Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How do we pay for parking?

cohost.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 347 posts

Re: How do we pay for parking?

#101

Post by crote »

toddmorey wrote: post #58

Even worse, my Dad met us for brunch and overstayed his allotted time in one of these systems by 8 minutes. Would be ok if they billed him the same rate perhaps, but they "fined" him $80 for the "violation". All the while trying to look like the local police as much as possible. All these companies are scam artists.

The whole concept of "allotted time" is a scam anyways. Sure, it made sense with analog pre-paid parking meters, but it's complete nonsense when you are modernizing it like this.

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.

Re: How do we pay for parking?

#102

Post by woodruffw »

KRAKRISMOTT wrote: post #71
kortilla wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can they have it towed if it’s free. That’s just theft.

A lot of the blue collar professions are in cahoots with organized crime (and similarly many adjacent white collar industries like real estate) 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...

“Fire Mitigation” are not first responders: they’re private entities that listen to the FDNY’s radio frequencies and follow them around. They’re ambulance chasers and that’s always been a scummy domain; it’d be much more surprising (and worse) if FDNY themselves were somehow involved.

Re: How do we pay for parking?

#103

Post by nine_zeros »

jonahbenton wrote: post #22

Agree. It is a serious problem when actual stuff in the world is based on shitty hell software- when the only way to do the stuff in the world is to enter into the shitty hell software world. Then it is exactly living in hell.

Software is being built to line pockets, often scummily. Even Google search page is complete scum. So many ads.

Software greed has made life hell.

Re: How do we pay for parking?

#104

Post by throwawaaarrgh »

I. Hate. Technology. I hate working in this field. I hate how unprofessional every company is, from the largest to the smallest. I hate how incompetent all the engineers are. I hate how no business I have ever worked for has ever trained its workers on anything but how to fill out a time sheet. I hate all the blog posts about inane technical details. I hate how people start building a solution to a problem they're not familiar with. I hate how seemingly obvious and painful problems never get solved, because nobody has ever forced the entire product team to listen to a brand new user's feedback. I hate how this affects everything, so the problems just build and build and everything just gets worse and worse.

Re: How do we pay for parking?

#105

Post by dalmo3 »

bluepnume wrote: post #76

We built a startup. 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.

I know text is still a thing in the US, but everywhere else, that's a huge no no. Phishy as hell.

Good luck nonetheless.

Re: How do we pay for parking?

#106

Post by rvnx »

version_five wrote: post #60
rvnx wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

? I agree with the author, I just write it in a shorter way.

Looks like it's been edited a bit, but when I first read it I got the impression you thought it was long and overly complicated and made a simple boring point. I'm not the only one who observed this, because the comment I replied to said the same thing.

Yes, I added "If you want to get to the point of the story" to solve that impression, should be good now :)

Re: How do we pay for parking?

#107

Post by NeoTar »

reilly3000 wrote: post #67

Bill my license plate. That is the UX I want.

I think that introduces some problems:

- 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

Re: How do we pay for parking?

#109

Post by nine_zeros »

version_five wrote: post #20

Much of the value in "tech" is basically treating people like shit at scale. In this example, when a lot attendant was needed, they could only be so unhelpful. Now we don't need to pay them, can push their work onto customers, and simply magically drop any "problem" customers. Same with all this shit. Huge companies exist solely to prevent a human from getting human support, and many more extend the concept to "scale…

Oh, have you seen the number of self checkout at grocery stores? I need to do the work of a checkout counter person to pay? Wtf!
Post reply on HN