www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40866201
76% of councils have done the new £1 conversion - not good!
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I've used pay by phone occasionally, it's quite good when I can be bothered to think about it car parks are one of the places I still expect to pay cash, and it's usually more straightforward.
When I used to occasionally commute to London it was far easier paying £6.70 or whatever it was by phone once I was sitting on the train rather than juggling with lots of coins on a wet windy day.
I love cashless payment (Android etc) elsewhere and I'm trying to convert myself to using card/cashless wherever I can, within reason.
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Pay by phone is the by-product of the works of Satan. Took me a full 40 minutes to pay by phone once in Brighton.
Luckily most places round here are cash or card.
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>> Pay by phone is the by-product of the works of Satan.
>>
A good word for the bean counters :-)
On paper, pay by phone is a brilliant idea. I does not matter how it affects many users.
SNAFU for many.
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I used it a couple of times, just seems over complicated - if they went over to Apple or Android pay, I'd happily use that
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I avoid it too. Unlike a cash payment, when paying by phone, I don't have a physical proof (i.e. no ticket to display in car) that I have paid.
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>> if they went over to Apple or Android pay, I'd happily use that
>>
As many older folk might say " wots that?"
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Surely every one under 70 at least should have a reasonable idea how modern technology works and if they dont they should find out.
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It is less about being aware of modern technology but more about realizing how modern technology can screw up things unnecessarily :)
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I get tired of the excuse that because someone is over 50 they somehow are exempt from making an effort to understand anything new and the whole world should be frozen in the 1980s just so that they don't have to make any effort to learn anything.
it is particularly annoying that they seem to be proud of their ignorance.
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I would imagine it's happened since the year dot?
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Probably. I guess Ugg just wouldn't get to grips with those new wheel things and insisted dragging a mammoth home on a sled was far easier.
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....actually Ugg adopted the wheel fairly quickly, but using a Satnav to get the mammoth home was a technological step too far...........
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>> I get tired of
>>
>>
What I get tired of is the constant assumption that anything new must be better, even if it self-evidently isn't.
The only time I tried to pay by phone was in Bristol when already late for a wedding (not mine). The system was slow and in the end didn't work. I got a fine and then had a long argument later to get it cancelled.
Popping some coins in a slot would have been quick and easy.
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Its a way for the parking authority to make more money.
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Pay by phone is inherently a good idea. It is the lack of standardisation and implementation that is the problem. Cash payment is just as fraught with problems. Never arrived at a meter with no cash or tried to use the Wrong type of pound coin?
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>> Popping some coins in a slot would have been quick and easy.
And then some scroat comes along, smashes the meter open and robs the money from inside.
If the money hasn't been stolen, someone still has to be paid to go around emptying them daily and also replenishing the printer paper.
You can see why councils, etc. want to move away from pay machines and do it electronically instead, it's just a con that they charge an admin fee, when they must be saving money by not employing people to go around emptying them anymore.
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On top of that, it's an immensely labour intensive and risky task to empty these machines, what's the cost of handling all that loose change. Total madness in fact.
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>> On top of that, it's an immensely labour intensive and risky task to empty these
>> machines, what's the cost of handling all that loose change. Total madness in fact.
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we are not yet a cashless society
While I, like many on here can go for weeks without handling cash, using contactless debit cards etc, there is a whole section of society, not just the elderly but also many poorer individuals for whom cash is the only alternative, not forgetting the millions of visitors who come to this country each year who may use cards etc in their own country but do not wish to incur exchange rate charges and other fees on a 60p payment.
We should be striving to be an inclusive society rather than trying to exclude small but significant sections of society for cost saving or technological reasons.
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>> On top of that, it's an immensely labour intensive and risky task to empty these
>> machines, what's the cost of handling all that loose change. Total madness in fact.
>
I don't know, all the reports of people stood around on their phones doesn't sound overly clever to me.
In theory it should be simple but it, by the sound of it, it's still quite clunky and awkward to pay cashless in car parks.
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"Surely every one under 70 at least should have a reasonable idea how modern technology works and if they dont they should find out"
Popped into B&Q forgetting it was Wednesday. The place was packed with er..older people. The check outs were queuing around the corner...the place has two unattended check outs. Neither was in use. The beige blue rinsers watched in awed as I swept through their serried ranks of beige and out in one shake of a credit card...
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I tried it once in Portsmouth. Took me ages on the phone, costing money in call costs, then found there was a ludicrously large surcharge, something like £2 for a 70p parking charge. I gave up and decided to risk it for the 20 minutes I needed.
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>> decided to risk it for the 20 minutes
>> I needed.
