Passport Parking Reviews

My last bank statement showed two charges from Passport for $74 and $86 dollars respectively. I have exchanged email with Passport over nearly two weeks and with two different customer service (I use that term guardedly) representatives. Neither can tell me anything about the charges other than that they are “probably” parking tickets, but that they cannot “locate the source of the charges in their system.” So, they’ve collected $160 dollars, cannot explain why or for whom they did so, and they have now simply said it isn’t their problem. I’ve had no tickets placed on the car I use Passport in conjunction with, I received no notice from any town that they ticketed the car, so the money has apparently vanished into the Passport bank account. Anyone thinking of using PassportParking ought to ask him or herself what stops Passport from randomly and without any cause adding charges to accounts given this approach. And, if charges ever did result from a ticket, how a user would know they have been paid, when Passport cannot trace money they have collected, but about which they have no further information.

Update: The developer reached out here and Customer Service (CS) also responded to my query. CS was very friendly, but the email process is slow and did not give a quick result. This is a new day and PassportParking seems to have reset, which may be thanks to efforts by CS - I can’t tell. I appreciate the sincere efforts to help.

Please correct the in-app warning: resetting the PIN deletes the credit card but NOT the entire profile. PassportParking forced me to reset my PIN and trying to avoid losing all of my information when I knew my PIN was entered correctly started this entire situation. In the end I kept my same PIN; I think this was just a way to obtain a new agreement to the terms and conditions.

Please also create a faster support method, to enable users to avoid parking tickets due to app malfunction.

PassportParking is great when it works and usually works flawlessly. Rating updated to 4 stars to reflect this plus the friendly CS; one star off for this experience, the slow support process and the parking ticket consequences that may result.

Original Review:

PassportParking has been a great convenience but today it suddenly required recertification and then refused to accept my PIN. I can’t reach my car so I will probably get a ticket. No response from Customer Service. This must be an update issue and hope it will be fixed ASAP.

I hate PassportParking with a passion and can’t wait for a competitor with better quality control and UX design team to replace it. It gets broke when there are upgrades. It errors out with meaningless errors. And whomever is responsible for end user use cases and process flows seems can’t seem to understand is that if PassportParking fails while you’re on your way to work … what are you supposed to do? Wait for the next train that comes after you call their useless support team to trouble shoot? Stand in a public place constantly re-entering payment information? Or take a $25 hit from a parking ticket because they can’t get it together and just don’t care?? (And, because by the time you’ve finished fighting PassportParking you’re either already on the train or don’t have time to go back to complete the manual pay process.) How many days can you tolerate that before you abandon the train stop you’re at in favor of any other option? When PassportParking fails, Passport Parking should reimburse for the parking ticket. Period.

The rate was shown, as usual, every time I use PassportParking for the same meters and the same time zone. I hit the complete payment option and the amount jumped by 50% percent. I reached out to support multiple times, sent screen shots and confirmation as per their request. The last response I received was a query on how often this has happened. Since then, there has been no follow up. The latest update has been terrible in general. Aside from the random price jump, there is an up-charge for using an all day zone: if you park for 3 hours and come back 6 hours later to park in the same zone, there’s no reset, no lag time, if you have to pay extra to park in that zone again. I recommend carrying change and avoid using PassportParking.

———————-UPDATE———————
There has been a request for me to update my review since I wrote the above and to email them for support. Went through that process again, with no actual support. Just a runaround and told to call 311 because they can’t help me at this time.

First off, this is a big improvement over having to run out to the meter and deposit coins every time the meter times out...but this depends on your phone having a good signal, of course. This becomes a big issue when you have to park a long distance away from where you work and the meters time out every two hours. While it’s true that PassportParking won’t allow you to add time the way you can when you deposit coins, it is easy to start a new session. The only drawback is that you will lose any time remaining on your current session if you start a new one before the old one expires; however, I suspect that is prefferable to paying a large fine if you try to wait and mis-time it. I really do hope that PassportParking is expanded to include adding time to a session. With that one change I would give it a rating of five.

