Passport Parking

I’m parked with a sign right in front of me that says “2 hour parking. Parking required daily 9am-6pm excluding Sundays and holidays. Download mobile app: Passport parking. Zone 5621.” I open the app and put in zone 5621. I go outside and check my space number, which has a big 1 clearly painted on the street. The car in front of me is space 3. I look back at the app and the lowest numbered space I can select is space 54. I enter 1 and the app says “space not available, check sign.” So I look at more of the spaces in front of me. They are numbered 7, 9, 11, etc., except the sign says “Zone 5620.” So I enter zone 5620 and it allows me to buy 22 minutes. I try to purchase more time and it says “not allowed.” So I use the kiosk, which allows me to buy something like 15 minutes. I tried to buy more, but it wouldn’t let me and wouldn’t say why. Meanwhile, I have no idea if I’m purchasing time for the right space or not and I’ve gone from 5 minutes early for my appointment to 15 minutes late. This is a great idea but it’s VERY poorly executed. There’s no information about why you can or can’t use a space. It just says “check signage” and the signs often seem to be wrong or misleading. I’m just going to avoid any area that uses this parking system I guess.

A Parking App is great for obvious conveniences But… I quickly downloaded this one to use for what’ll be a regular quick stop for me, but never a long one, so I’m unlikely to use it again…unless I’m quarterless, and here’s why… - I only needed 15 minutes & 20 mins cost 25cents so I hit “select 20mins” & submit. Then juuusst as it was accepting the payment & closing the screen(too late to stop) I caught a quick glimpse of the 40cent transaction fee added along w/the 25cents for my 20 minutes! Boom…65cents for 20 minutes, lol. I saw no clearly visible mention of a 40c fee per transaction in the App’s description on the AppStore(I looked for any mention of prices), or I would’ve just popped in a quarter, lol - I have another App for Center City Philly, it has no trans fee so I wasn’t expecting one here - I wonder if it hits you for another 40cents if you add $ to the meter, or is it just a one-timer(?). If it’s the former you’re better off using up your quarters, if the latter then you’ll want to stay awhile to get your money’s worth!

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 the app 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. The app 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. The app 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: This app 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.