A 6 minute video weighting at about 150MiB for "explaining" what can be summarized in a couple sentences of text is another particular version of hell.
It's about the Chicago Parking deal in 2008 with some machines for parking. Daley gave control of parking meters to a private company until 2083. Sold out his citizens. For a super discount. And now, in a shocking twist, the private company is squeezing the citizens
and government.
I'm not going to stick up for the deal itself, but parking in Chicago got better after that deal, and downtown parking in Chicago is cheaper by far than NYC, and than Boston. It's about as expensive as Seattle is.
I close the YouTube app anytime it makes me watch more than a 5 seconds skippable ad. This was one of those times so I have no idea what was in the video :-)
In other words: Fuck Google and their ad bullshit.
Raising the question: why do you have the Youtube app installed at all? Modern phones can play Youtube in the browser just fine, and browsers like Vivaldi come with adblock built in.
Half as Interesting could alternatively be titled Double as Long. Most of the extra length is taken up with in-jokes and the obligatory streaming service advertisement, but you could try the browser plugin 'SponsorBlock' to cut the length back down.
I have questions about where you live if 150 MB of data is an even remotely significant amount of data... Are you on a cellphone in rural Canada or something?
Street parking, a universal hassle, is especially problematic in Chicago due to the infamous Chicago parking meter deal. This deal permitted a private company to take control and revenue from all 36,000 of the city's parking meters. In return, the city received a lump sum of $1.16 billion. However, this arrangement has led to numerous financial and political challenges that won't conclude until 2083.
The root of this decision can be traced back to the 2008 financial crisis when Chicago was grappling with a significant budget deficit. Mayor Richard M. Daley, in an attempt to address this, chose to privatize the parking meters without adequate analysis. Surprisingly, the city's aldermen approved this deal by a vote of 40 to 5, despite having limited time to review the terms. These aldermen have since faced criticism for their apparent lack of due diligence.
The beneficiaries of this deal, Chicago Parking Meters LLC (a consortium formed by Morgan Stanley, Allianz Capital partners, and The Sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi) saw immense profits. This was largely due to stipulations in the agreement that increased parking rates, ensuring a steady rise in revenue. Furthermore, the city now finds itself in a position where it has to pay penalties whenever it undertakes any actions that could potentially dip into the company's profits. This has amounted to Chicago paying the company over $75 million since the deal's inception.
Additionally, this arrangement severely restricts the city's urban development endeavors. For instance, adding bike lanes or implementing other urban reforms now comes with the caveat of compensating the company for any possible lost revenues. An attempt to challenge this by claiming the company held an illegal monopoly was dismissed in court twice. The courts deemed that while the deal might not have been the wisest choice, it wasn't illegal. So, due to the financial pressures of the crisis, Chicago ended up making a deal that has permitted financial institutions to reap substantial profits from city property for an extended period.
This is where the sovereignty of the people is so important. A country (or in this case, a city) should not be able to enter into a deal which it is unable to back out from. To actually prematurely terminate a public-private contract would be of course very damaging to the reputation of the city/state/country's reputation, and thus would increase the remuneration private companies expect from running public services due to the additional risk, but would be beneficial to each citizen in the long-term if done with caution.
The problem is some people were 50 years old when the the 2nd statement became true. For nearly everyone alive, the first statement has always been true. I think the government is failing its citizens by assuming digital literacy is commonplace.
The literacy rate for all males and females that are at least 15 years old is 86.3%. Males aged 15 and over have a literacy rate of 90%, while females lag only slightly behind at 82.7%.
What is the average literacy rate among drivers? Considering that street signs exist, I would imagine almost all countries require a basic ability to read as a pre-requisite for a licence.
I support this statement! I'm a reasonably tech-savvy iOS user, and these parking apps are among the worst digital experiences I have ever encountered. And I say that as a frequent SAP Concur user
The described landscape is hellish for the tech savvy, too. Just slightly less so. Regardless, why disparage non-tech-savvy people? That's most people.
Or for actual computer users who want to avoid Android like the plague it is (also iOS).
Between this (I've basically given up parking on the streets ever again, I'm now forced to always go for actual parkings) and banks, it is indeed hell.
Modern parking lots always seem ripe for physical phishing, whats stopping someone from sticking up a couple of QR codes that link to a fraudulent payment page or some other malware?
This is one of those things that tech really didn't "fix" and now I have to select from one of 20 apps instead of just paying with cash or even a credit card.
One would think this would happen pretty often, but at least my cursory search didn't turn up many specific examples of it happening in the US. I wonder why that is?
