ParkMobile: Park. Pay. Go. Reviews

I use the this app mobile app periodically while visiting my daughter in Northern California. I’m just visit, however we parked briefly to go to lunch, and I started and stopped my parking session as usual. Several hours later, when I was 200 miles away on my drive back home, I received an email letting me know that my parking session would automatically end in 15 minutes. Shocked, I went into Park immediately to see if they were any active parking sessions, and there were not. The parking session also did not appear, and currently does not appear at all in my parking history. The next day today, I was shocked to get a $68 parking receipt for what should have been three dollars worth of parking. I contacted customer service, explained the issues, sent them my Google maps history to show that I was only in the location for about an hour, but the customer service rep said that they don’t collect the fees, I would need to contact the city parking office. The rep did acknowledge that Park was currently not showing parking history, etc., but we’re still unwilling to help. The city parking office, of course, says they don’t have access to any of Park information. I will save a screenshot of my Google maps history and the transcript from the customer service chat, and dispute the charges with my credit card company, but what a massive, unnecessary hassle

ParkMobile seems to be the most popular app for municipal parking around me, and it works pretty well for what it is. Seems to sync well with whatever technology the authorities are using. A handful of app-specific annoyances in the last year or two: 1) there are more often than not popover ads or popover promos that appear as soon as I open Park that I must dismiss in order to input the parking zone and start parking. I imagine most people are like me and in a major hurry to input the zone number and start the clock. The ads and promos are a HUGE annoyance. I’ve cursed Park more than once standing in the rain after finding the zone number and trying to start parking. 2) I turned off app notifications for time remaining and session expired and now they will not turn back on for me. Every time I hit the radio button in Park , I’m redirected to the iPhone setting menu for Park , which doesn’t help - two different types of settings. All of those iPhone settings are correct, so I don’t know what the problem is turning notifications on in Park . I really don’t like text or email notifications, which are now my only options. 3) I had to log out and log back in to Park to see an updated parking history. Park stopped showing parking history in real time for a couple months.

I don’t even have time to list all the things all the things that went wrong with this terrible functioning, unreliable app. I parked my car and walked off, opening to app to pay for my parking. Park then bugged out and had issue after issue. First, it would randomly sign me out and and wouldn’t let me sign back in, telling me my info was incorrect, or simply loading forever. Once it finally started realizing my info WAS correct, I tried to click on a zone and it wouldn’t load it. Then, when it finally did load it, it kept telling me I didn’t have a payment method on file, despite having used it before. When I went to add a payment method, it showed that I did indeed still have a payment method on file. I continuously opened and closed Park , again and again trying to get it to simply function properly, and every time it was a different issue, different bug. Eventually I became so frustrated with it that I went and grabbed my wallet, walked all the way back down to the parking space to pay manually, and upon arrival realized that I had received a parking ticket in the time that I spent trying to simply get to app to function.
Park fails at the simplest levels, and is just terrible and unreliable in general. An app like this is supposed to be reliable - that’s the whole idea. Don’t waste your time on this.

Avoid this app mobile spots, find a parking garage. I put 30 minutes on the spot as we were just grabbing a quick bite. At 29 minutes I tried to add more time but it wouldn’t let me. I looked up from my burger and the meter maid was already hovering over my car. It took me 45 seconds to cross the cross walk and by the time I got to my car she had printed the ticket and said once it is printed there is nothing she can do. I paid for the spot through 12:45, the ticket was issued at 12:46.

The car in front of me was smart enough not to pay at all. It was there before I parked and was still there 8 minutes after I got the ticket. Because they didn’t pay, this app Mobile didn’t send a message to the meter maid and they didn’t get a ticket. As soon as she pulled away she did a U turn and parked next to a car on the other side of the street and waited 3 minutes until their spot expired. Over $100 of fines every 5 minutes for the city. That is easily $20k per day per meter maid. Not a bad racket when the spot is only worth $7 per hour. I paid more for the credit card “convenience” fee on the ticket than it cost for 30 minutes of parking.

Park is not about making parking convenient, it is about reporting exactly when your spot is expiring to ensure you get ticketed and cities get their ticket revenue. I wonder how much commission they make on the tickets???

