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About 22 years ago, we began doing our best to obsolete those things. To the degree you want to pay for parking, lol, the preferred device has long been in your

About 22 years ago, we began doing our best to obsolete those things. To the degree you want to pay for parking, lol, the preferred device has long been in your pocket IMO!† Cofounder, PayByPhone here. As someone pointed out, the engineering required to harden those (against thieves, vandals, weather) is impressive. Thus, the amount of money your cities, universities, airports, etc. pay up front for paystations and then annually in mandatory maintenance contracts (that's where the real money is made) ... ugh. I'm not saying our UI & UX over the years are without flaws (IVR, WML, SMS, & finally apps) but at least you're not standing in the weather or leaving your appointments to feed the beast. † Added: Actually, the best payment interaction might be no interaction but the whole always-connected-and-location-aware-car wasn't on our roadmap in 2000. The scene is ripe for change again IMO.

lbriner 4y ago
The apps aren't much better. I got an App error the other day so I paid cash in the machine, it turns out I had paid on the App but still got the error. Also problems setting up some of them (Have to run a number and waste 5 minutes when you just want to pay and park). My rant over software in general is that we have rushed to get features into things without investing the correct amount of time handling errors and making UX as slick as possible.
RHSeeger 4y ago
But this means you need to require anyone who wants to park must 1. have a smart phone of the appropriate type and 2. be comfortable installing an app (possibly one they only just now found out about and haven't had time to research). Since clearly this isn't reasonable, you'll still need to have those paystations (though less of them?)
- emptybits 4y ago
  Nope. IVR (voice & touch tones) has always been an option. i.e. "Enter the location number on the sign. Enter how many minutes you wish to park for." We invested a lot to ensure dumbphone compatibility. Some say it's faster than an app.
  - RHSeeger 4y ago
    Ah, I wasn't aware of this. I don't know that I've ever seen it, but I appreciate that it does exist. Kudos for putting the thought, time, and effort into handling that case.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    The IVR sounds like a much nicer experience than what you currently have on the web.
  - danbolt 4y ago
    As a Vancouver resident, it’s always a bit of a relief when you notice the green dots on the meter and don’t have to fiddle with a credit card machine.
- jakewins 4y ago
  These pay-by-app parking setups are everywhere in Sweden, each parking owner has their own app, so you run around with a dozen shady parking apps on your phone. It seems that is now being replaced by the app being optional - if you don’t do anything and just park and leave, you get a bill in the mail for the time your car was parked, based on license plate recognition. No signups, no parking tickets, just park and leave.
  - emptybits 4y ago
    > if you don’t do anything and just park and leave, you get a bill in the mail for the time your car was parked, based on license plate recognition. No signups, no parking tickets, just park and leave I like this. It's civilized. As I said, the best interaction today could be no interaction. One way or another, convenience means you're probably trusting someone with information and linking it to an account or address or payment mechanism. For city governments, maybe this is okay. For commercial destinations and sketchy parking operators ... maybe not.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if some parking operations factor in a certain percentage of fines into their revenue model so that making everyone pay (and thus no more fines) would actually decrease their profits.
Nextgrid 4y ago
The problem is that moving things online/app means there's now an opportunity for "engagement" to creep in. It's only a matter of time before you need to create an account, agree to a privacy policy, share telemetry and receive "offers" (aka spam) just to be able to pay for parking. The objective no longer becomes to be a tool to help the user pay for parking but to generate "engagement" in order to justify employees' salaries (and potential VC funding) and monopolize the parking payment market. I just checked your website and indeed it's asking me to agree to ToS, privacy & cookie policy - I'd rather fight with the old-school machine. According to the privacy policy you're also selling aggregated analytics data - that's a huge downgrade from "insert coin to pay for parking". The old-school approach, with all its flaws, just takes payment and no other identifying information and leaves no opportunities for marketing/product to mark their territory.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  Many ATMs now have a "please wait..." screen which pauses for a few seconds... to show you a random ad. All of these are textbook examples of how markets actually add friction. You could have a single centralised ATM/payment network with a national or even global transaction standard for different application UIs, hardware, and software. But instead everyone duplicates effort to build their own version, some of the versions have exploitative features, and the job is done poorly - although no doubt it's profitable for the shareholders.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    > Many ATMs now have a "please wait..." screen which pauses for a few seconds... to show you a random ad. Thank goodness I've never seen this. Where are you that this is a thing?
  - Someone 4y ago
    I guess the next steps are: - changing the random ad to a recommendation based on your credit card and parking history (and car age and type, derived from camera, or from the license plate) - a quiz question to check that you watched the ad - a subscription with your credit card company to get checkouts without ads Progress! /s
justinhj 4y ago
It usually goes like this… get out phone, download the app, need Apple password to add an app can’t use face id, checkmate my apple password is too secure to remember. I don’t have time to reset and it’s a PITA anyway. Even if you have the app you can suffer from the combo of poor cell reception and wifi with no internet hijacking your connection
- collegeburner 4y ago
  Yeah the whole app thing can go die. There is 0 good reason why it can't just be a web site. And as somebody who doesn't pay for a lot of data because I don't use it much your shitty 100MB app just ate a very significant chunk of what I had for the month. Oh and now it's taking up space on my phone, unless I want to burn data to download it again next time.
frereubu 4y ago
I agree with a number of points in other replies to your comment, but I do think your app is the best that I've used out of the many I've ended up installing, so kudos for that.
- emptybits 4y ago
  Appreciate that. In theory, a company's offering should improve over two decades and hundreds of millions of user interactions. (If it's paying attention.) I have moved on so credit now goes to a large and apparently excellent team.
logicalmonster 4y ago
> To the degree you want to pay for parking, lol, the preferred device has long been in your pocket I think that using Apps can be very reasonable and easier to use in many situations, but I also think that accessibility standards ought to be different when you're a government. If cash and coins are legal tender, then they should be acceptable as payment in some fashion.
jagger27 4y ago
I really like PayByPhone! Thanks!
- emptybits 4y ago
  Hey, thank you and thanks for using it!
deergomoo 4y ago
Heh, I just downloaded PayByPhone a couple of days ago as I’m on holiday and it’s what all the machines here seem to use. It’s a nice app! Many parking apps are pretty utilitarian in nature but found PayByPhone very easy to use—it feels very well designed to me.
neilalexander 4y ago
On the whole, what bothers me most about many parking apps is that they are apps. I don't want to have to download apps and register user accounts. Ideally I'd like to scan a QR code that takes me to a checkout page _without user registration_ where I can just enter the relevant details, Apple Pay and done. You don't need to know my name, address, phone number or email address — no other parking ticket machine in the world would ask for these. Anything more than my vehicle registration and payment method is overcomplicating it.
- jakear 4y ago
  FWIW, the person you're responding to mostly solves this. It's a website, and while they do ask for an email they don't validate it. That said, I did end up with a ticket because I parked in their space, phone was dead, and machine was broken. I charged my phone as soon as possible to pay, but it was too late.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