This is a well-known problem at more than just parking lots. Any proprietor using QR codes in their place of business should generally be policing the property for rogue stickers. Obviously, quality of the business matters here a lot for that.
Fix: “using QR codes” is unnecessary. Just every business with public access to the property. Customers of a business not using QR codes are vulnerable to the same scam.
I have, on multiple occasions (in Austin, >10 years ago), paid for parking to an "attendant" at a lot I know is free. Those guys will just have your car towed — the whole scam just hangs together: the towing company charges you for the storage & processing, but not the nominal fee; the attendant gets cash. Win-win-lose.
“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.
Two things. Sometimes these venue areas have other central business district employers who don’t allow overnight or weekend parking for the public, but don’t enforce it. (But they are signed to allow towing) The fake parking guy probably has a relationship with the tow driver.
Also, tow operators are generally pretty shady. Because they operate in a second responder capacity, they have personal relationships with cops and sheriffs, repair garages, etc.
In my city, in the rougher parts it used to be somewhat normal to pay someone to "look after your car", of course you were paying them not to vandalise it while you were away! Especially popular on football days when parking near the stadium.
It was only a couple of pounds or so. I haven't been to these parts of town for years so I have no idea if this practice still goes on.
There’s a popular swimming around here that’s near a rough neighborhood. One elderly gentleman from that neighborhood guards the cars at the swimming hole. He even got himself a shirt that says “security”. You pay $2 and he makes sure nobody busts the windows out of your car.
No, I don’t think it’s blackmail in this particular situation. Though that definitely does exist here in other spots. This is just an old guy who tries to quell the riff-raff of the youth of the neighborhood. He’s really sweet actually. And if you bring him a cold beer, he’ll do a quick cleaning of your windows to boot!
I'm aware, and have used, this practice in Oakland, CA, Los Angeles, SF, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle and Portland OR. One reason I keep a small amount of cash around - just for the vig.
Canadianfella is correct. "Vig" is not the correct term. Vig, short for vigorish, is a yiddish/Slavic word used to describe the excessive interest on a loan from a lender of ill-repute. It's also used to describe the house's take of a book.
It's not just money you pay to shady people. If he charged you $5 for parking, but allowed you to pay when you came back, but it would be $10 instead, you could say the additional $5 was the vig as that represents a 100% interest on a short term loan.
This is common all over the developing world. I always give them a little something, despite the feel of extortion it has to it. It’s marginally better than begging, and they will really watch the car, and often help with parking and leaving. Fair enough.
There is often a fine line between crime, commerce and even altruism. It is a shame that western society has been perhaps a little too effective at separating these concepts. The very same contract could be any of them in different contexts:
"Party A pays 1 Pound Sterling for the item owned by Party B"
Crime: Party A blackmails Party B into selling them the item at a discount
Commerce: Party B offers the discount to entice Party A to try the item out, so that they can sell more at full price in the future
Altruism: Party B wants to give the item to a good home rather than destroying it (if that would cost them, then it's even mutually beneficial altruism from both parties)
Clearly it is the context about how the contract was made that distinguishes the situations. It would be a mistake to try to classify every possible contract as legitimate based on its semantics alone.
That happened to me at least a few times; I never went for it, and nothing bad happened in those instances. In retrospect, I suppose I'm surprised. But perhaps it was sort of randomized, so that people wouldn't draw obvious conclusions?
I'm from a developing country with humongous corruption. I now live in Canada and love it. But to certain degree corruption is just less visible. For example, apparently majority of our towing industry in Toronto is just organized crime. With murders and arson and everything - in the seemingly simple and innocuous towing industry. And when opening a restaurant in downtown, near one of the stadiums, protection money is just normal line item.
> majority of our towing industry in Toronto is just organized crime
All industries who's generous profits depend on monopolizing a fixed pie, they need to tightly control the amount of competition in order to maintain their profits, so they eventually devolve into a maifa-like organization, regardless if they're blue collar or white collar.
The only difference is the blue-collar mafia is way more visible as they solve their difference with valence, while the white-collar mafia doesn't need to resort to barbaric acts but simply lobbies their political friends in power to put enough laws and regulations in place to stop any newcomers entering their turf.
If only the towing industry could have taken a page out of Canada's telcos' book and lobby their way.
"The only difference is the blue-collar mafia is way more visible as they solve their difference with valence, while the white-collar mafia doesn't need to resort to barbaric acts but simply lobbies their political friends in power to put enough laws and regulations in place to stop any newcomers entering their turf."
