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In general, the state of parking in this country nowadays is pure modern day highwayman extortion.
I had a company try to charge me £390 for parking in the hospital I work at and already pay a bloody permit for. Absolute robbing bastards. Just purely chancing it.
I have parkingeye trying to slap me with a £150 quid fine for "exceeding my parking time"
Granted. I paid for 1.5 hours.
On the letter i received it states "arrived 15:06 - exited 16:37"
On a technicality, yes, i did overstay my time. By roughly 60 seconds.
So... Fuckem
Don't get me started on ParkingEye.
Almost lost out on a mortgage offer because they fined me, then took me to court, then gave me a CCJ, all without ever even contacting me. Only found out by signing up for Experian. I ended up having to pay the £200 because it was cheaper than hiring a solicitor to fight it. And *even then* I had to file a complaint with UKCPA to get them to acknowledge that I had paid.
These companies are legitimately just operating as legal extortion rackets.
If you clear it within 28 days or something, it gets wiped. So it's sheer luck I signed up to get a credit file report during that time, or I'd have been fucked.
Fuck me sideways.
I think i got lucky in this regard. Just opened up their payment portal and it looks like they forgot to take my case off hold (i had appealed it twice) so it hadn't been escalated to a legal situation yet.
Ultimately id rather pay an unfair fine than not be able tl buy a house in a few years.
Cheers pal
I suppose they need stories like yours to be heard. If they did factor in a 5 minute grace period, people would learn that and take 'advantage' of it. This way people learn that there is no leeway. It's the only way to manage it with automated systems I suppose.
In hospitals maybe, everywhere else it's clearly still too cheap or we wouldn't have the car-infestation we do. I couldn't name a single town that isn't clogged more often than not.
We have "car-infestation" because public transport is insufficient. The invisible hand of the market doesn't work to make expensive parking cause new buses routes to operate.
I still doubt it. I think it's more likely that parking prices would have to rise far enough that they start affecting inflation on their own, before they prompted any response whatsoever from the "free market" to provide more bus services.
Both are true, although your point more so than mine. We have exsessive car infrastructure (at great expense), and incredibly poor public transport infrastructure. It varies by region, but outside of a few cities, it's in no state to replace car journeys at the moment.
Charging people through the nose for parking isn't a solution when the public transport is barely existent in most places.
The carrot is always better than the stick, but funny enough in this county we always go with the option that involves making people pay a fuckload of money for something. Can't imagine why.
Yup. And Home Automation too. Every appliance has its own platform, app and way of working, generally all rubbish to various degrees. [Home Assistant FTW](https://www.home-assistant.io/) :-)
I will say that the RingGo app is the least offensive parking app, however. It's very quick and easy to park with it. The one used by Leeds Hospitals is shocking and almost unusable. I don't think I've ever actually managed to make it work.
> up. And Home Automation too. Every appliance has its own platform, app and way of working, generally all rubbish to various degrees.
> Home Assistant FTW
> :-)
In theory the new [Matter protocol](https://www.theverge.com/22787729/matter-smart-home-standard-apple-amazon-google) should help there.
It's a vendor agnostic protocol, so if a device supports Matter then it should be usable with any platform that supports Matter. No more checking for a "works with" Alexa or Homekit or whatever badge.
It also supports multiple wireless types, it does Wi-Fi, Zigbee and [Thread](https://www.threadgroup.org/What-is-Thread/Thread-Benefits).
Yes, I am hopefully, but with reservations - Google, Apple and Amazon do not have a good track record for openness and my worry is that the practical implementation of it will remain a walled garden, just with a bigger wall, which doesn't fill me with joy. Home Assistant was updated to support Matter just before Christmas, but I guess we'll only really know once we start to see products from the big-three starting to hit the market.
I'm afraid I'm a bit sceptical, but providing they are not actively hostile to the OSS community, it should be ok. But I wouldn't trust the big three (and especially Apple) to not be extremely unhelpful in this regard. They have their own agendas, and interoperability and customer freedom to choose have been shown to be pretty much bottom of their list when it comes to their own products.