>>
Problem is CCTV/ANPR these days. A local shopping centre car park reads your number plate on the way ion and if you overstay the free 2 hours you get a ticket - no humans involved.
Talking of which, I got a ticket not many years ago for parking on a double yellow. This was done purely by CCTV too, somewhere in west London. I only stopped for a couple of mins to nip into Tesco Express for chocolate and a drink after an interview.
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"..rather than juggling with lots of coins on a wet windy day."
Kingston hospital has a relatively recent " New" parking system installed.
Try using it on a wet windy night in the dark with a tiny key pad conveniently positioned at near knee height.
Of course there are no signs to say just one machine on site takes credit cards but that machine is hidden in a corner inside the main entrance.
Oh and you must remember the time you entered the site so YOU calculate the fee due or else.
Do remember to arrive with a big bag of coins.
I guess it has one positive - you no longer need to guess how long you will be onsite when you arrive.
NHS at its finest.
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>> Kingston hospital has a relatively recent " New" parking system installed.
>> Try using it on a wet windy night in the dark with a tiny key
>> pad conveniently positioned at near knee height.
>> NHS at its finest.
>>
I think the bigger problem at Kingston hospital is actually finding a vacant parking bay.
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After you have managed to avoid all the traffic jams getting there.
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>>I think the bigger problem at Kingston hospital is actually finding a vacant parking bay.
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If you do not have mobility problems etc there is very cheap ( free after 1530 ) parking in a nearby street. Always lots of spaces whenever I have used it.
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I've used the Ringo parking App a few times. It works well. Even setting it up on the phone was easy.
What would be good if someone could develop a system similar to Tesco's PayQwiq App where you just present a barcode from your phone's screen into a scanner on the parking meter.
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>> I've used the Ringo parking App a few times. It works well. Even setting it
>> up on the phone was easy.
Thats fine, except its not universally accepted across other LA or parking bandits.
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I hit this problem yesterday, in the Millstream car park in central Salisbury.
Went to pay with cash, having deliberately hung on to a good pocketful, only to find the machine did not accept new pound coins. (I have since realised that this is part and parcel of the "pay by phone" issue.)
Phoned up, entered all info as requested, only to be told I had entered an incorrect number of digits for the card number. After repeating this, I realised they probably did not accept American Express. (Funny, because St Albans station car park does.)
Did the whole thing over again with a Mastercard. Took me the best part of fifteen minutes and a lot of profanity. "Enter the number of... This is the number you have entered. Do you wish to confirm? Press one to confirm, two to start again... etc., etc."
One good thing is that you can extend your stay by a simple text message. On the other hand, that means the parking company has stored your credit card details without obtaining permission.
Last edited by: Focal Point on Wed 9 Aug 17 at 12:39
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I use pay-by-phone 3 times a week at the station car park because it is simpler and quicker - you don't waste time trying to find change for the machine that doesn't include forged £1 coins which the machine won't take!
My objection is the surcharge for pay-by-phone that some councils put on. At our council car parks the cash price for an hour is £0.60. Paying by phone adds a 'convenience fee' of £0.50. No way, Jose!
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If pay by phone charge a fee which is less than cash fee (due to inconvenience caused) then more people might be tempted to use it.
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They prefer cash as they don't give change and in practice the the overall take is 10 to 15% over the nominal charge.
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Not a problem I have to tackle locally but should it not be possible to buy tickets via a mobile and have the cost debited to a credit card?
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>> Not a problem I have to tackle locally but should it not be possible to
>> buy tickets via a mobile and have the cost debited to a credit card?
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It is ("ticketlessly") but as noted by Zero there isn't a standard system. I use 2 station car parks, one can be done with the Ringo app, the other uses Connect Cashless Parking which involves a phone call or an SMS once set up.
The ringing up business is a terrible process.
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Why can't they just accept contactless payments?
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My nearest station car park accepts contactless. But the system is often broken! People try for several minutes and then fail, causing a queue behind and people miss trains as a result.
Same machine accepts credit card payment but often that system is down too. Then only option is to pay cash (which is surprisingly often never out of order). If I don't have coins I have to go to ticket counter to get changes (but miss train in the meantime).
The situation was so bad that I started using the station further away (which was cheaper and paid during exit so can afford to stay back if takes longer to pay).
That station had its problem too. Recently for a whole week their machines were out of order and many people just used the car park for free when attendant has to open the barrier because 100 cars queued up and couldn't get out.
People should be given option for coins, credit card, contactless, pay-by-phone etc - I have no problem with that. However, forcing people to pay an option which is convenient for the parking company but problematic for users is not acceptable to me.