Similar experience here, and from your name we’re either neighbors or from the same country originally. People from our region usually have some idealized fantasy about western countries. After I moved to the US I was shocked to find out that it is just as corrupt as the Balkans, just in a different way.
My pet peeve is hearing how I don’t understand corruption because I live in a functioning country now.
To be fair, it IS different, and I think Canadians cannot fathom the concept of taking a bottle of booze / carton of cigarettes / box of chocolate with you for normal bureaucratic activities. Similarly, it took me a while to understand where Canadian corruption lies and I'm sure I only understand and am aware of tiny percentage - I happily live a straight and narrow, middle class, ignorant kind of life. As such I'm only sure there's many other types of corruption in other places I'm blissfully ignorant of :-:
I remember when I moved to DC many years ago we drove to an art exhibit (in an empty building way away from the metro). There was a guy walking up and down the road saying "$5 to park!" I paid him and in the elevator an older woman smugly told me "It's free to park here!" I told her "I know, I'm paying for him to not break MY window." The look on her face....
I was a mobile developer on a parking app, and this is a serious issue. Our solution was to add a button in the app to verify if a QR code is valid, but I was always bothered by how tucked away the actual button was.
You don't, but you are also statistically unlikely to spend money (or, perhaps spend very little) at where ever you're trying to park so everyone concerned would prefer you move along to make room for a paying customer please. :)
I guess if you s/park/live then this is why everyone concerned would rather poor people just get on with it and die already. I mean if you're not going to spend money then please move along and make room for a paying customer.
1. Why do I want people to contact me while I'm out? It's almost always spam, and assuming it's not, it's almost always a them problem.
2. If I did want people to contact me, a flip phone would work fine for that.
Without a smart phone with a data plan, it is becoming harder and harder to navigate the world made for advertizers and cellular providers. And these parking companies don't want to make it easy for you to pay for parking. They'd much rather you have a frustrating experience, take the risk of not paying and getting impounded.
People even made plans to meet at a specific time and place before phones were invented. When they left their houses, nobody was able to deliver a letter to them. I'd say it went fine, but honestly, they're all dead now.
I was appalled when my transit system recently introduced mobile fares, and I let them know exactly how I feel, as a designated early tester.
First you gotta install their atrocious little app, which I've always avoided because it was buggy and Google Maps gave the same real-time info in a better interface. So then you purchase some passes. They're QR-based, they're not NFC. Ugh, why?
Then during your entire voyage you'll need to maintain both connectivity and battery life. I hear tell that NFC can even survive a dead phone battery, but not a QR app. I was pissed about the connectivity, because I tend to disable networking while traveling, and I have a 1GiB data plan. Also, it makes for one-handed boarding because they mean it when they say "Have Fare Ready" so I feel like fiddling with my phone onboard is like fishing in my pockets for a pass, but worse, and I've already had passengers complain at me.
Now they're revamping the fare system again, and they're introducing NFC-card-based payments as well as account-based rather than pass-based fares. The punch line is that the mobile app won't be compatible with the card, so you need to choose one or the other, permanently. Guess I know which way I'll go.
They email me, or call and leave a message on my answering machine, or sometimes even write me a letter that eventually finds its way to my house. I get the message and answer it when I have time.
In the not so distant past, it was perfectly normal for a person not to be reachable at all times. Today it became a luxury. I choose to indulge in it.
If you have plenty of spare time in your life you could just park anyway, and dispute in court that there is no physical way to pay, and they can't force everyone to own a phone.
Sort of, if you skip the Google Ads, Google Instant Apps, Google Pay, and Google Location Services problems, which are all one company trying to collect data to use to serve ads.
The tone of your oversimplification sounds like you have something against the author's opinion, which, if true, would be much better stated than sarcastically implied.
Edit: The parent has been edited since I commented.
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.
I read the original with interest because it describes very well the absurdly crap systems the world has become infested with and which many of us on this site have become complicit in making.
People are spending vast amounts of time fiddling with shit that doesn't work.
We not only have created a complex society on all levels, but now a very difficult world to live, even the most simple events is now a pain in the ass.
From restaurants to small markets, you now pay for a robot, you don't have a human to support you.
things that were simple, became full of friction, all to collect our data.
> things that were simple, became full of friction, all to collect our data.
I always wonder who comes up with these full of friction "tech innovations".
Last time it took me about five minutes to order a soda from one of those machines in a hotel. It even required a phone number to complete the order.
Another day that machine failed mid transaction but charged my card so I had to email the hotel's accounting department to get a refund about a week later.
>> It even required a phone number to complete the order.
