Parking Suck

[Red_Dazes]

So this is part parking people suck and part me suck. Some of the other threads about parking reminded me of this.

I've got a ticket for parking illegally. ((and I really had been there for 5 min)) I had no cash on me so I had to park, run to the closest gas station(across the street) and get money to put into the drop box. When I got back to my car I had a $35 ticket. I was upset... but hey, my bad. So I sucked it up and paid the ticket.

Of course...I am ashamed to admit, I decided "I was being good and getting the money to pay for my parking.... and I got a ticket anyway... screw it I am not paying for parking."
So I left the ticket on my window, put my cash back in my pocket and ran the errands I needed to run.

[Jack7957]

That's not so sucky. In a way, you're paying for parking with the ticket, just more than it would have cost you.

[bhskittykatt]

I was TWO MINUTES! late to my car once and got slammed with a ticket.

It was my fault and I had no problem paying it. The sucky part is that I had parked on the main strip while my friend parked her car on a side street less than a block away. When she parked, the car next to her had an expired meter. Two hours later when we returned to our cars, neither she nor the car with the long-expired meter had a ticket but I did!

[infinitemonkies]

The company that has the parking enforcement contract at my college has been caught many times giving out tickets before someone's time has expired. Basically their policy is to ticket everyone, and give refunds to those who complain.
I don't know how they've managed to avoid some massive class action lawsuits, but apparently there's some very good money to be made off students who are too lazy to argue a $35 ticket they didn't deserve.

[Mystic]

The company that has the parking enforcement contract at my college has been caught many times giving out tickets before someone's time has expired. Basically their policy is to ticket everyone, and give refunds to those who complain.
I don't know how they've managed to avoid some massive class action lawsuits, but apparently there's some very good money to be made off students who are too lazy to argue a $35 ticket they didn't deserve.

Because they are a University and can get away with it.

When I read this thread, I immediately thought about Universities because the whole "leaving your car for 1 minute to come back and find a ticket" happens there all the time. Granted, most of the college students are too stupid to live and you end up wondering how they got there in the first place because they usually don't care that they are getting these tickets or they think they can get away with parking like morons because "I'll only be a few minutes", which ends up turning into 10.

However, words cannot describe how much I despise the parking Nazi's on campus, either. They are no better than the people who park like idiots. *sigh*

[fma_fanatic]

I remember when the ex and I were living in Santa Barbara and the parking enforcement office liked to ticket cars that were deemed to close to the UCSB campus. We never could figure how close was too close, but I know we racked a few tickets up during our two year stay there.

I remember being told just before we were moving that we were never even near the campus as a neighbor showed me maps of where the county was and where the campus was. We were at least a good six blocks away. The parking enforcement liked ticketing people who "looked" like students. I guess being 23 and 31 made us look young.

So I wandered into the office one day and dropped all the tickets off along with a copy of the boundaries and told them I wasn't paying for these tickets as they were essentially unenforceable. I was told if I didn't they'd hold my transcripts. I laughed all the way out telling him good luck to that one. It's been about 12 years, and gee, no one's ever told me that I can't get my non-existent diploma.

[PepperElf]

i got a ticket once for parking like an idiot on campus but it was only 5 bucks.

right now i still park a little like an idiot but they're not issuing tickets since the parking lots are so snow-covered in the morning, you can't actually see where the lines are and you just have to line up next to another car. once the spring hits they'll be giving out tickets for parking outside the yellow lines

oh except parking where the 30 minute parking area is. i'm sure they still issue tickets there.

[LillFilly]

I remember when the ex and I were living in Santa Barbara and the parking enforcement office liked to ticket cars that were deemed to close to the UCSB campus. We never could figure how close was too close, but I know we racked a few tickets up during our two year stay there.

So...You were not a student, and not parked on campus, but the ticketing officers thought you looked like students and were parked too close to campus in non-student parking? I'm trying to figure if the ticket was for being a student not parked on campus, or being a student parked on campus in an unacceptable area. Either way, no way to enforce that, you're right!

In a ticketing officer's defense, I ticket people all the time (handicap and fire lane violaters) who say our tickets are un-enforceable. Heeheehee, the only thing is, we are semi-deputized to write tickets which go to the area police department, who get the stub of the tickets we write, and if they're not paid within 10-days the police department then sends a citation for 10-times the original amount. The argument when they finally pay, or fight all the way to court is "I didn't think it was a REAL ticket!"

I love when they drive away and use their wipers to flick the ticket off the window, thinking they won't have to pay it if they don't have it and can argue "I never saw it!" Only thing is, I usually see them do it and make a note on the back of the stub!

[fma_fanatic]

So...You were not a student, and not parked on campus, but the ticketing officers thought you looked like students and were parked too close to campus in non-student parking? I'm trying to figure if the ticket was for being a student not parked on campus, or being a student parked on campus in an unacceptable area. Either way, no way to enforce that, you're right!