lbriner 4y ago

The apps aren't much better. I got an App error the other day so I paid cash in the machine, it turns out I had paid on the App but still got the error. Also problems setting up some of them (Have to run a number and waste 5 minutes when you just want to pay and park). My rant over software in general is that we have rushed to get features into things without investing the correct amount of time handling errors and making UX as slick as possible.

RHSeeger 4y ago

But this means you need to require anyone who wants to park must 1. have a smart phone of the appropriate type and 2. be comfortable installing an app (possibly one they only just now found out about and haven't had time to research). Since clearly this isn't reasonable, you'll still need to have those paystations (though less of them?)

emptybits 4y ago
Nope. IVR (voice & touch tones) has always been an option. i.e. "Enter the location number on the sign. Enter how many minutes you wish to park for." We invested a lot to ensure dumbphone compatibility. Some say it's faster than an app.
- RHSeeger 4y ago
  Ah, I wasn't aware of this. I don't know that I've ever seen it, but I appreciate that it does exist. Kudos for putting the thought, time, and effort into handling that case.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  The IVR sounds like a much nicer experience than what you currently have on the web.
- danbolt 4y ago
  As a Vancouver resident, it’s always a bit of a relief when you notice the green dots on the meter and don’t have to fiddle with a credit card machine.
jakewins 4y ago
These pay-by-app parking setups are everywhere in Sweden, each parking owner has their own app, so you run around with a dozen shady parking apps on your phone. It seems that is now being replaced by the app being optional - if you don’t do anything and just park and leave, you get a bill in the mail for the time your car was parked, based on license plate recognition. No signups, no parking tickets, just park and leave.
- emptybits 4y ago
  > if you don’t do anything and just park and leave, you get a bill in the mail for the time your car was parked, based on license plate recognition. No signups, no parking tickets, just park and leave I like this. It's civilized. As I said, the best interaction today could be no interaction. One way or another, convenience means you're probably trusting someone with information and linking it to an account or address or payment mechanism. For city governments, maybe this is okay. For commercial destinations and sketchy parking operators ... maybe not.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if some parking operations factor in a certain percentage of fines into their revenue model so that making everyone pay (and thus no more fines) would actually decrease their profits.

