[jamesfmilne]

As a North London resident, the parking app situation is just as farcical for me.

There are at least three different apps for parking around me: RingGo, PayByPhone and JustPark.

I went to East London recently to visit the Velodrome, and discovered yet another one: Evology.

It's always great fun, standing around in the car park trying to wrangle your cards whilst creating yet another account to pay for 30 minutes of parking.

Then, of course, there's the 50/50 chance that my iPhone has decided to offload the parking app you need because you haven't used it in the last month or so.

And occasionally RingGo will decide to log me out, and when I go to log back in for some reason the last password I have in my password manager doesn't work, so now I also have to reset my password.

Agreed, paying for parking has turned into a total farce.

[ryandrake]

If people just stopped paying for parking en masse, things might change. I'm in the US, so maybe my attitude is different, but if I parked in a parking lot that didn't let me pay without installing some weirdo app, I would just park without paying and let them come after me if they can find me. If they send me a bill, I can refuse to pay. If they send it to collections, collections will probably not pursue over such a small amount. And if the debt collector does pursue, I can send them a dispute letter, forcing them to prove I have a debt obligation, which 99 times out of 100 will make them go away.

[acdha]

This is like the people who think “admiralty court” is a magic phrase to get out of paying taxes. What actually happens is that your car gets towed if you ever park anywhere affiliated with the same company (hope you never need to go to the same place twice), or you get tired of dodging collectors and having that mounting debt affect your credit and employability. Not liking how a business runs doesn’t give you a right to use their services without paying, your choice is still to pay or not use them.

[genewitch]

Okay, but if everyone or a plurality of people did that because they disagreed with the business practices?

An individual may not be able to do much in all circumstances, but a lot of people might.

[acdha]

Yes, boycotts can be effective but they work by not buying things rather than pretending theft is noble. Most people have a moral objection to that.

[slater-]

Towing my car to an impound lot and ransoming it back to me... is that not theft?

[genewitch]

if snow and ice close the lot is nature "thieving" from the lot owner?

[kjkjadksj]

The thing is they can tow your car away potentially. At which point your little protest is over as you are now being extorted for hundreds for something you can’t ignore.

[aucisson_masque]

Yeah yeah yeah.

They sell the debt at lower price to companies specialized in debt collection, the longer you wait then to pay them the more they are allowed to collect from you.

If you try not to pay at all, they put you in court against lawyer working for the company whose only job is to collect debt, so he knows his job pretty well and the bonus is that you end up having to pay the lawyer fee.

Of course you could still refuse to pay that, get cops to show up at your house and then you have to shoot to get them to leave.

At some point of course you would think it's a bit much for a parking ticket.

If you don't like it, just don't use it, like everyone else does.

[fc417fc802]

Nobody takes you to court to collect small amounts. They only do that if the amount is sufficiently large and they have good documentation and they believe they will be able to collect a judgement against you (ie either you have assets or you have stable employment so they can garnish wages).

Mostly nothing will happen except daily phone calls for years plus the hit to credit score.

And cops aren't showing up unless aforementioned judgment happened, you ignored it, and the court eventually authorized physical seizure of your property to recover funds.

[ryandrake]

Thanks to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), those phone calls should be able to be stopped with a simple Debt Validation Letter. No need to even get an attorney involved. Demand that the collector provide proof that you owe the money. Debt collectors will frequently just give up at that point if it's a tiny amount of money like a parking ticket.

[genewitch]

Is this like US fanfiction?