Pretty much. The people running the parking enforcement office weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer.

[Ironclad Alibi]

I live in Arlington, VA. About five years ago I got a letter from some school in the Norfolk, VA, area about an unpaid parking ticket. The last time I was in Norfolk was in the mid 70s. What had happened was I got a new license tag that started with the letters JRK. My wife didn't like what that suggested, so I exchanged it for a different tag number. Who ever then got the JRK tag was the person that parked illegally, but since the database had apparently not been updated, the ticket got sent to me. I called the people who sent me the ticket and explained it them. It was a crazy situation.

[Mystic]

In a ticketing officer's defense, I ticket people all the time (handicap and fire lane violaters) who say our tickets are un-enforceable. Heeheehee, the only thing is, we are semi-deputized to write tickets which go to the area police department, who get the stub of the tickets we write, and if they're not paid within 10-days the police department then sends a citation for 10-times the original amount. The argument when they finally pay, or fight all the way to court is "I didn't think it was a REAL ticket!"

The thing that irritates me is that they make us pay to park where we work. We have to get a monthly parking pass from the University in order to use the lot. Now, I normally would have no problem with this since it's only $8/mo for the pass, but we work at this place maybe... twice a month, and the kicker is that most of us who work there live at least an hour away from the place and it costs less to actually pay for a ticket than to make an extra trip over on a day we aren't working to buy it.

Other places we work have specific lots set aside for the people who work there, but universities have this snub "we can do whatever we want" attitude. It's constantly making us . Especially since we don't make much more than most people in retail at this venue (That's the other thing, they won't pay us what we're worth there. They can always replace us with unskilled students in their mindset). It's the lowest paying venue we work for that does the largest shows. Kind of ironic, eh?

[Magpie]

Because they are a University and can get away with it.

My university is very picky about parking, but I suspect it's more because there's a lot of people who drive there. I'd say that probably more than half the staff, and at least 10% of the students drive to campus. (Bear in mind that not only are we in a city, but the university is one of the transit hubs, and all undergrads have bus passes at less than 1/4 price, which they all paid for everywhere). There's people who complain that the parking is so far away (maybe a 15 minute walk from class), so if the university failed to ticket people parked in the popular lots there'd probably be a big uproar, as well as a lot of people parking just on the roadways, because they knew they could get away with it.

In a ticketing officer's defense, I ticket people all the time (handicap and fire lane violaters) who say our tickets are un-enforceable. Heeheehee, the only thing is, we are semi-deputized to write tickets which go to the area police department, who get the stub of the tickets we write, and if they're not paid within 10-days the police department then sends a citation for 10-times the original amount. The argument when they finally pay, or fight all the way to court is "I didn't think it was a REAL ticket!"

See, I like that it works that way for you. Here we have real campus police (some places don't, they just have basically a private security firm, which Macleans decided to assume was the norm, but that's a different rant), but the tickets are basically tied to a) getting a parking pass and b) getting your transcript/graduating/etc.

[Sapphire Silk]

The community college where I teach is pretty strict about parking. If you park in a faculty spot, and they catch you, you get towed, no warnings. Same for handicapped parking. They are cracking down on students who use grandma's handicapped placard, or mom's faculty hangtag (students gets stickers for their cars, faculty/staff hangtags): towed. Grandma reported for inappropratel use of her hangtag (which can result in its revokation). Faculty mom disciplined by her supervisor.

Parking was so bad at the start of the Fall semester, students were parking on lawns. Campus police let that go for awhile, but now it's all roped off. Park there now, and towed you get.

Plus, if you don't pay your parking tickets ($5 a pop), you can't register and your grades won't be released.

[Jack7957]

When I worked at the County we sometimes had to go to the community college for service calls. Since we didn't go up very often, we'd have to go to the security office first to get a temp parking permit for the day. What was nice, since we usually were only there for a couple hours, they'd let us park in the faculty lots right next to the buildings.

[Chrismor]

The fastest I have seen parking to ticket is 30 seconds. It happened to my dad and I while parking in Dublin to do a plumbing job.

Parked outside house 5. Meter is outside house 1 (the corner) and does every space on the street. We had no change for the meter so we went to get some from one of the other contractors in the house. Walked up the steps to the house, turned around, and there was the warden writing the ticket!

Luckily it was argued with him that he was jumping the gun, that we had just arrived and were getting coins to feed the meter and he relented. Could have been nasty though, as it was €2.50 for the meter or something like €60 for a parking violation.

(The rule is that if a warden sees a car with no parking tag from the meter, he notes it and returns in 5 minutes. Still no tag? Then he issues the ticket.)

C.