Nextgrid 4y ago

The problem is that moving things online/app means there's now an opportunity for "engagement" to creep in. It's only a matter of time before you need to create an account, agree to a privacy policy, share telemetry and receive "offers" (aka spam) just to be able to pay for parking. The objective no longer becomes to be a tool to help the user pay for parking but to generate "engagement" in order to justify employees' salaries (and potential VC funding) and monopolize the parking payment market. I just checked your website and indeed it's asking me to agree to ToS, privacy & cookie policy - I'd rather fight with the old-school machine. According to the privacy policy you're also selling aggregated analytics data - that's a huge downgrade from "insert coin to pay for parking". The old-school approach, with all its flaws, just takes payment and no other identifying information and leaves no opportunities for marketing/product to mark their territory.

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
Many ATMs now have a "please wait..." screen which pauses for a few seconds... to show you a random ad. All of these are textbook examples of how markets actually add friction. You could have a single centralised ATM/payment network with a national or even global transaction standard for different application UIs, hardware, and software. But instead everyone duplicates effort to build their own version, some of the versions have exploitative features, and the job is done poorly - although no doubt it's profitable for the shareholders.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  > Many ATMs now have a "please wait..." screen which pauses for a few seconds... to show you a random ad. Thank goodness I've never seen this. Where are you that this is a thing?
- Someone 4y ago
  I guess the next steps are: - changing the random ad to a recommendation based on your credit card and parking history (and car age and type, derived from camera, or from the license plate) - a quiz question to check that you watched the ad - a subscription with your credit card company to get checkouts without ads Progress! /s

justinhj 4y ago

It usually goes like this… get out phone, download the app, need Apple password to add an app can’t use face id, checkmate my apple password is too secure to remember. I don’t have time to reset and it’s a PITA anyway. Even if you have the app you can suffer from the combo of poor cell reception and wifi with no internet hijacking your connection

collegeburner 4y ago
Yeah the whole app thing can go die. There is 0 good reason why it can't just be a web site. And as somebody who doesn't pay for a lot of data because I don't use it much your shitty 100MB app just ate a very significant chunk of what I had for the month. Oh and now it's taking up space on my phone, unless I want to burn data to download it again next time.

frereubu 4y ago

I agree with a number of points in other replies to your comment, but I do think your app is the best that I've used out of the many I've ended up installing, so kudos for that.

emptybits 4y ago
Appreciate that. In theory, a company's offering should improve over two decades and hundreds of millions of user interactions. (If it's paying attention.) I have moved on so credit now goes to a large and apparently excellent team.

logicalmonster 4y ago

> To the degree you want to pay for parking, lol, the preferred device has long been in your pocket I think that using Apps can be very reasonable and easier to use in many situations, but I also think that accessibility standards ought to be different when you're a government. If cash and coins are legal tender, then they should be acceptable as payment in some fashion.

jagger27 4y ago

I really like PayByPhone! Thanks!

emptybits 4y ago
Hey, thank you and thanks for using it!

deergomoo 4y ago

Heh, I just downloaded PayByPhone a couple of days ago as I’m on holiday and it’s what all the machines here seem to use. It’s a nice app! Many parking apps are pretty utilitarian in nature but found PayByPhone very easy to use—it feels very well designed to me.

neilalexander 4y ago

On the whole, what bothers me most about many parking apps is that they are apps. I don't want to have to download apps and register user accounts. Ideally I'd like to scan a QR code that takes me to a checkout page _without user registration_ where I can just enter the relevant details, Apple Pay and done. You don't need to know my name, address, phone number or email address — no other parking ticket machine in the world would ask for these. Anything more than my vehicle registration and payment method is overcomplicating it.

jakear 4y ago
FWIW, the person you're responding to mostly solves this. It's a website, and while they do ask for an email they don't validate it. That said, I did end up with a ticket because I parked in their space, phone was dead, and machine was broken. I charged my phone as soon as possible to pay, but it was too late.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]