Wheelclamped after paying for parking by mobile
My other half wasn’t impressed. You know when I was spending shitloads, courtesy of what I assumed was a Vodafone Passport style service? Well I was getting the full details. She was out with her sister shopping during the afternoon. She paid for parking via the Verrus-powered pay-via-mobile service for parking in the Westminster area.
Despite giving the helpful operator the correct numberplate for her sister’s car, they returned and found it clamped.
A few further calls later and she established that the operator had (mistakenly?) paid-up parking using the numberplate that she signed-up with her account for, a little while ago. My car.  Not her sister’s car.
So she’d paid for parking. Just not for her sister’s numberplate. Operator error. They must have just seen the numberplate on her account and not bothered checking when she gave a different one.
Regular SMS Text News contributor Ben Smith had a bit of a problem with the same system a little while ago (the Verrus chaps managed to fix it promptly).
Broadly speaking, I think the Verrus system works ok. In these kinds of situations though, the end users go absolutely nuts. Now my other half’s sister is going to have to ‘go through the system’. She’s going to have to write letters and explanations, all the while the rather obsessive Westminster Parking Folk do their best to nail her to the wall for contesting the parking fine.
Might be quicker to just pay the fine. Well, she’s already had to pay for it, I think, to get the clamp taken off.
Paying by mobile hits all my geeky-efficiency buttons, but there’s no accounting for human error. It happens. It’s an arse…
I’m waiting for an update from Verrus and will post an update when I get it. However, on the information I have so far it looks like Westminster (or their contractor) are milking this - I appealed my penalty and it was rejected without any reference to the information I submitted…. even though they publicly tell people (including Verrus) that they cancel them for common problems such as mine.
Posted by Ben Smith on March 30th, 2008 at 5:17 pm.One of my pet hates is when you get trapped in the ‘automated system’ loop. When you have a perfectly valid reason for whatever it is you’re remonstrating over, yet it doesn’t fit within one of the options on the computer so they reject it. Just employ some sensible people to assess these claims and you could get them sorted so much quicker and actually not pi5s off so many customers!
rant over.
Posted by Patrick on March 30th, 2008 at 6:57 pm.