I paid for the wrong car and got a parking ticket. Mea culpa, but Park makes this error easy. How? Park spontaneously rearranges the vehicle list order when a non-default vehicle is chosen. How is this intentional? It is confusing and misleading.
ParkMobile has created a payment system that is structured to benefit itself and its contracted municipalities. Its users are simply revenue generators. Park 's structure ensures that users always pay for more time than they use, allowing one parking spot to generate overlapping revenues for multiple vehicles. Some users belatedly realize they selected and paid for the wrong car and effectively double-pay for their parking when they catch their error and correct it by paying again for the correct car. People making my error pay both for their parking and for their parking ticket (if unresolved). My experience with customer "support" indicates that ParkMobile disavows any responsibility for contributing to profitable user error and thereby protects its revenues.
ParkMobile's regrets for my inability to use their app and apologies for my frustration are a condescending approach to customer service. I did them a favor by presenting my concerns, and they rejected them. It's called stonewalling.
I will confine my use of ParkMobile for when I might need to extend parking sessions remotely, otherwise I will just pay at parking stations directly.

Update 9/18: in response to ParkMobiles apology and offer to assist via email, I sent my third email support request on 11 August (previous emails on and 21 and 29 June) and not one email has been responded to. Stop acting like you have customer service when you clearly don’t. Bottom line: good app, convenient, but you’ll never ever get a refund should anything not work perfectly! And no one from “customer support” will ever respond to your emails.

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Park is good and does what is says, but customer support is non-existent. Park warns that the service is merely a financial transaction tool between municipalities and the meter so Park developer will NOT process refunds. However Park offers an opportunity to forward your comments to the city to request a refund. I received an automated email once the ticket was opened, then nothing. I’ve sent follow up emails and not even an acknowledgment, nothing. The original email says it was from the this app mobile helpdesk, but I’m pretty certain one doesn’t even exist. Why offer to facilitate communication with the municipality if you’re not going to do it in the first place and then not even get back to the customer with any update(s) much less an actual resolution. It’s been over a month and nothing.

Had worked ok for me for work (university) parking, but used at a baseball game last night and ended up with a citation. All seemed to be as usual: added, then selected the license plate of my husband’s car, entered the lot #, selected payment method and confirmed payment. Countdown began and I even remarked to friends that the parking rate (which was not posted in the lot) was slightly less than the $12 we would have paid at the lot for the venue, which was directly across from us. Came out later to find a $45 citation on the windshield and no history of the transaction (except the addition of the new license plate) in the ParkMobile app. I’m forced to use Park at my university, but at least there I have some recourse through the parking office if something goes wrong (and apparently many things have gone wrong, since the university has apologized for the problems with the rollout). In short, Park is completely unreliable and I won’t use it elsewhere despite the seeming convenience. Allowing countdown to start as if payment has been processed, but then letting the entire history of a transaction to be erased so I have no way of proving payment is a major design flaw!

I parked and saw that parking could be paid through Park. I downloaded Park , entered my vehicle and payment information, entered the zone where I was parking, set it to pay for two hours ($2.85). I got confirmation and even saw the clock start counting down. I go to lunch, then come back to a $42 parking ticket. I check Park and somehow there is nothing in my activity history.

Edit: I have sent the information as they requested. The event happened exactly as described above. I will update my review to include how this is handled once it is resolved.

Edit #2: I've upgraded my review to 4 stars. Park didn't work and I got a ticket, but I was surprised to find that the developers actually responded to this, they investigated, and ultimately reimbursed me the price of the ticket. That's excellent customer service, which unfortunately isn't common these days. And for the record, I used Park again a couple of weekends ago (I made sure to take a screenshot this time) and it worked fine, so I'm not sure what happened with that first one.

Park is about as close to a scam as could be, without legitimately being one. It has a lot of features which sound good on the surface, but they never make one mention of “service fees” when you download and set up your account. The developers have gone to great lengths to ensure these fees stay hidden. When you click on a parking space, examine the price they tell you. For me, in my hometown, they wanted to charge me double the face value of parking. Perturbed, I contacted a support agent. It was only through him that I found out what I had suspected, Park is riddled with hidden fees. A much more honest approach would’ve been to adopt a subscription-based business model. I would gladly pay for an app like this on a monthly (or yearly) basis if it meant I was paying face value at the meter. But alas, they’ve instead chosen to adopt a model that preys on customers’ ignorance and naïveté to make their money. Shame on these developers. I don’t see Park surviving another few years without major overhaul. The only people willing to pay double for parking would be business owners who could use Park to secure a parking spot for the entire workday. But for the average consumer Park might as well be a scam.