I was in a Richmond VA parking lot yesterday and on every poll had a sign for PassportParking so I figured if here it must be part of the lot. It was a pay yourself at kiosk lot. I downloaded PassportParking and setup account. It didn’t give me a lot of options and I was told to pick a zone which only gave me a single option for a zone and I was told to give the parking spot number. I finalized and at that time i was told the zone I was in was for Nebraska. So I am in VA parking in a zone in NE. I then clocked a button with a head shearing a headset assuming g that would take me to customer service and to my surprise it took me to the page showing me what I paid. I clicked through the menu and with the exception of the faq everything took me to the total paid page. In FAQ section they have listed in response to someone’s question about cancelling and they respond with letting the time run out. This is lovely. They give no option to fix or stop this. How are they allowed to have an app like this that steals money. I’m disputing today with my CC

• Change the session expiration sound to a more typical smartphone alert sound. We get it, it’s a parking app and the alert sounds like a car horn. It’s annoying. Even better, give us the ability to customize the alert sound to any of those available on our phones.
• When the session expiration alert goes off (10-minutes before expiration) have both a Dismiss and a Snooze button. Sometimes we’re too busy when the first alert goes off to add time. It would be great to have a reminder occur at actual expiration, as well.
• When PassportParking knows that a parking area has a maximum time limit and that I’ve reached it, why still show me “Extend” button during my session – and at the end? It’s misleading. I think I can add more time but I can’t. Change that message “Max time reached” or something.

In this day and age, if an app cannot use my Apple wallet or Apple Pay or charge me through iTunes, I argue that PassportParking is extremely dated. After all, I can go to almost any store or restaurant and pay using Apple Pay, all my apps that don’t charge through iTunes charge through Apple Pay, in short, you can use the Apple Pay platform most places. Thus, when an app doesn’t access my wallet or use Apple Pay, it appears dated and stuck in the past. Much of the convenience of PassportParking (install and quickly pay) is negated by this over sight. This is one such app. Considering I ran out the door without my credit card and needed to catch a train, it was far less than convenient and, in my opinion, an app whose purpose (convenience to the consumer in order to increase compliance) is negated.

A brutal digital experience. A few suggestions for the devs: (1) When a session is about to expire, give me the number of my last parking space and ask if I would like to extend my time in the current space instead of asking me to start over and remember the space number. (2) If I want to pay for someone’s parking after I have have paid for my own spot, don’t give me an alert that says “Invalid Number” when it’s not an invalid number, just tell me I can’t open a new session once I’ve started my first session, or let people open more than one session since you provide the option to do so. (3) Allow the users device to use geo location instead of force them to walk down the block searching for a sign that may or may not contain the arbitrary zone number assigned to the area the parking spot is located, you’ll likely have way fewer customer complaints and more completed sessions.

PassportParking is designed to scam customers for the first time use, at least. Why would it default to a 8 hours Max to scam $25? Why can't it leave it as 0 hour and force users to select the hours? What is the purpose of having the "Max 8 hours" button twice as big compare to "Stay" button? And why "Stay"? Can it be like "Select Hours"? If it is not intended to scam and what is the purpose? I parked 1 hour and had to pay 8 hours. Even I called the service right at the parking spot and no refund and no justice served. The guy said that how PassportParking worked. You booked you're death. I thought max is 8 hours so you start your time and end your time and pay the duration when your done, just like you regularly park anywhere. I'm an app developer guy and got trapped, think about old folks with no tech skills. Change your app with my free consultation. May others forgive your sin???!!! It is not the $25, it is the feeling of being scammed.

PassportParking is a great idea,the developers need to work out the bugs tho.i payed with the meter then downloaded PassportParking ,entered my card information then charged me twice.i wanted to give it another chance the following week and I wanted to pay for the spot for 4 hours, it only let me pay for 3 then I picked a new session to add hours and it charged me the max time,so I had two different sessions going on at the same time!! I wrote numerous text to the contact/help center and no response! So I had to cancel charges with my credit card company. The developer of PassportParking needs to prevent getting double charges for the same parking spot...

What PassportParking does for you is not much! You will find in the fine print of the Terms & Conditions a statement that says it does not reserve you a parking spot. No where else does it say that. It doesn’t find you parking! You have to know where the parking zones are. So what you get is a way to pay and a notice if your time is running out. Both can be easily done without PassportParking. Your phone has an alarm that you can set to notify you your time is running out. And there is a parking kiosk that you can pay at without having to put money in a meter!
The developer should make it clear that you are not guaranteed a parking spot until you get there and find it yourself!! There should be a FAQ for this as well. I’m sure I was not the first person who wanted an answer to this question.
They should make it clear that if you need a refund, you can’t get it through PassportParking !!!!!
PassportParking is a waste of time and effort!!

PassportParking works for me, mostly does what it says it will do, and is certainly easier than carrying around a lot of quarters.

It does come with one annoying bug that the company is refusing to acknowledge: no matter how quickly you enter the information, you will never get the full amount of time on the timer. I understand their rationale for knocking off a few seconds (you pay from the time you start deciding how long to stay), although I don’t like it, but frequently, including twice in the last two days, I have been given a full minute less time than I paid for. Either that, or the timer has been incorrect. One way or another, there is a bug that I have been unable to convince the company exists.