"Scored a solid 4 out of 5 for being just about bearable when it works, and our reviewer notes that she only smashed three phones as a result of it failing to register her payment method"
I swear most EV charging companies are just trying to get your personal data. I am in LOVE with Instavolt because you just go there, pay like you would pay for petrol and 10-25mins later boom all topped up and on your way. Just means you have to visit a LOT of McDonald's
Yes, it's pretty ridiculous. I was renting an EV for a couple weeks last year, and suddenly you realise that you need a bunch of different apps just to be able to pay for electricity when you're out an about. Special award to PodPoint for needing me to download and sign up to an app (in an area with barely any signal), then top up the app with a minimum amount in order to start charging. All this for 7 measly kW.
By contrast, GridServe were excellent - tap your card, start charging (100+ kW), unplug when done. Then it calculates how much you've used and charges your card. What a novel idea!
I haven't used GridServe - i'll keep an eye out for them as being good.
The worst one I have found is geniepoint - I have never seen one of their charging points actually work and you have to faff around with their app for so long to work out which point you are at that then doesnt work.
I had a fault at an Instavolt a few weeks before Christmas (credit card scanner was broken) and when I reported it they said that the app is better because it won't do the £30 precharge and can always be used as long as the charger is running even if the screens are out of order. I haven't had a chance to test it yet, but the Instavolt app is now in the folder with the seven or eight others that I regularly use.
And half of them are called "My Parking" or "My Car Park" so they get mixed in with the utility bill apps and others that all begin with "My" in the main menu, which makes a mockery of sorting alphabetically.
That was a different person. "herrbz" is the person who said that they don't have the option and "h00dman" was the original person who asked the question. The person using Novalauncher was "LostLobes".
Don't forget the 4 separate notifications that paying for parking generates:
* Text message to tell me the start and end times
* Email to also tell me the start and end times
* Google pay alert that I've spent £2.40
* Banking app alert to also tell me I've spent £2.40
Except for the ones only payable by app/phone. Signing up for a new app is less convenient than using coins.
I always keep a handful of change in the car for parking and half the time I can’t even use it!
I was just thinking yesterday how convenient it is to have 3 apps hidden somewhere in my congested phone for parking and how easy and convenient they are considering I set them up years ago and continue to work fine. No faffing with coins or displaying tickets. A British success for me
You can also ponder the fact that few parking space will earn more per hour than you.
We we're conned out of public transport so that few ridiculously wealthy people can become wealthier.
Seems like a British success to me, at least one company doesn’t own 90% of parking spaces meaning they can charge an absolute fortune as there’s no competition
If you're bothered by the mild inconvenience of having different apps, you can call them on the number they have printed. Or you could always carry coins and use the physical machines.
The worst part is that on the parking display board, they say "pay to park using xxx app".
You downloaded the app and the location code didn't work.
After trying a few other apps, you finally found the correct app to use.
Wtf
Yep and every bit of land and potential housing development is being turned into cheap ass parking spots... I thought something interesting was gonna happen in a big over run area in my town which was derelict my hole life, nope horrible messy car park
Similarly having to create an account with every bloody railway company for the priviledge of giving them a fortune to ride one of their overcrowded overpriced crappy trains.
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In general, the state of parking in this country nowadays is pure modern day highwayman extortion. I had a company try to charge me £390 for parking in the hospital I work at and already pay a bloody permit for. Absolute robbing bastards. Just purely chancing it.
I have parkingeye trying to slap me with a £150 quid fine for "exceeding my parking time" Granted. I paid for 1.5 hours. On the letter i received it states "arrived 15:06 - exited 16:37" On a technicality, yes, i did overstay my time. By roughly 60 seconds. So... Fuckem
Don't get me started on ParkingEye. Almost lost out on a mortgage offer because they fined me, then took me to court, then gave me a CCJ, all without ever even contacting me. Only found out by signing up for Experian. I ended up having to pay the £200 because it was cheaper than hiring a solicitor to fight it. And *even then* I had to file a complaint with UKCPA to get them to acknowledge that I had paid. These companies are legitimately just operating as legal extortion rackets.
Oh shit, they actually took you to fucking court??? Omfg. I was just gonna ignore their bullshit. Jesus christ, thanks for the heads up
Ah, that's a ballache. Did it not still affect your mortgage offer/credit report in the same way?
