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the_snooze parent
Parking apps don’t seem to care much for that. They know you’ll jump through their shoddy UIs and data collection because they have a local monopoly. Often with physical payment kiosks removed and replaced with “download our shitty app!” notices.
StilesCrisis
They get paid more if you get a parking ticket.
deinonychus
i'm currently disputing a bill with a parking company. there's a kiosk at the movie theater served by the parking lot, so that you can get free parking if you see a movie. the kiosk has an option for you to describe your car if you forgot your license plate number. i did that and they sent me a bill for unpaid parking.

customer service is unable to acknowledge why that feature is offered and can only assert that if you park you gotta pay. after threatening to complain to the BBB and my state AG they have graciously offered to drop the ticket to $25.

thank you for listening to me vent :)

petesergeant
The RyanAir model of technically legal, but actively playing a zero-sum game against their consumers' diligence.
dbspin
At least in my country they face no competition. For a given location, only one app will work.
Workaccount2
Plenty of people on here looking to disrupt a market with tech...c'mon guys, get on it

Edit: On second thought, there is a perverse incentive at work (and probably one of the "lowest friction" ways to get money), which is issuing government enforced fines.

wlesieutre
The crappy apps that replaced parking meters are the people who disrupted the existing market with tech
Mashimo
Huh, where I live you often can use many different parking apps, and the one i tried is very simple and user friendly.

Start app, wait for gps, turn time wheel, press start.

edwinjm
Turn time wheel? How do you know in advance how long you stay? Where I live, you start and when you leave, you click stop. You also get reminders in case you forgot to stop.
deificx
Not GP, but I guess I'm using the same app. You guess (and then it gives you the price up front). 10 minutes before it expires it asks you if you want to extend it. There might also have been a detect if you drive away and stop feature (don't recall).

Mostly these days all paid parking has registration camera's, and it just starts and stops parking for you automatically. However, there are like 3 or so apps that compete here so you need a profile with all of them for this to work and you also need to enable this on all the apps.

baobun
There is no way this is not a degradation compared to a physical meter accepting cash plus whatever. My country doesn't really have parking apps yet here and paying for parking is never a friction.
Mashimo
> There is no way this is not a degradation compared to a physical meter accepting cash plus whatever.

Well you can extend the parking time while not at your car. That is a big plus.

2 More Comments →
prasadjoglekar
There's also the unfortunate stick of a much larger parking ticket that is even more trouble to contest.
CamperBob2
(Shrug) No, I'll just park someplace else. I probably need a good walk anyway.

There's no such thing as a monopoly when it comes to parking. If there is -- if every single parking spot within walking distance is locked behind a shitty app -- then you need to spend some quality time at your next city council meeting making yourself a royal PIA.

vel0city
You should read about the Chicago Parking Meters scandal. The City of Chicago leased all their meter rights to a private corporation on a 75 year lease for a bit over a billion dollars. The private company made it back in the first decade. The city even has to pay the parking company when they have to do construction or throw events that blocks the parking as revenue compensation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Parking_Meters

This doesn't apply to private pay lots though, so there's still some amount of "choice".

harikb
Sometimes I think, it should be illegal for these government contracts to last beyond 5 years for exactly this reason. Who know what kind of deals are being made. Some administration could sign away the whole country on their last day.
specproc
It's straight up corruption, pure and simple. The UK is also full of this crap. The officials and executives who've facilitated and profited from this robbery should be jailed.
jacquesm
So, the officials that signed that deal went to jail, right?
542354234235
I don’t think a monopoly requires literally every possible option to be controlled by the monopolistic entity.

Also, I only have time for so many hills on which to die. I’m not sure parking reform, while worthy, makes the cut.

cyberax
LOL. All the city parking spots around here are managed by PayByPhone, and pretty much all private parking spots are DiamondParking paid through ParkMobile.

I raised the issue with my local city council rep. She didn't care.

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