I use PassportParking for the Pasadena, ca area. It seems like it’s a faster way, until you are cited for not having a receipt displayed on the dash. I contacted Passport Parking twice and they said I had to contact the issuing agency that cited me and there was nothing else they can do. Shouldn’t Passport and the city have a way of communicating with each other to take care of the problem immediately. If I call Passport they look it up and tell the city to dismiss it for us. Their moto is stress free parking. I don’t think so, when you know you can be cited. I had to file a protest with the city to review. After two weeks the $55 cited was dismissed. I will not take the chance again using Passport Parking and waste my time fight another cite. Just walk to the parking box get a receipt and be guaranteed no cite!

I love the Passport app, but much prefer the older interface, because using it for stays of more than a few hours (either when establishing a session or reviewing when the session expires) is not a simple matter. The new interface seems better suiting for parking in a city for a few hours than parking in a train station parking lot for several days or a week.

I would prefer to select the number of days, not push a ruler until I get at a cost that corresponds to an estimated number of days.

Is there an option to make the interface “less intuitive”?

I got PassportParking two months ago. Used it for a two dollar parking and then never used it again. Two weeks later I found two separate charges of 27.7$/each on my Bank of America account(this is the one that I linked to PassportParking ) under the Passport Parking app name. I disputed each of them and got my money back. Afterwards I changed the primary account to a Citi Bank card. Today I went over the statement and I found yet another two charges of the same amount + a third one of 67$ finalized on 4th of June. I mention that I never used PassportParking again since the initial issues. Now, I suggest developers to look into this as soon as possible and EVERYONE that already uses it to check their bank statements from the time they first got PassportParking . The charges that show up on the bank statements aren’t listed in PassportParking under the “Parker History”

It’s been months and months of bad reviews telling you that PassportParking just freezes on opening and requires being deleted and reinstalled to work every single time! You’ve done nothing to fix it! It’s less work to pay at the machine! It’s really inexcusable that it’s still doing this. I had an iPhone 6S and just got a brand new iPhone X and it’s the same thing on both. My brother is an app developer working for a large national company and he would lose his job if he ever put out such a shabby product without a fix for many months.

Update: THEY STILL HAVEN’T GOTTEN OFF THEIR LAZY BUTTS TO FIX PassportParking . CONTACT YOUR CITY AND ASK THEM TO FIND SOMEONE ELSE TO HANDLE THEIR METERS. OTHER COMPANIES DO A BETTER JOB.

Update: No change at all despite knowing of the issues for over a year. I still have to delete and reinstall PassportParking every time I use it unless I’ve used it very recently.

PassportParking won’t use saved credit cards for payment. When I try to reserve a spot, the only option for paying is to set up a new payment method, and it will not allow you to input your card details if your payment method is already saved. It seems the only way to pay is to delete your credit card from your account, and then manually input the credit card number every time you want to reserve a spot. I was in a rush recently and didn’t have time to manually input my credit card info, and I ended up getting a parking ticket because of this bug.

Also, I would much prefer if PassportParking had the option to use PayPal and/or Apple Pay rather than having to give out my credit card information directly.

I have a brand new iPhone 8 and PassportParking has not been able to load once within the last month. I have tried all possibly fixes on my end (restarting my phone, making sure PassportParking is up to date) and it still just won’t load.I will always use change if necessary from the constant spotty issues it has. When forced to park in an app only parking spot I basically have to park knowing I’ll accrue a fine. I’ve waited around to mention it to a meter maid and they seem to just say “yea lots of people are having problems with it.” But if you’re not there to tell them your problem you’ll just receive a ticket. If I’m being forced to use this stupid app please at least fix it to make sure it’s doing it’s only job because currently it doesn’t.

Passport parking has been so convenient for 3 reasons. First one: when I’m running late, I can just park and pay as soon as I sit down in class or for work. Second: it’s been snowing in Denver and it’s nice that I don’t have to stand outside waiting at the pay station, especially if there is a line! Third: it’s safer for me. I get to school and work when it’s still dark out (6:30/7am) and nobody is around. I like that I don’t have to scramble for cash or for my card in the dark, alone.

I do pay $0.30 more for using PassportParking , but you really cannot put a price on convenience, warmth and safety! 😁

PassportParking is very handy for those who live/work in a city; especially one that has a strict parking policy. Being able to replenish your parking time from your mobile device changes the game, and gives you more control. Weather you are stuck at work, or on a date, or just want to sleep in an extra hour ( if that’s even possible for us busy folk) then PassportParking is right for you. There is a small convenience fee for each transaction, however, this a small price to pay for the alternative of getting soaked in the rain.
Happy parking.