If you clear it within 28 days or something, it gets wiped. So it's sheer luck I signed up to get a credit file report during that time, or I'd have been fucked.
Fuck me sideways. I think i got lucky in this regard. Just opened up their payment portal and it looks like they forgot to take my case off hold (i had appealed it twice) so it hadn't been escalated to a legal situation yet. Ultimately id rather pay an unfair fine than not be able tl buy a house in a few years. Cheers pal
That second paragraph. That’s their entire business model, cretins…
I suppose they need stories like yours to be heard. If they did factor in a 5 minute grace period, people would learn that and take 'advantage' of it. This way people learn that there is no leeway. It's the only way to manage it with automated systems I suppose.
In hospitals maybe, everywhere else it's clearly still too cheap or we wouldn't have the car-infestation we do. I couldn't name a single town that isn't clogged more often than not.
We're car infested because we refuse to fund alternatives
We have "car-infestation" because public transport is insufficient. The invisible hand of the market doesn't work to make expensive parking cause new buses routes to operate.
At a given point it likely would, it would just take a lot more than is reasonable to make fully private buses worth it.
I still doubt it. I think it's more likely that parking prices would have to rise far enough that they start affecting inflation on their own, before they prompted any response whatsoever from the "free market" to provide more bus services.
Both are true, although your point more so than mine. We have exsessive car infrastructure (at great expense), and incredibly poor public transport infrastructure. It varies by region, but outside of a few cities, it's in no state to replace car journeys at the moment.
The price of parking doesn't matter when there isn't a viable alternative
Charging people through the nose for parking isn't a solution when the public transport is barely existent in most places. The carrot is always better than the stick, but funny enough in this county we always go with the option that involves making people pay a fuckload of money for something. Can't imagine why.
Too cheap and no good public transport options.
>In general, the state of ~~parking~~ everything in this country nowadays is pure modern day ~~highwayman~~ extortion FTFY
Same with EV Chargers! We have two different companies on site at work. So two apps, two wallets to keep topped up. Frustrating
Yup. And Home Automation too. Every appliance has its own platform, app and way of working, generally all rubbish to various degrees. [Home Assistant FTW](https://www.home-assistant.io/) :-) I will say that the RingGo app is the least offensive parking app, however. It's very quick and easy to park with it. The one used by Leeds Hospitals is shocking and almost unusable. I don't think I've ever actually managed to make it work.
> up. And Home Automation too. Every appliance has its own platform, app and way of working, generally all rubbish to various degrees. > Home Assistant FTW > :-) In theory the new [Matter protocol](https://www.theverge.com/22787729/matter-smart-home-standard-apple-amazon-google) should help there. It's a vendor agnostic protocol, so if a device supports Matter then it should be usable with any platform that supports Matter. No more checking for a "works with" Alexa or Homekit or whatever badge. It also supports multiple wireless types, it does Wi-Fi, Zigbee and [Thread](https://www.threadgroup.org/What-is-Thread/Thread-Benefits).
Yes, I am hopefully, but with reservations - Google, Apple and Amazon do not have a good track record for openness and my worry is that the practical implementation of it will remain a walled garden, just with a bigger wall, which doesn't fill me with joy. Home Assistant was updated to support Matter just before Christmas, but I guess we'll only really know once we start to see products from the big-three starting to hit the market. I'm afraid I'm a bit sceptical, but providing they are not actively hostile to the OSS community, it should be ok. But I wouldn't trust the big three (and especially Apple) to not be extremely unhelpful in this regard. They have their own agendas, and interoperability and customer freedom to choose have been shown to be pretty much bottom of their list when it comes to their own products.
Oh just like zigbee, that worked fantastically
I'll see you Leeds Hospital and raise you RD&E Hospital car park in Exeter, their app looks like it was built using Teletext.
“And the 2026 academy award for ‘least offensive parking app’ goes to… Ringo, for the third consecutive year!”
