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

Fixed Raises $650K More and Heads to Oakland

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 31 posts

Re: Fixed Raises $650K More and Heads to Oakland

#11

Post by fragsworth »

ihaveajob wrote: post #10
fragsworth wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you make a mistake, own it. But if the city makes the mistake, they shouldn't own it? It's their own rules, on their terms, designed to confuse newcomers. I can't fathom how you would think this is fair.

Sure, if that's the case. In my experience, though, these services simply contest everything in the hope that the officer in charge or the ticket will not have time to follow up, and the case will get thrown out even if it's a perfectly reasonable fine. It works, but that doesn't make it right.

> these services simply contest everything in the hope that the officer in charge or the ticket will not have time to follow up

No. If you actually read the article, they generally contest things on the grounds that there was a mistake or error in issuing the parking ticket that makes it invalid.

Re: Fixed Raises $650K More and Heads to Oakland

#12

Post by forgottenpass »

davidhegarty wrote: post #4
[deleted] wrote: post #3

[deleted]

Sorry to hear about your experience. This is definitely not the experience we are aiming for... Can you email directly at hegs (at) fixed (dot) com and I'll figure out exactly what happened with your ticket. Thanks.

What about the Tried to contact them without getting any feedback. part of the parent post?

Any plans to be responsive to customers that don't know a slightly insider-y venue to make your company look bad?

Re: Fixed Raises $650K More and Heads to Oakland

#13

Post by gmarx »

fragsworth wrote: post #11
ihaveajob wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if that's the case. In my experience, though, these services simply contest everything in the hope that the officer in charge or the ticket will not have time to follow up, and the case will get thrown out even if it's a perfectly reasonable fine. It works, but that doesn't make it right.

> these services simply contest everything in the hope that the officer in charge or the ticket will not have time to follow up No. If you actually read the article, they generally contest things on the grounds that there was a mistake or error in issuing the parking ticket that makes it invalid.

Generally? That doesn't sound like an argument against the basic idea. If they only contest when they fins a specific error, I would agree. If they contest everything hoping the police won't show...it's a short term hack. If a service makes every ticket contested, cities will change the process.

Re: Fixed Raises $650K More and Heads to Oakland

#14

Post by nbaman_23 »

ihaveajob wrote: post #5

This makes me sad. If you make a mistake, own it. If you get a fair parking ticket, pay it. Don't be a leech. Cities have scarce resources that are not designed to fight people looking for loopholes.

Being a minute late to a meter shouldn't constitute a $60+ fine. If being a "leech" means recuperating exorbitant fines that are primarily in place to increase revenue (so more money can be wasted), then count me in. I'm not trying to spend money allocated for my water and gas bills to pay a ticket that was issued for parking at a meter one minute after it had expired. I understand that yes, an honest mistake was made, but it didn't cause $60+ worth of inconveniences to the city.

Re: Fixed Raises $650K More and Heads to Oakland

#15

Post by akgerber »

matthewarkin wrote: post #9
ihaveajob wrote: post #5

This makes me sad. If you make a mistake, own it. If you get a fair parking ticket, pay it. Don't be a leech. Cities have scarce resources that are not designed to fight people looking for loopholes.

My issue is that I'll happily own up to my mistake if the amount I have to pay is fair. A $60 parking ticket obtained during the $.25 an hour rate seems unfair when the street is half empty.

The idea is that the fine is high because they can't catch every parking violation.

Likewise, the fine for fare-beating on mass transit is much higher than a transit fare, because it's very unlikely you've been caught on your first offense.

Parking is hard in the big city because it requires a lot of a very expensive resource (urban land)— maybe you shouldn't drive if you're unable to handle the responsibility.

(I personally am not very sympathetic to the many entitled drivers who feel free to park on the sidewalk, or in a bicycle lane, or a crosswalk, or by committing some other antisocial act, and am especially unsympathetic to those drivers who feel their ease of parking outweighs the need to build the necessary infrastructure for high-quality mass transit and safe walking and biking.)

Re: Fixed Raises $650K More and Heads to Oakland

#18

Post by chaqke »

ihaveajob wrote: post #5

This makes me sad. If you make a mistake, own it. If you get a fair parking ticket, pay it. Don't be a leech. Cities have scarce resources that are not designed to fight people looking for loopholes.

Some people have scarce resources and are not "designed" to fight a bureaucratic machine that was designed to not process their potentially-valid complaints.

I've certainly gotten erroneous tickets in the past.

Secondarily, I'd support ending the practice of generating revenue by statistically extracting a large amount from a few people - people whose demographic doesn't overlap much with those who can pay for permanent garages or parking lots....This makes me happy.

Re: Fixed Raises $650K More and Heads to Oakland

#19

Post by davidhegarty »

forgottenpass wrote: post #12
davidhegarty wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear about your experience. This is definitely not the experience we are aiming for... Can you email directly at hegs (at) fixed (dot) com and I'll figure out exactly what happened with your ticket. Thanks.

What about the Tried to contact them without getting any feedback. part of the parent post? Any plans to be responsive to customers that don't know a slightly insider-y venue to make your company look bad?

We take a huge amount of pride in our Customer Service.

We have a target response time of 4-5 hours, and try to make sure every user questions gets responded to in under 1 business day.

We think it's reflected in our reviews on the App Store (http://goo.gl/dn4zYC).

Someone not getting a response shouldn't be possible.. our workflows aren't setup that way. That's not to say that it hasn't happened, but when it does it's usually for a technical reason outside of our immediate control (e.g. user's spam filters).

Happy to de-bug the issue publicly on hackernews, but so far I can't find any record of a user with an email/name similar to that username, and the user hasn't contacted me.

I'll update as I know more...

Re: Fixed Raises $650K More and Heads to Oakland

#20

Post by Kalium »

nbaman_23 wrote: post #14
ihaveajob wrote: post #5

This makes me sad. If you make a mistake, own it. If you get a fair parking ticket, pay it. Don't be a leech. Cities have scarce resources that are not designed to fight people looking for loopholes.

Being a minute late to a meter shouldn't constitute a $60+ fine. If being a "leech" means recuperating exorbitant fines that are primarily in place to increase revenue (so more money can be wasted), then count me in. I'm not trying to spend money allocated for my water and gas bills to pay a ticket that was issued for parking at a meter one minute after it had expired. I understand that yes, an honest mistake was mad…

The fines aren't there to increase revenue, though that's a perk. They are there to encourage you to make do without a car in SF.
Post reply on HN