Omg. This is so stupid.
The same with parties/festivals: you have to create accounts to buy a fucking ticket, then you pay a "convenience fee".
That is, in addition to providing your data to a platform that you did not ask for, you still pay for the "convenience" lol.
So finally when you arrive at the party, then you have to pay for a "credit card" that works only in that place, where some 3rd party collect your data again.
The other day I just wanted to update a dependency in my Python project and now it’s crashing in CI (doesnt locally) due to a missing C header file. No amount of git clean allowed me to reproduce it locally (using venvs). It used to work fine before. I just gave up for now. The article summarises my feelings perfectly.
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" without properly supporting customers.
Actually as a consumer I prefer self check out. I am much quicker and it is more efficient because now you can have many of these tills in the same area that only a few would have fit, resulting in much faster experience than waiting in queues.
That experience aside, I don't believe there should be jobs where you simply don't think. Manual labour jobs are unfair because they don't reward the brain whatsoever, no creativity, no one loves to do them, and they create a market of labourers with little to no transferable skills thus putting them in an unfair situation if they want or are forced to get a different job.
You are much faster than a professional cashier? Congrats I guess.
Also the space argument doesn't hold up. The cash register belts are not need on staffed registers if they are not needed on customer slaving ones. So they are approximately the same size minus the chair for one helpful human.
Not because of anything impressive other than the fact that most professional cashiers I have interacted with are not skilled enough to be as fast you imply because it is a high turnover job.
The space argument depends on the fact that all customers are checking out simultaneously, not waiting in a queue.
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.
These days, everything actual is already based on software. It is miserable. It's nearly impossible to talk to humans these days. Even talking to someone at a hospital or doctor's office is nigh impossible at times. I have also noticed an increase in the automated phone systems and even human representatives just flat out hanging up or ending chats on me, when it is they who are having the problems. But I just get a condescending "call us back when you have the required information". I especially hate when the automated system says "it looks like we're having a problem". No, I'm not having any problem. It's you having the problem.
> Pay-for parking feels like the kind of thing that should become a utility with one, easy, well-known way to pay for parking anywhere.
The trouble is that this either requires government regulation, or for one company to effectively become a monopoly, which can lead to different abuses.
"One way to park anywhere" sounds like a federated system, which is exactly how I think it should work. You could install one of many client apps, but all the parking companies can be paid for from any of them.
What is my incentive as a car-park owner to agree to your federated system when scummy company X has just offered me $1000 to exclusively allow them to collect fees for my car-park?
You're making leaps just for the opportunity to be snide. Attendants aren't the only solution by a long shot, and they are not a bullshit job absent other systems. You are criticizing the image of a person, not a specific person.
In the Netherlands and Germany at least I have never dealt with a parking lot attendant. There's just a machine you walk to, put your card/cash/whatever in, and you get a paper that you put in your car. The whole process takes 1 minute, the things have accessibility features to some degree, and if they don't work there's another one somewhere or its free.
Same experience. But in the US everything seems 99% anti-consumer while the majority of consumers keep supporting/voting for these things.
Not just parking, also banking ($ 30 overdraft fee mentioned in the article), telecom, health insurance. All of it is designed in very anti-consumer ways in the US, even though consumers should be a majority of the votes in a democracy.
seattle, of all places, should legislate that software built on public money must be publicly available and open for public contributions (with appropriate vetting ofc).
literal thousands of engineers could do better, but may not, and are instead subjected to the profiteers.
Seattle could try (I don't think it would pass constitutional muster), but that wouldn't help here. The person is describing privately-owned parking lots. Paying for storing your private auto on the public street can still be done by hand at a machine.
Are you seriously asking this question in 2023? Nobody makes web pages anymore, just make an app and require access to a ton of user data just to sell them for shady purposes.
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.
Most of these shitty apps pay over 10 dollars to the payment companies to process a chargeback. And if they get too many their rates increase or they get kicked out.
So chargebacks for bullshit "fines" is a great solution to teach them not to charge those.
they could easily ban you nationwide, at all the parking facilities that payment processor serves. or if their ToS doesn't allow banning, your payments will just start failing their fraud checks, and you'll be effectively banned. if that's an acceptable consequence then go ahead and do a chargeback, but don't recommend it to others who don't know the consequences.
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.
Love how when someone overpaid in coins the next one parking there could take advantage of it while now the payment is instead tied to your license plate.
- 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?
The airports near me use the toll RFID tags as an option. I wish most pay parking would be able to bill through it as well. It seems to have a low enough rate of false positives.