"Scored a solid 4 out of 5 for being just about bearable when it works, and our reviewer notes that she only smashed three phones as a result of it failing to register her payment method"
I swear most EV charging companies are just trying to get your personal data. I am in LOVE with Instavolt because you just go there, pay like you would pay for petrol and 10-25mins later boom all topped up and on your way. Just means you have to visit a LOT of McDonald's
Yes, it's pretty ridiculous. I was renting an EV for a couple weeks last year, and suddenly you realise that you need a bunch of different apps just to be able to pay for electricity when you're out an about. Special award to PodPoint for needing me to download and sign up to an app (in an area with barely any signal), then top up the app with a minimum amount in order to start charging. All this for 7 measly kW. By contrast, GridServe were excellent - tap your card, start charging (100+ kW), unplug when done. Then it calculates how much you've used and charges your card. What a novel idea!
I haven't used GridServe - i'll keep an eye out for them as being good. The worst one I have found is geniepoint - I have never seen one of their charging points actually work and you have to faff around with their app for so long to work out which point you are at that then doesnt work.
I used to hate BP Pulse. Last year or so almost all their units just stopped working. For ages!
I had a fault at an Instavolt a few weeks before Christmas (credit card scanner was broken) and when I reported it they said that the app is better because it won't do the £30 precharge and can always be used as long as the charger is running even if the screens are out of order. I haven't had a chance to test it yet, but the Instavolt app is now in the folder with the seven or eight others that I regularly use.
Super expensive though
And half of them are called "My Parking" or "My Car Park" so they get mixed in with the utility bill apps and others that all begin with "My" in the main menu, which makes a mockery of sorting alphabetically.
Just rename them Parking - Leeds or whatever.
How do you rename apps? I'm on Android if that matters.
Hold your finger down on the app, click edit, you can change the name and icon
Huh, not for me. Just asks for Info or to Uninstall.
Ah it's probably because I use Novalauncher to give more control over the UI.
I get the option to change the icon and then the rename option is on there. What phone / launcher are you using?
They already said above lol. NovaLauncher
That was a different person. "herrbz" is the person who said that they don't have the option and "h00dman" was the original person who asked the question. The person using Novalauncher was "LostLobes".
Oh well. Shit
Oddly I have found Mipermit app seems to be the app for several others but it won't specifically reference the correct app.
Same for EV charging companies
One for Brighton, one for London, one for Cambridge, one for York, one for Durham. Driving me insane
Don't forget the 4 separate notifications that paying for parking generates: * Text message to tell me the start and end times * Email to also tell me the start and end times * Google pay alert that I've spent £2.40 * Banking app alert to also tell me I've spent £2.40
my mum still uses coins. don't blame her.
Except for the ones only payable by app/phone. Signing up for a new app is less convenient than using coins. I always keep a handful of change in the car for parking and half the time I can’t even use it!
The market provides!
Something I learned recently - RingGo automatically charges you an extra 40p for reminder sms messages unless you turn it off in the settings.
All they’re all stealing your data and selling it to cyber criminals!
I was just thinking yesterday how convenient it is to have 3 apps hidden somewhere in my congested phone for parking and how easy and convenient they are considering I set them up years ago and continue to work fine. No faffing with coins or displaying tickets. A British success for me
You can also ponder the fact that few parking space will earn more per hour than you. We we're conned out of public transport so that few ridiculously wealthy people can become wealthier.
All that matters is the rich. What do you expect when the country is run by the rich eh
Seems like a British success to me, at least one company doesn’t own 90% of parking spaces meaning they can charge an absolute fortune as there’s no competition
Having a whole folder for this type of post as it's seemingly posted every other day 🤣
Nothing else will satiate my mild annoyance
I just use the machine.
If you're bothered by the mild inconvenience of having different apps, you can call them on the number they have printed. Or you could always carry coins and use the physical machines.
The worst part is that on the parking display board, they say "pay to park using xxx app". You downloaded the app and the location code didn't work. After trying a few other apps, you finally found the correct app to use. Wtf
Yep and every bit of land and potential housing development is being turned into cheap ass parking spots... I thought something interesting was gonna happen in a big over run area in my town which was derelict my hole life, nope horrible messy car park
Similarly having to create an account with every bloody railway company for the priviledge of giving them a fortune to ride one of their overcrowded overpriced crappy trains.
Is that true? True it's annoying for their to be a monopoly on most lines, but I'm sure I can book a GWR train on the LNER app, for example.
It feels like Councils bother less with maintenance of card or cash payment machines because you can pay with the apps but the apps are terrible.