So I’ve already got a parking ticket – and paid it – which reminds me exactly how fast-moving America is. I’ll have kids and a wife by the end of next week, and maybe my descendents will come to Foo Camp next year, telling tales of their great-great-gayfather and his weird ideas about annotatable media. I have to say, I’m very impressed by the way I managed to pay the whole thing online in about five minutes. I’d say it represented a cultural difference where the British favour forcing rule-breakers to suffer inconvenience where Americans thought the money was punishment enough, except I have no idea whether or not you can pay parking tickets online in the UK. Also, I got charged a $2.75 ‘Convenience Charge’. No idea what that’s about. Here is a picture of my parking ticket receipt. Don’t say I don’t give you any sexy personal content…
9 replies on “A parking ticket comes and goes…”
Convenience Fee is the fee to pay Visa or the online processing place for their time. The City gets their full 40 bucks. Basically it is like a tax for using the credit card network.
Then again in the UK you actually have a decent public transportation system and national health care coverage.
Hahaa. Parking tickets suck. I once got a ticket for 600 dollars going 60 in a 35…damn police. haha. later.
wannabeleader
Paid a parking ticket… for a rental car? Abroad? Oh, my.
Rather than force you to suffer an inconvenience, they decided to convenience you. Just like you said – cultural differences. 😉
You can definately pay them online in Islington and it’s pretty easy.
You have enough sexy content, Mr Coates, to get you onto an blacklist used by Vodafone. Without an adult age certification Plastic Bag is unacceptable content for my laptop. Mind you, so is GAIM.
By the way, I paid my parking fine and clamping fee over the phone the other day, by Switch, in a few minutes. Afterwards, it took just over two hours to get unclamped. We were chasing traffic wardens down the road and getting them to radio base before anything happened. This was Lambeth, south London.
paying parking tickets this way is becoming more common in the UK. i don’t have a car, or drive. but apparently it is.
I don’t know how it is in the U.K., but here parking fines and moving violations are more about raising money for the city than anything. It doesn’t make any commercial sense to make it harder for you to pay, nor to put a large expensive bureaucratic structure in place to handle it.
Many small cities in the States are well known for reducing speeds just on the main through roads, or putting extra enforcement there, to catch out of towners. Sort of an extra tax for traversing their breadth.
The only ticket I’ve ever gotten was one of those small town wonders in the middle of West Texas. They were hyper efficient and handled the whole thing online.
America… fast moving? Look a little more closely.
I’ve just come back from a year working in the east bay, and their DMV assures me they are still working on printing my drivers license.
Getting a social security number took a mere 6 months.
Mind you, I gave them $30 for that.
Enjoy the rest of your time in California!