Some parkings here have a terminal where you enter your license plate and pay right before you are about to leave. Time of entry was registered automatically by scanning your plate. Once you’ve paid you got 15 mins to get out of the gate, again controlled by plate scanning.
This is actually how New England handles toll roads. (Not parking.)
You have to write a law with it that says "rental car company's can't charge a junk fee of $25/day" or whatever. (Which is roughly what we were charged the last time we accidentally — there wasn't a toll booth! — took a rental through a toll. $25 from the rental car company for a $1 toll. We own an EZ pass now to avoid this very problem.)
We usually do that, specifically to avoid any chance that the rental company might get billed.
(For those unfamiliar, the EZPass is associated with a set of plates. You can register a rental car against your account during the term of your rental, which helps ensure the charges go to the right place, if the EZPass itself fails to register during the drive.)
I vacationed in Norway in July. Have yet to receive any bills from my trips on ferries and highways. My car had Swedish registration plates. I don't know whether to expect any bills any more.
There used to be systems whereby consumers could get all kinds of services and just have them billed to their phone account. I don't know how broad or widespread this was, but certainly there were pay-per-call services and such. Unfortunately, the scammers ruined this model, because it was far too easy to force or fake consent over a voice telephone line, and many laws and regulations later, I hardly ever hear of this practice at all.
P.S. my parents became the victims of a phone sex line. They had been receiving mysterious hangup calls in the middle of the night on a regular basis. Then my aunt was planning a trip and dialing a lot of airline (800) numbers, and she accidentally dialed (800) + my parents' number, and got an earful, and so thus my parents found out what all the callers were after.
Parking apps are the work of the devil, and the devs and all the people involved in implementing them should be ashamed each and every day they go to work. And I write that from half a globe away from Seattle, in Eastern Europe, that is. At least some of the cities in here still give you the possibility of paying by SMS, for now.
Some people say that the common folk now have cheap mass produced gadgets that were previously only available to the wealthy, and some rant about the enshitification (great term whose origin I need to learn more about of) of our society.
I nod along to this piece and yet I don’t want to be so cynical.
the term is coined by Cory Doctorow, pointing out that big ecommerce middlemen, usually platforms have outsized pricing power (because they are in their quasi-oligopoly due to network effects). and as a consequence of the relative business
success of these platfors nowadays "almost everyone" tries to become one, transform their business into something that might become one, try to replicate the shitty business methods
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.
Scanning the QR code makes your device text the company? Or you scan it and enter in your phone number? What if I don’t have a saved card? Still seems just as bamboozling
Sounds good, and you probably have the best intentions, but right now, that would just make you standard no. 15.
It's quite possible that the third sign on OP's parking lot would have led them to a perfectly user-friendly app with a pleasant and simple payment flow. But with so many apps to choose from and each lot only supporting a random subset of them, it'd be basically luck if you get to use the "good" app, even if there exists one.
You can also imagine a world where you have a single phone number saved. You text it "I'm at XYZ parking lot in ABC city, how do I pay?" and it gives you the easiest possible option.
Definitely standard no. 15, but there's room for something better to win out here right?
One obstacle to this is mentioned on the OP: People might not actually know the street address of the parking lot they are standing in, so you'd have to use some other means of identification, like a lot number or geolocation - however, then you're back to requiring an app...
Not necessarily. "I want to pay for parking" -> "Click this link" -> quick automatic web based geolocation and redirect back to the SMS thread -> done.
Mainly because the message thread is implicitly authenticated, so no additional web login required -- and we want to allow for conversational payments, where you can ask as many questions as you need before committing to pay.
Doesn't have to be hugely phishy if you have a saved contact card with a number you trust. That's often safer than some new app or web url that is imitating another.
Sure -- phishing is a huge problem, but it's also an argument to never build anything ever, because QR codes, sites, apps, emails, etc. can all easily be cloned and used as a phishing attack vector.
I'm not sure if the term "phishing" even applies here. The scam would be straight up fraudulent credit card billing -that most users wont even notice.
During the processing part, The scammers could very well just overbill the user by saying "Do you agree to $2 for parking?" and then charge the user $50. Then say a "We will hold $50 while the transaction is approved" just like a gas station.
Your service will get all the complaints and the scammer just gets the cash.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea or anything, however there are many bored smart teenagers and many hungry people with sliding ethics.
Hell, an even better scam is to copy your QR code from each unit and then bill the user for $X more as a "convenience fee" ... then auto-submit correctly to your service.
I mean, that might not even be illegal [in the sense that the customer agreed to the fee].
