it locally (using venvs). It used to work fine before. I just gave up for now. The article summarises my feelings perfectly.
It's about the Chicago Parking deal in 2008 with some machines for parking. Daley gave control of parking meters to a private company until 2083. Sold out his citizens. For a super discount. And now, in a shocking twist, the private company is squeezing the citizens and government.
It's a pretty good watch.
Downtown parking shouldn't be cheap!
In other words: Fuck Google and their ad bullshit.
Street parking, a universal hassle, is especially problematic in Chicago due to the infamous Chicago parking meter deal. This deal permitted a private company to take control and revenue from all 36,000 of the city's parking meters. In return, the city received a lump sum of $1.16 billion. However, this arrangement has led to numerous financial and political challenges that won't conclude until 2083.
The root of this decision can be traced back to the 2008 financial crisis when Chicago was grappling with a significant budget deficit. Mayor Richard M. Daley, in an attempt to address this, chose to privatize the parking meters without adequate analysis. Surprisingly, the city's aldermen approved this deal by a vote of 40 to 5, despite having limited time to review the terms. These aldermen have since faced criticism for their apparent lack of due diligence.
The beneficiaries of this deal, Chicago Parking Meters LLC (a consortium formed by Morgan Stanley, Allianz Capital partners, and The Sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi) saw immense profits. This was largely due to stipulations in the agreement that increased parking rates, ensuring a steady rise in revenue. Furthermore, the city now finds itself in a position where it has to pay penalties whenever it undertakes any actions that could potentially dip into the company's profits. This has amounted to Chicago paying the company over $75 million since the deal's inception.
Additionally, this arrangement severely restricts the city's urban development endeavors. For instance, adding bike lanes or implementing other urban reforms now comes with the caveat of compensating the company for any possible lost revenues. An attempt to challenge this by claiming the company held an illegal monopoly was dismissed in court twice. The courts deemed that while the deal might not have been the wisest choice, it wasn't illegal. So, due to the financial pressures of the crisis, Chicago ended up making a deal that has permitted financial institutions to reap substantial profits from city property for an extended period.
Am I required to own a smart phone now to park? Am I required to have a credit card to park?
Idea:
1) Park without paying
2) Get towed
3) Sue the living shit out of the municipality so that they shut down modern parking meters.
I was going to a local store to buy something. Amazon will probably get my business next time.
I see we've hopped out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Who is going to track my balance 5 years from now when a different company is granted the rights to collect parking for the city?
I’m guessing there has to be a hidden option to only “charge” the app for what you want to reserve the spot for, else this seems illegal, but then again the city may be giving itself these mob-style rights.
Try to concentrate on the other stuff in life, maybe.
Periodically I joke around with my family that when I retire (I'm 49 now, so it's not all that far away), I'm never touching another computer again. Ever. Each time I make that joke, it's a little less joke and a little more of an actual plan.
> He went away from the basement and left this note on his terminal: "I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."
You are an artist with a blank canvas that countless people in the world will pay you life changing amounts of money to draw on. If you choose to paint in a way that you hate, that’s on you.
I don’t want 500 knobs, a touchscreen on everything. I don’t want your app, I don’t want an account.
The example of car parking.. the technology is there to make is 100% automatic. But then you can’t fine people
Usually in this case the user is not the customer, so it does not matter.
Though TBF what you wrote is pretty much 100% prime grade-A certified rant. A/K/A fulmination.
Substantiating a few of the claims / offering alternatives (either for the industry or yourself) might also skew dang's interpretation.
Posting from a throwaway account would also add to the overall effect, IMO.
One important aspect of this is repetition. If a comment is repeating something that has been said many times before, its curiosity value approaches zero—and indignation makes that happen faster.
Conversely, the more new information or unexpected twists a comment contains, the better it is for curiosity.