Pay by phone Grove Vale

[Huggers]

I parked on Grove Vale this morning, registering my car for the free half hour and it was going to charge me 40p! I tried 20 mins and same. What’s going on?

[SpringTime]

Not having a pop at you, Huggers, but what a hideous image. Credit to you for the pic. The image says it all. It dissuages people from parking up. It prevents people who don't use mobiles from interactions with other folk and making commercial exchanges. It stops people paying other people's wages. It's confusing. It stifles businesses and therefore tax income. It encourages unnecessary pollution by causing drivers to carry on elsewhere. It promotes an imaginary cashless economy, which will never work.   X

[Sue]

23 minutes ago, SpringTime said:

Not having a pop at you, Huggers, but what a hideous image. Credit to you for the pic. The image says it all. It dissuages people from parking up. It prevents people who don't use mobiles from interactions with other folk and making commercial exchanges. It stops people paying other people's wages. It's confusing. It stifles businesses and therefore tax income. It encourages unnecessary pollution by causing drivers to carry on elsewhere. It promotes an imaginary cashless economy, which will never work.   X

Somebody appears to be making money from it, albeit not much.

Who?

[Crokes]

Check your settings on the Paybyphone app and make sure that notifications are off (they seem to have started charging for texting you to confirm the parking and again when the parking is almost expired). I think you can select email to confirm the parking (or exit the app and re-enter it to check current bookings as an alternative way to confirm that the parking booking has worked).

Edited 5 hours ago by Crokes

[Huggers]

I’ve got all that!

it’s just making you pay for free parking that is free if you pay by phone which then charges you! I put in the free time limit. It still charged me

[Joseph]

I'd be interested if anyone else has this as well. Up at Crystal Palace you now have to pay with the RingGo app. It should be free for an hour. I'm on Android and it comes up as free. My wife has an iPhone and it costs 20p every time. Same app, same location, same vehicle, same time. Obviously it's impossible to contact anyone about it and isn't worth the time for 20p but it makes no sense.

[ianr]

The phone number seems to be that used by several  London boroughs for PayByPhone contact( though, probably incidentally,  different from the one give for phone bookings on the company's own website).  They also say, at https://support.paybyphone.com/hc/en-001/articles/11574881494545-Is-PayByPhone-free:

"PayByPhoneParking rates are set by the parking operator and should match the cost of paying at a traditional meter. However, some locations may add a small service fee, typically less than $0.50 (USD) or £0.35 (GBP), which is determined by the parking authority."

There's nothing on the signage pictured to imply  that the motorist is contracting with the council to pay any service fee for a stay up to 30 minutes.  I suggest someone asks a councillor, to check what Southwark have to say  and report back.

Edited 3 hours ago by ianr

[Huggers]

2 hours ago, Crokes said:

Check your settings on the Paybyphone app and make sure that notifications are off (they seem to have started charging for texting you to confirm the parking and again when the parking is almost expired). I think you can select email to confirm the parking (or exit the app and re-enter it to check current bookings as an alternative way to confirm that the parking booking has worked).

Aha I’ll check whether it’s set to text and torn that off!

[Earl Aelfheah]

Ridiculous. If there is 30 minutes free parking, why do you need to use a parking app at all? 

[Sue]

2 hours ago, Earl Aelfheah said:

Ridiculous. If there is 30 minutes free parking, why do you need to use a parking app at all? 

Because it's a maximum stay of 2 hours and presumably only the first 30 minutes is free?