In Croatia you can pay via SMS, just send a message to the phone number listed on the machine, you type in your plate number and receive a confirmation. The only caveat is some additional transaction cost over paying via the machine.
No way am I giving your startup* my phone number. Maybe you can have a custom-generated, one-use-only email address that I can turn off so you don't spam me. (Your startup may be virtuous, but most startups fail, and then my data becomes an asset that gets sold away in bankruptcy.)
I also hope that your startup has been advised on the very significant TCPA liabilities this approach risks. Even if you do everything right, you're going to face lawsuits saying you don't. I have very mixed feelings about the TCPA, and it does hamper "innovation" in some circumstances, but I am delighted that it carries significant litigation risk for anyone who thinks it's a good idea to send me SMS messages. I. Don't. Want. Them.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 324 ms ] threadIt's about the Chicago Parking deal in 2008 with some machines for parking. Daley gave control of parking meters to a private company until 2083. Sold out his citizens. For a super discount. And now, in a shocking twist, the private company is squeezing the citizens and government.
It's a pretty good watch.
Downtown parking shouldn't be cheap!
In other words: Fuck Google and their ad bullshit.
Street parking, a universal hassle, is especially problematic in Chicago due to the infamous Chicago parking meter deal. This deal permitted a private company to take control and revenue from all 36,000 of the city's parking meters. In return, the city received a lump sum of $1.16 billion. However, this arrangement has led to numerous financial and political challenges that won't conclude until 2083.
The root of this decision can be traced back to the 2008 financial crisis when Chicago was grappling with a significant budget deficit. Mayor Richard M. Daley, in an attempt to address this, chose to privatize the parking meters without adequate analysis. Surprisingly, the city's aldermen approved this deal by a vote of 40 to 5, despite having limited time to review the terms. These aldermen have since faced criticism for their apparent lack of due diligence.
The beneficiaries of this deal, Chicago Parking Meters LLC (a consortium formed by Morgan Stanley, Allianz Capital partners, and The Sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi) saw immense profits. This was largely due to stipulations in the agreement that increased parking rates, ensuring a steady rise in revenue. Furthermore, the city now finds itself in a position where it has to pay penalties whenever it undertakes any actions that could potentially dip into the company's profits. This has amounted to Chicago paying the company over $75 million since the deal's inception.
Additionally, this arrangement severely restricts the city's urban development endeavors. For instance, adding bike lanes or implementing other urban reforms now comes with the caveat of compensating the company for any possible lost revenues. An attempt to challenge this by claiming the company held an illegal monopoly was dismissed in court twice. The courts deemed that while the deal might not have been the wisest choice, it wasn't illegal. So, due to the financial pressures of the crisis, Chicago ended up making a deal that has permitted financial institutions to reap substantial profits from city property for an extended period.
If you aren't digitally literate, life is hard.
The problem is some people were 50 years old when the the 2nd statement became true. For nearly everyone alive, the first statement has always been true. I think the government is failing its citizens by assuming digital literacy is commonplace.
Between this (I've basically given up parking on the streets ever again, I'm now forced to always go for actual parkings) and banks, it is indeed hell.
"You wish to park on Lord Absentee's land? You must enroll yourself in his service, then, peasant!"
This is one of those things that tech really didn't "fix" and now I have to select from one of 20 apps instead of just paying with cash or even a credit card.
Consider an AWD BMW without badges. If it's a 3 series or above all you know is that it's either RWD or AWD.
If they tow it by the rear wheels you blow up your transfer case. But try and prove that it was THAT action that blew it up.
Criminals are quite efficient at getting things done
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...
Also, tow operators are generally pretty shady. Because they operate in a second responder capacity, they have personal relationships with cops and sheriffs, repair garages, etc.
It was only a couple of pounds or so. I haven't been to these parts of town for years so I have no idea if this practice still goes on.
You know that what you said isn’t true. Or you are really badly informed.
It's not just money you pay to shady people. If he charged you $5 for parking, but allowed you to pay when you came back, but it would be $10 instead, you could say the additional $5 was the vig as that represents a 100% interest on a short term loan.
Not so much the guys that insist on spraying your windshield with soap at every traffic light.
"Party A pays 1 Pound Sterling for the item owned by Party B"
Crime: Party A blackmails Party B into selling them the item at a discount
Commerce: Party B offers the discount to entice Party A to try the item out, so that they can sell more at full price in the future
Altruism: Party B wants to give the item to a good home rather than destroying it (if that would cost them, then it's even mutually beneficial altruism from both parties)
Clearly it is the context about how the contract was made that distinguishes the situations. It would be a mistake to try to classify every possible contract as legitimate based on its semantics alone.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/44749/inside-the-tow-truck-maf...