I’ve only used Park a couple of times but it’s always worked well for me. It’s fairly straight forward and easy to use. You can add any vehicle to your account quickly from anywhere. (I even added my daughters best friends car from home when needed to this app, because they are teenagers and don’t always think ahead.) You can have multiple vehicles on your account. All of the info you need to know about a space (hour and minute rate, maximum time allowed in a space, etc) so you don’t accidentally get a ticket is given in Park when you chose a space/parking zone. I often use Park before I even get out of my car (and I counsel my children to do the same) which gives me a greater sense of security. I like that it warns you when your time is going to run out and I find it very convenient to be able to extend my time in a space from my smartphone rather than having to run out and feed the meter.

Edit: as an addendum to my review, there is a way on the website to change your membership to free. However, i was forced to add a new payment option just so it would let me into the personal tab. This is what led me to believe there was no way to cancel the membership, as there is no way to opt out of this, you have to add some payment info before it will let you on. Currently, my review still stands, it took one click on Park to sign up for pro, so it should be just as easy to do it in the same place on Park , not hidden away in some submenu on the website

I used this app Mobile throughout college to this app on my campus and never had a problem with it, I even signed up for this app mobile pro. Now that I’m out of college and moved away, I wanted to cancel my pro since I won’t be using this app mobile anymore, and I can’t find anything about how to cancel it, not on Park or the website. This is wrong. If I have to jump through a bunch of hoops just to get an app to stop charging me money, then I see that as a scam. I’ve had to contacted customer support to cancel it, and I will not be using Park again

Downloaded Park when one of the downtown Indianapolis parking meters had buttons that weren’t working at all. Used it to pay for my parking, entered the associated info, and took note of the number of the parking spot. I even looked to see and was pleased to see a “find my car” option for when I was done.

After a work dinner downtown in a city I’m unfamiliar with, I fired up Park and told it to lead me via Google Maps to the car. I knew it felt off when it told me that my ~5 minute walk TO the restaurant was now going to be a 17 minute walk BACK to my car. But I followed it, thinking perhaps I got myself distracted and hadn’t realized just how far I’d initially walked. After reaching the destination, I discovered I was nowhere close to my car. Through trial and error, I eventually found it — first by walking 17 minutes back to the restaurant, then by systematically eliminating other directions. Ended up completely lost for nearly 45 minutes before finally reaching my car and then driving an hour home.

Lesson learned: don’t trust that particular feature. Park gets two stars because it allowed me to pay for parking and I didn’t get a ticket.

I received a ticket when I had already paid for parking in NYC with Park. I have spent HOURS disputing it now. I sent in a statement including the receipt for parking. The judge said a screenshot was not a valid means of proof. I called 311 and was told that I could try appealing the decision. The appeals process seems to be lengthy and complicated. When you call and are waiting on hold they say that they are giving priority to people trying to start a parking session, and that you should contact them via email. When you then send an email to that address you immediately received a automated response saying that they no longer do support via email. Park is nothing but a scam. You would be better off not using it. You would still get a parking ticket, but at least you won’t waste money on the meter payment. Update: after weeks of disputing it seems things are finally settled.

But I have yet to receive a refund on the parking ticket. I’m told I need to fill out forms online, print them out, FAX them in, along with proof of original payment. The bureaucracy involved is insane.

Any city that allows them to be a vendor should be ashamed.

Park has historically been excellent. Recently though a ton of bugs have been introduced. It seems to have lost my account information; I can login with my phone and password and it has no history no payment methods and someone else’s vehicles. I tried to log out and log back in but when you log out it leaves “sign in with faceid” on, so you get stuck in a logoff-logon loop. Had to cover my faceid sensor to get out of it. Added credit card as only payment method but it tried to use PayPal instead on check out. When that failed, it lost all information and I had to start over at a map of the US. I did it again, the second time for same location it wouldn’t give me the max/all-day option, only duration. I selected the max 13 hours on the menu and when I hit save it set to 8 hours. Did it three more times and third time it kept 13 hours. Went to checkout and it was back to 8 hours. I hit “change” on the duration and it started me over at map of US. I eventually succeeded (I think) but total time elapsed fighting with Park was 14 minutes; incredibly buggy and disappointing given how great and smooth Park used to be.

I am going to have to delete the useless app because my bank card was stopped due to fraud, and I cannot enter my new number. No help available and not user friendly. Went into every conceivable help category and received no information that worked. It said I can change the card by tapping on the old one and reenter. Well that isn’t true. I spend 10 minutes trying to this app before I got down on the floor of my car doing the search for coins. Then I went to my communities parking to complain about their app and they won’t take complaints - I have to contact an uncontactable company. So this company has total control of parking in my community and they have no way of being held accountable for how miserably their app works. I sat down at home and have been working on this for 1/2 an hour already without resolution in changing my payment. This is a junk poorly supported app and I have no choice but to erase it. What a crock and what bs. I am going to write a letter to my council members to let them know that Park is not workable and the parking office doesn’t want to hear it. Communities need to hold these companies accountable when they have dedicated their technology to this monopoly. Idiocy and incompetence.

