Slashdot Mirror
Use Your iPhone To Get Out of a Ticket
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Parkingticket.com just announced new compatibility with the Safari web browser on Apple's iPhone, giving you new tools to immediately contest a parking ticket. The site is so confident in their service that if all steps are followed and the ticket is still not dismissed they will pay $10 towards your ticket. "The process begins by navigating the iPhone's Safari browser to the Parkingticket.com website where you'll find a straightforward means to fight a parking ticket; whether the ticket was issued in New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia or Washington, D.C. Simply register for a free account and choose the city in which the ticket was issued. Enter your ticket and vehicle details then answer a few quick questions. The detailed process takes about ten minutes, from A-Z. To allow easy entry of your ticket, a look-a-like parking ticket is displayed — for your specific city — with interactive functionality."
So, in effect, they're profiting off the crimes of others?
Doesn't look like anything special.. just an automated ambulance-chasing service. They get 50% of the price of the ticket by filing some forms to contest it. There must be a low conviction rate for parking tickets (or people who fight them), and they're just taking advantage of that fact. To top it all off, they get all of your personal information, including the make, model, and plate numbers of your vehicle. I'm not sure whether an attorney-client relationship would exist in this scenario, but even if it did, they could probably resell anonymized information.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Wouldn't it be easier to just obey parking laws?
I think the iPhone just became a positive ROI for many people in these areas.
Or any other phone that has a half-decent web browser. All this thing does is launch Safari to take you to their website. The only reason the press release mentions the iPhone is because that's a virtual guarantee that it will be spread all over creation via the news wires and sites that don't actually read the articles beyond a few keywords such as, say, Slashdot.
Under cursory review of the above terms, it still sounds like an excellent hedge when one gets a ticket. Sure, it's not a great deal if you're experienced with combating tickets, but for someone who otherwise would have just paid the ticket or thrown their arms up in the air when trying to figure out the dispute process, it sounds like a bargain.