All industries who's generous profits depend on monopolizing a fixed pie, they need to tightly control the amount of competition in order to maintain their profits, so they eventually devolve into a maifa-like organization, regardless if they're blue collar or white collar.
The only difference is the blue-collar mafia is way more visible as they solve their difference with valence, while the white-collar mafia doesn't need to resort to barbaric acts but simply lobbies their political friends in power to put enough laws and regulations in place to stop any newcomers entering their turf.
If only the towing industry could have taken a page out of Canada's telcos' book and lobby their way.
Ah, Brujah vs Ventrue.
My pet peeve is hearing how I don’t understand corruption because I live in a functioning country now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDLw1XDMJkk
https://ktla.com/morning-news/technology/scammers-use-fake-p...
It solved a very real problem of surveillance/advertising and skimming a little cream off the top in the process
Still I was just wondering about the author of the parent post that reported that he didn't have a cell phone.
2. If I did want people to contact me, a flip phone would work fine for that.
Without a smart phone with a data plan, it is becoming harder and harder to navigate the world made for advertizers and cellular providers. And these parking companies don't want to make it easy for you to pay for parking. They'd much rather you have a frustrating experience, take the risk of not paying and getting impounded.
I mean I would think you have a family and just to organize something you would need to communicate, even when you're outside.
>a flip phone would work fine for that.
Yes flip phones are indeed cell phones.
This seems to come as a shock to much of the HN crowd, but people did in fact manage to organize things before cell phones existed.
Believe it or not, they still do.
Why is that so hard for people to grasp?
First you gotta install their atrocious little app, which I've always avoided because it was buggy and Google Maps gave the same real-time info in a better interface. So then you purchase some passes. They're QR-based, they're not NFC. Ugh, why?
Then during your entire voyage you'll need to maintain both connectivity and battery life. I hear tell that NFC can even survive a dead phone battery, but not a QR app. I was pissed about the connectivity, because I tend to disable networking while traveling, and I have a 1GiB data plan. Also, it makes for one-handed boarding because they mean it when they say "Have Fare Ready" so I feel like fiddling with my phone onboard is like fishing in my pockets for a pass, but worse, and I've already had passengers complain at me.
Now they're revamping the fare system again, and they're introducing NFC-card-based payments as well as account-based rather than pass-based fares. The punch line is that the mobile app won't be compatible with the card, so you need to choose one or the other, permanently. Guess I know which way I'll go.
In the not so distant past, it was perfectly normal for a person not to be reachable at all times. Today it became a luxury. I choose to indulge in it.
If you have plenty of spare time in your life you could just park anyway, and dispute in court that there is no physical way to pay, and they can't force everyone to own a phone.
An old lady in Seattle couldn't understand how to pay for parking using confusing parking apps.
The author helped her, but the process was complicated and not user-friendly.
He guided her through scanning a QR code and using parking apps, eventually helping her pay with the Park Mobile app using her credit card.
Edit: The parent has been edited since I commented.
I agree with the author, I just write it in a shorter way.
People are spending vast amounts of time fiddling with shit that doesn't work.
We not only have created a complex society on all levels, but now a very difficult world to live, even the most simple events is now a pain in the ass.
From restaurants to small markets, you now pay for a robot, you don't have a human to support you.
things that were simple, became full of friction, all to collect our data.
I always wonder who comes up with these full of friction "tech innovations".
Last time it took me about five minutes to order a soda from one of those machines in a hotel. It even required a phone number to complete the order.
Another day that machine failed mid transaction but charged my card so I had to email the hotel's accounting department to get a refund about a week later.
Omg. This is so stupid.
The same with parties/festivals: you have to create accounts to buy a fucking ticket, then you pay a "convenience fee".
That is, in addition to providing your data to a platform that you did not ask for, you still pay for the "convenience" lol.
So finally when you arrive at the party, then you have to pay for a "credit card" that works only in that place, where some 3rd party collect your data again.
It's: multiple competing apps, QR code scanners, advertisements, buggy apps, buggy payment taking.
It is only a very slight exaggeration.
The other day I just wanted to update a dependency in my Python project and now it’s crashing in CI (doesnt locally) due to a missing C header file. No amount of git clean allowed me to reproduce it locally (using venvs). It used to work fine before. I just gave up for now. The article summarises my feelings perfectly.