I use Park only once every month or two when I go to Walnut Creek or Oakland. It’s very convenient to use for parking instead of looking for change or pulling my card out and dealing with the parking meter. Park though is very frustrating in a few ways; 1) it never picks up the parking zone I’m actually at but seems to pick up every other zone around me. So I always have to punch in the zone. 2) After going a long period without using it, Park always ask me to setup my payment method even though I’ve done this numerous times with cards that haven’t expired since the last time, 3) more often than not I punch in my zone, then my space # and hit continue when it asks me to select a vehicle. There’s no list and no option to bring up my list of vehicles so I have to cancel and go to my vehicle list only to see all of my vehicles are there and my primary one is set to default. After checking I then return and it allows me to restart and finish the parking process. Like I said the system is very useful but the user interface needs work.

Park is horrible with remembering where you are. Any time you leave Park it will forget where you are and where you were in the payment process. Need to reset your password? Enjoy going to your email app and losing your progress. Do you use a password manager? Enjoy going to your password manager app and losing your password. The password you created is randomly generated and secure but doesn’t have a special character? Enjoy going back to your password manager and losing your progress. Apple Pay is unavailable with this so don’t take too long getting your credit card out because guess what happens when your phone locks you out after not interacting with it. Your phone randomly cleared it’s clipboard so the password you had copied is gone and you need to go to back to your password app? Guess what you get to do...

Every time Park forgets your progress, it takes 20-30 second to get back to where you were. Took me 10 minutes to just pay for my dumb parking. I wish like hell some other company would make a better app that cities/municipalities would use instead.

First I could not enter my license plate number because it kept saying default next to the last rental cars license plate number. After 25 minutes of trying to fix the problem I finally figured this out.
Next I went through all of the prompts and pushed the button to start my parking session , saw that the timer started , however after returning to my car I had a parking citation . When I went back into Park it did not start my session and it just magically vanished ! There is no way of proving that I paid for it , and upon returning to my vehicle found that I received a citation . I will never use Park again and I will make it a point to tell all of my friends to NOT use Park as it malfunctions and you end up getting a ticket anyway.
I called customer service and was told there is nothing that they can do about it!!!
Also you get charged additional fees to use Park !! So the developers get rich , take your money and all the while do fix the glitches . I’ve read many other reviews that say that similar scenarios have happened to them! Wish I would have read them first.

Don’t expect any help from their chat line. They serve no purpose, and they get paid for no work being done but wasting your time. I wanted to extend my current parking limit, but when I tried to use Park to do so, there was only a button to start another session; therefore, I naturally went with it and paid for a “session.” Immediately after submitting the payment, the previous/current one suddenly popped up with the new one I just paid for. It then did not extend my current one, but instead double booked the spot. Again, almost immediately after realizing what happened, I contacted them through the chat line. She stated that even though they are the “payment processor,” they could not refund my money, merge the two sessions, or extend the other. (Keep in mind that this was for the same vehicle that was not moving! Same spot, same vehicle!) They wasted 10-15 mins of my time to only tell me they couldn’t do anything. Why would they even have a chat line when they don’t do anything to help? They should just give a FAQs section instead, especially when they refuse to help.

Older versions allowed easy switch between cars. Also clearly identified which car you were paying for parking. You need to now go into settings and change your default car anytime you want to pay for a different car that is already in your list of vehicles. I have three cars and was confused as to which car I had set as the default since it did not tell me as I was setting the parking duration. Paid a $30 violation plus the fee to Park plus the $6 to the city for the other car that was home in my driveway. MAKE IT EASY TO switch between cars like before.

SETTINGS ARE NOT SOMETHING YOU SHOULD HAVE TO TINKER WITH WHEN YOU HAVE A CAR FULL OF KIDS AND YOU ARE TRYING TO PAY FOR PARKING.

UPDATE: Changed to five stars from one star. App owner made good on promise to make things right. Expeditiously handled the complaint to my satisfaction- above and beyond which is rare. Thank you.

