Secure Parking

Secure Parking could not have gone so cheap and opted out of UX testing, knowing that they’d create an app that would make a mass murderer out of Ghandi. The only possible explanation is that this is deliberate. How else could you explain the layers of design defects but as an attempt to thwart customers attempts to buy parking without losing their minds. It’s a genius idea to have separate payment methods on the web and app version one customer account. Then, while trying to update payment methods, repeatedly generate an error message about “tokenising” (whatever that is) and then, if the customer succeeds, then time out the booking and make them start again. My favourite is how the booking PIN / QR is only generated by email if you use the web version. So, when you’re in the underground carpark there’s no way to retrieve those details without re-parking your car and resurfacing to receive exit details. By then, you’ve outstayed your booking and have to pay more, if only you could add a payment method. Genius!

It looks nice, but doesn’t save credit card details so every time you’ve gotta save them again. Can’t change dates of bookings easily - when I did ended up the next day not being able to get in to the car park, had to pay for a ticket, then a comedy of errors, where it almost charged me $499 because of their error. Thankfully I didn’t just tap my card to get out!! The week before a different issue resulting in phone calls, refunds and a line of cars behind me as they tried to sort it all out. It’s frustrating but with the cheapest parking in Adelaide I suppose you can’t expect too much. (Then again, the developers should have tested so many things before releasing this in to the wild). Responsiveness of the website to devices has so many clunky issues if you’ve gotta switch between the app and website to try and get your bookings sorted. Usually love Secure park (before the upgrades) and now also have to mention my disdain for any business that bans cash as an option at all in the facilities. Not on at all.

Not sure who was paid to develop this app but it’s the worst user experience I think I’ve ever had. You can’t set hours for your parking to apply to multiple dates - you have to reset it every time you check for availability on a date. You can’t select the options and see on the calendar which dates have vacancies. You can’t select multiple dates at a time. When you do find a vacancy with all your booking data entered and you select “add to cart”, it says “register to add to cart”….when you’re logged in already. If you do manage to get a booking, you enter your pin and park for the day, only for it not to work when you try to leave. Customer service staff then say, “We have no record of you coming into the facility.” Um…..how do you think I got in then? Everyone has been forced into an online booking platform that quite clearly wasn’t tested prior to launch and reflects a complete lack of understanding of how people use it.