Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Using a mobile phone to pay for parking
Haringey is the latest Council to sign up with PayByPhone for parking spaces. What are people's experiences of the new system?
Zena and I prefer using cash - not least because you know what you paid and can see how long you get. (Even if it isn't very much.) Though it can sometimes be frustrating to walk up and down looking for a meter which will take your money.
You may have seen a Guardian video which included John Harris testing Barnet's PayByPhone system.
Mr Mustard - one of the famous 5 Barnet Bloggers has done some mystery shopping to test another aspect of the Barnet scheme - visitors who plan a trip and want to buy a parking voucher in advance.
As perhaps you might guess, neither were successful.
Tags for Forum Posts: Barnet, Barnet bloggers, Haringey, John Harris, Mr Mustard, mystery shopping, parking, paybyphone
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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....and as I wrote the other week, Alan, there is a sting in the tail.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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But first people need to get through.
In Barnet, John Harris waited on the phone line for 35 minutes. Local traders told him that they watched people who gave-up, got back in their cars and drove-off.
None of this makes sense. Not even for the PayByPhone company. Unless they get paid whether or not their customers get through promptly.
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Permalink Reply by Lydia R on
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It actually happened to me. At the beginning of this year I wanted to stop off at a bakery in Finchley but when I got out of the car and discovered that I had to register my phone for parking, I decided it was too complicated and time consuming and I drove away. I don't even think of shopping there any more. I can't understand what Barnet thought it was about when it came up with this crackbrained idea.
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Permalink Reply by Dom G on
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Once you are registered, Pay by Phone parking can be excellent. In a rush, you can park, head off to your destination with the location code memorised, tap in a few digits on your mobile phone keypad on your way and that's it - done. No finding a working machine. No finding the right coins. No delay. You also get an immediate email and text message to confirm when your paid-for time expires. The best bit: if you want to extend the parking period, you phone up again - the system knows who you are and where you're parked - and you can extend the parking period without re-keying all the details and without returning to the car to put coins into the machine. These are all useful features for me, but I accept that the initial set-up and service charges of 20-30p per use are a disincentive. My experiences are with the system used in Islington by the way.
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