There may be a lot of stupid and lazy people who still use this stupid app, but think of all people who don’t use it or have stopped using it. I still see plenty of people using stupid parking meters. My mother was all excited about paying for parking with your phone until she stopped using ParkMobile. I mean Park is great it saves me a trip to the parking meter to swipe my stupid credit card. Park even allows me to cheat the system by paying remotely when I saw parking enforcement ,but that got boring after a while. I eventually got a ticket since I selected the wrong plate number since I use multiple cars. What’s even more annoying is that I mistakenly still put in the wrong plate number and confirmed it. Then I had to pay twice😭. Just kidding! You just go through the time
Consuming task of disputing the transaction with the credit card company. It’s the same thing with the stupid sections and spots. Maybe this doesn’t happen with everyone ,but I’m dyslexic so sometimes I misread all the numbers or press the wrong button. Think of how much better it would be if there was an edit feature. Anyways here’s my review.

I have been using Park for at least 5 months now and use it very often so do my colleagues, friends, clients and guests. Everyone always mentions how convenient it is. It also runs very smoothly. Once in a while they will not find the meter I’m trying to charge but I think they’re in the process of integrating all parking meters to have this fab feature. I believe I was also sent a $5 Starbucks card upon signing up. I think that’s the only time I’ve ever received a gift card for another company as a thank you gift. I thought that was so classy. I was very impressed at both their generosity and thoughtfulness. I’m just in the process of understanding the benefits of being a premier member I hope this means I can pay in advance or schedule a payment. All star app. Much appreciated. I wish you guys all the best!

I downloaded because I had no other option to pay for parking in a lot in Seattle (zone 2606). I’ve parked in the same lot on weekday evening and on a Saturday. Once I enter the zone number, it automatically chooses the max time and there is no way to change it. The lot is clearly marked with rates for hourly parking. Giving Park the benefit of the doubt (e.g. maybe the lot actually only allows max time parking), i would expect Park to tell me that is the only option available, instead presenting me with a widget that is clearly intended to let me edit the parking time but will not respond when touched. Also be fore you pay you have an option that says “change” by the parking time, but touching it only takes you back to where you enter the zone and time is automatically set. Thanks for reading. Finally as a minor annoyance it presents Apply Pay as a payment method, but also a red message saying it is not accepted. Why?

Park is excellent! No more coins! Major hassle reducer. Yea!

In addition to the idea of a wireless parking meter and associated app, which is great, I find this one to be really well designed. There is an initial account setup, which is quick and easy. You put in ID details for yourself and your car, and select your desired payment method.

After that, everything happens in one screen. You select your parking “zone” number based on what is labeled on the meter, then you input the amount of time desired, or select “maximum time” and you are done! Park screen will continuously show you a countdown of your time remaining. even alert you when your time is close to expiring if you want!

In my town, they have one meter per two on-street spots. At first I was confused as to how the meter “knew” which car had what time remaining, but then I realized that’s why you input your car info. Makes perfect sense, and obviously saves the town money.

Bottom line, Park is really easy to use, the user interface is wonderfully clear and intuitive. Big time saver, big coin and hassle eliminator, overall a really nice experience. Love it!

So I been using Park for quite some and loved it but there tech support is the worst I ever experienced. What the problem with support is I was having a problem with payment for parking. Where I was parking was that the location wanted a minimum of $4 parking if using a credit card but there was no minimum if paid with cash. So I started a this app mobile wallet with a minimum of $25. However when I went to pay for the parking it was still charging me the $4 minimum as though it was a credit card with it was not. Wallet is cash deposited into my account. This is where it gets bad. I contact chat support and explain my situation, the person says the minimum was for credit card payment which I understood and informed them that I was using wallet which is like cash and was not using a credit card. After explaining that the minimum was for credit cards and not cast they responded with “That’s great is there anything else I can help you with?” Use to love Park but my feelings have drastically changed....

Make sure you watch out what you are paying for.

Make sure you know metered hours because the Parkmobile app will charge you regardless.

I downloaded Park so I could pay for my parking and not miss my train. Park works fine except for one very bothersome component: It does not tell you what time to what time you are obligated to pay for parking. Instead it allows you to pay for parking at all hours of the day and night. I paid for parking from 8:15am - 4:15pm. There are no signs inside of the parking lot telling you the metered hours. So I paid those 8 hours. However, while I was still away I wasn’t going to be able to make it back until after 5pm so I paid $0.35 from 4:15pm to 5:15pm. I then paid again until 6:15pm. Even though the metered hours are only from 9am-5pm Park lets you pay their transaction fee during these off hours when you don’t have to pay for parking!