If machine can't accept payment then parking should be free.
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>> My objection is the surcharge for pay-by-phone that some councils put on. At our council
>> car parks the cash price for an hour is £0.60. Paying by phone adds a
>> 'convenience fee' of £0.50. No way, Jose!
Mine too. Charging customers a fee for saving them inconvenience of handling cash is beyond cheeky.
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I think its the ultimate captive market scenario.
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Not parking, I'm not sure we have all this phone malarky up here, but We've been hoarding pound coins for some weeks as our 15 yr old grandson has been living with us for a while. He gets the tram to school, there's a stop 200 yds from here and his school has a stop outside...5 stations away.
We were having to give him 5 coins a day to cover his fare and a snack until his IGO card came, allowing youngsters discount. I found that I could get a weeks season ticket from the station machine for £7......a quid a day anytime between the two stated destinations. Good value. The first couple of weeks I had a lot of trouble with the touch screen, speshly in the Sun. It times out too soon as well, did it while I was struggling to get the coins out of my jeans pocket, and you have to go right back to the beginning.
What I hadn't noticed was that each machine has a card slot and will do contactless as well...bliss, just pop the debit card in and it takes £7 from you...no extra charges. Seems to me the ideal way to run a car park as well. The local hospital has a ticket machine on entry and a machine near the building that calculates what you owe and takes cards or cash. Except us lucky ones who ignore the pay machine, drive to the exit barrier, press the button and wave a blue badge in the air out of the car window.
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Ringo works well once set up.
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Cambridge has managed to avoid the cost of taking cash by forcing Ringo only (plus a surcharge of course) in many car parks. There's no contactless or card payment available of any sort.
They have simply taken away the old cash machines, left the old notices telling you the price, which don't mention the surcharge, and popped a badly spelled and worded bit of A4 about Ringo in place of the machine "apologising for the inconvenience" in the same sentence that they tell you there will be a "convenience fee".
I set up the app, which means it takes about ten seconds to pay, but you can see endless people on their phones making calls for extended periods of time and struggling with the call.
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Now deceased father in law would drive round for hours looking for a free car parking space rather than pay.
I always maintained life was too short. I was right!
:-|
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Yep. I went to Rhyl the other week for a funeral. Knew where the Church was and knew that the streets around were difficult to park in. Taking a phone out in Rhyl is taking your life in your hands (more likely to get stabbed there than have your car stolen - fact) so I opted to park on the prom. Drew up at one of the council pay machines and peered out of the window at the pricing scheme...as I did so a young lady helpfully pointed out free parking at the theatre...pays to stare occasionally
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OT - I used to spend a lot of time with my grandmother in Rhyl when I was a kid. My recollection was of it being a nice place, but I'd heard it had gone downhill. I'm thinking of doing a bit of a tour of places I knew well in my past when I can be bothered, maybe Rhyl will just be a drive-through rather than a few days holiday!!!
I do have a good recollection of running battles between skinheads and greasers along the streets as I was caught up in one of them. Also remember watching the police making the skinheads take off their DMs as they arrived on the train for the bank holiday bundle. I think I'd have been under 11 at the time but I had a fair amount of freedom to go out on my own.
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>> Ringo works well once set up.
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Unless your phone is discharged. Or you're out of credit. Or you forgot it that day. Or you don't have a debit/credit card. Or you're a foreign visitor who doesn't want to incur huge mobile charges.
Last time I checked the figures, a million brits don't have a bank account. www.bbc.co.uk/news/10277151
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>> >> Ringo works well once set up.
>> >>
or if you do not have a smartphone, SWMBO likes her technology simple, she can send messages and make & receive phone calls, who needs a smartphone?
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>> who needs a smartphone?
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Er, a driver who wants to park in the car park that only takes payment by Ringo?? :-)
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The fact remains that Ringo works well once set up. There is always an alternative means of payment isn't there?
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>> The fact remains that Ringo works well once set up.
The fact remains its not universally accepted, so no it does no work well, set up or not.
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> Last time I checked the figures, a million brits don't have a bank account. www.bbc.co.uk/news/10277151
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My FiL is one of them, never had one and not interested in getting one. Never owned or used a CC/cash card, mobile or PC either.
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I was in Brighton on Sunday. Wanted to park for two hours. Took ten minutes struggling with the ridiculously over-complicated coin machine that had no instructions and only got one hour so had to go back and put a second hour on.
All these things are fine for those who use them regularly. Those who visit a new place, and have to struggle with a new system for a one-off purchase, are at a disadvantage.
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Drivers avoid pay-by-phone parking bays, says AA - smokie
