Imagine working in a place where there was literally nowhere you could park your car all day.

You’d have to constantly move you car in order to avoid getting a parking ticket at short term parking spots.

That’s what the worker in today’s story had to deal with, but she wasn’t concerned when she got a parking ticket.

What she was really annoyed by were the late fees on the parking tickets.

See how she found a way to avoid the late fees.

Parking Payment Compliance

This was quite a few years ago.

I worked downtown where there wasn’t any long-term parking within two blocks of my building.

There were two-hour meters I would use for short stops at the office maybe three or four times a week.

Inevitably once a month or so, I would get a ticket because something came up at the office and I couldn’t get back to my car in-time.

The tickets needed to be paid right away.

The tickets are only $15, but you only have a week to pay and then they would be $45.

At the time, there was no option for online or web payment, so a check had to be mailed in.

Most of the time I would get it paid in time, but I hated it when the fee would triple.

I basically just considered this the cost of doing business downtown.

She thought she came up with a solution to the problem.

I was also very frustrated that there was such short timeframe for payment and response on my part, but most interactions from the city took months for the city to respond/resolve (my job involved working with the city regularly).

I had previously asked if I could just set up an account and keep a running balance, but they said no.

After about 5 years of this, I decided to set up an auto bill pay with my two vehicle license plates in the memo line and it would send every two weeks to ensure that if I accidentally got two in a month, I was covered.

Never again would I have to pay the $45.

The parking department didn’t like the checks.

I guess this caused quite the headache for the parking department.

After about four months of automatic bill payments, and them sending me back the checks that did not have any ticket to apply, I got a phone call requesting that I stop as it required a lot of research on their part and a commissioner had to sign for each check they had to send back.

I asked again if I could have an ongoing ‘account’ to avoid the accidental $45 fee, and they said I could not.

So I continued sending them automatic payments for about three years after that until I changed jobs.

That does sound like a headache for the parking department, but it also sounds like there needs to be a better parking solution in this city.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

The system is intentional.

If everyone did what she did, maybe they would change the rules.

If the parking ticket is cheaper than the parking garage, why not?

It is ironic.

This reader is confused and has some good questions.

The parking ticket system is completely rigged against us.

Everyone knows it.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.