That experience aside, I don't believe there should be jobs where you simply don't think. Manual labour jobs are unfair because they don't reward the brain whatsoever, no creativity, no one loves to do them, and they create a market of labourers with little to no transferable skills thus putting them in an unfair situation if they want or are forced to get a different job.
Software greed has made life hell.
Pay-for parking feels like the kind of thing that should become a utility with one, easy, well-known way to pay for parking anywhere.
The trouble is that this either requires government regulation, or for one company to effectively become a monopoly, which can lead to different abuses.
I don't know how parking lot attendees felt about their jobs, maybe they were
It's not hard. Even toddler rides at shopping centres have contactless now.
Not just parking, also banking ($ 30 overdraft fee mentioned in the article), telecom, health insurance. All of it is designed in very anti-consumer ways in the US, even though consumers should be a majority of the votes in a democracy.
What is so difficult about getting a ticket and paying the ticket when you check out?
literal thousands of engineers could do better, but may not, and are instead subjected to the profiteers.
So chargebacks for bullshit "fines" is a great solution to teach them not to charge those.
they could easily ban you nationwide, at all the parking facilities that payment processor serves. or if their ToS doesn't allow banning, your payments will just start failing their fraud checks, and you'll be effectively banned. if that's an acceptable consequence then go ahead and do a chargeback, but don't recommend it to others who don't know the consequences.
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.
Actually, I don't love it at all.
I always forget to stop the timer when I get back to the car and pay the Max so I hate it. YMMV
Maybe it’s me but I prefer the allotted time. I only regret that when paying at a meter at least if I have excess someone else can use it.
Wait there's another activity a global mega corp can monopolize and overcomplexify.
Incentives are nonsensicle when the primary task is not providing a service, but using the service as a vehicle to explore software.
Parking apps are a solved problem. Why are we submitting that class of problem to tech abuse?
Feynman was right, even smart people get on computers and begin to 'play'. Pointlessly so, in pragmatic terms.
- 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
Solves all the problems you’ve listed.
You have to write a law with it that says "rental car company's can't charge a junk fee of $25/day" or whatever. (Which is roughly what we were charged the last time we accidentally — there wasn't a toll booth! — took a rental through a toll. $25 from the rental car company for a $1 toll. We own an EZ pass now to avoid this very problem.)
(For those unfamiliar, the EZPass is associated with a set of plates. You can register a rental car against your account during the term of your rental, which helps ensure the charges go to the right place, if the EZPass itself fails to register during the drive.)
(Road tolls already do this in Norway.)
They timed the release of photo-rolling with a few years worth of defective, delaminating license plates, and many people deface or bend the plates.
P.S. my parents became the victims of a phone sex line. They had been receiving mysterious hangup calls in the middle of the night on a regular basis. Then my aunt was planning a trip and dialing a lot of airline (800) numbers, and she accidentally dialed (800) + my parents' number, and got an earful, and so thus my parents found out what all the callers were after.
I nod along to this piece and yet I don’t want to be so cynical.
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.
It's quite possible that the third sign on OP's parking lot would have led them to a perfectly user-friendly app with a pleasant and simple payment flow. But with so many apps to choose from and each lot only supporting a random subset of them, it'd be basically luck if you get to use the "good" app, even if there exists one.
Definitely standard no. 15, but there's room for something better to win out here right?
Good luck nonetheless.
- That should take all of 4-16 hours to setup the software / web side and payment processing [processors who do cannabis / adult products].
- 1 hour to run to Staples and get some laser Av3ry pre-cut stickers.
- 1 hour to replace | supplement your 'real' stickers.
During the processing part, The scammers could very well just overbill the user by saying "Do you agree to $2 for parking?" and then charge the user $50. Then say a "We will hold $50 while the transaction is approved" just like a gas station.
Your service will get all the complaints and the scammer just gets the cash.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea or anything, however there are many bored smart teenagers and many hungry people with sliding ethics.
Hell, an even better scam is to copy your QR code from each unit and then bill the user for $X more as a "convenience fee" ... then auto-submit correctly to your service.
I mean, that might not even be illegal [in the sense that the customer agreed to the fee].
I also hope that your startup has been advised on the very significant TCPA liabilities this approach risks. Even if you do everything right, you're going to face lawsuits saying you don't. I have very mixed feelings about the TCPA, and it does hamper "innovation" in some circumstances, but I am delighted that it carries significant litigation risk for anyone who thinks it's a good idea to send me SMS messages. I. Don't. Want. Them.
What if I don't have my phone?
What if my phone doesn't have a camera?
What if I don't have a card?