PayByPhone Parking 4+

Simple enough, but needs work

Firstly if you use this app as a one off for the odd visit into a city centre then you’ll be fine. It’s fairly simple to set up enter your car details, setup payment and you’re up and running.

The app features a nice map function that allows you to find the parking you’re looking for or alternatively it uses geo-location to pick the nearest one.

The two issues I have with this is a; you cannot top up once you purchase a maximum ticket, meaning you arrive at 8:30 on day one and pay you cannot top it up until 8:31 the following day, which means the sometimes your sat in your car waiting for the current one to expire before you can purchase another... Wait, you’re probably thinking just wait until it expires and it will send a notification through ... well that leads me into my second issue - I have all my notifications turned on, on my phone and both text and push notifications on the app and they simply do not work. If I get into the office and get caught up in the day to day, there is no reminder for me to do this and by the time I remember I’ve already received the inevitable parking ticket.

Probably not worth it yet if you’re using this on a daily basis.

Urgently needs issues to be fixed

The UI is OK but the UX is terrible, and there are two issues which must be known about and should be fixed - quickly!

Firstly when I park a car and go through the process of paying, after clicking the pay button the screen is dimmed and a circulating icon appears with the word “processing…”. This never clears, but the charge does go through and I get a confirmation email. So why does the app not clear the screen? This is obviously a bug which the devs must know about, and it is pathetic that it has not been addressed.

Secondly I get a message saying that my email address needs to be verified, but if I try and do this it takes longer for the email to arrive than the time-out on the verification process allows. So every time I try and verify I get told it is too late and I need to start again. So given how long their system takes to send the email, why don’t they lengthen the timeout on the verification? This is again pathetic- doesn’t anyone think about the customer experience and test it?

Developer Response ,

Hi Nick,
Thank you for this important feedback. Please accept our apologies for any frustrating experiences that you have had using the PayByPhone system. We are currently reviewing both points and hope to have a solution soon.
Please stay tuned for updates!

PBP, Jill

Disappointing

App used to be perfectly reliable, however in recent months now routinely freezes on the processing payment screen leaving the user in doubt as to whether or not payment has been taken and/or vehicle is parked in accordance with car park regulations. On each occasion connectivity has not been an issue and eventually you just have to give up and close the app. Each time I have taken a screenshot as evidence that I have attempted payment and eventually an email is received confirming the transaction. Not a great experience. PS Have just noticed that this issue was acknowledged by “Jill” in early July and clearly still not fixed in the most recent update. Come on guys!

I think the fact that it had taken the developer 17 days to respond to my comments pretty much sums this app up. It should not be beyond the wit of man to reinstate a feature that used to work before “improvements” were made.

Developer Response ,

Hello Duke Pops.
I’m sorry to report that the solution we implemented didn’t work as expected. Apologies for the frustration this may cause. We're still working on the issue, but for now, a quick workaround is to restart the app to see if the countdown clock appears. If the visual confirmation is still missing, here are a few other suggestions: https://bit.ly/3QGBOmE.

PBP, Jill