3 ms·

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

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 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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
wink 5y ago
Depends where you live. Here (Munich, Germany) all street parking is actually done and accounted for by the city and for a few years we've actually had a quite awesome system that I am 100% happy with. Just as if it this was not Germany where you often can't pay without cash :D So it's an app where you use the same account to log in that you can use for public transport, and the geolocation so far has always matched me up with the correct parking spot and I can just start (by-minute pricing) and stop again, it reminds me if I forgot to check out and it gets paid from my billing info that is in that account, same as when I take the subway. Now if we're talking about private parking lots, that's where I am probably ok to keep on using cash or card, and nothing with an account.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  The incentives are different if it's built & maintained by the government, so less pressure for "growth & engagement". You're lucky to be in an area where the problem has been tackled by your government (and they seem to have done a good job) as opposed to offloaded to a private company like here in the UK.

TheOtherHobbes 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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

wink 5y ago

Depends where you live. Here (Munich, Germany) all street parking is actually done and accounted for by the city and for a few years we've actually had a quite awesome system that I am 100% happy with. Just as if it this was not Germany where you often can't pay without cash :D So it's an app where you use the same account to log in that you can use for public transport, and the geolocation so far has always matched me up with the correct parking spot and I can just start (by-minute pricing) and stop again, it reminds me if I forgot to check out and it gets paid from my billing info that is in that account, same as when I take the subway. Now if we're talking about private parking lots, that's where I am probably ok to keep on using cash or card, and nothing with an account.

Nextgrid 5y ago
The incentives are different if it's built & maintained by the government, so less pressure for "growth & engagement". You're lucky to be in an area where the problem has been tackled by your government (and they seem to have done a good job) as opposed to offloaded to a private company like here in the UK.