Vancouver Parking Pay by Phone
posted at 2:02 pm
on May. 22, 2007
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I went downtown last week and discovered a really nice new feature of Vancouver’s parking meters: you can pay with your cell phone!
I looked up the service provider, and I guess by “new” I mean, since June 2006, when Verrus introduced it at 7,800 meters . But it was still new to me, and very helpful.
Basically, you call a main number, and punch in the number of the meter you’re parked at. If you’ve never used it before, you also enter a credit card number and your license plate—it’s annoying the first time, but smooth afterwards.
The reason I used it was the the meter was full of coins and wouldn’t accept any more, and when I called to tell them I lost a quarter in the meter, the nice lady offered to credit me $0.25 towards the pay-by-phone. Nice, eh?
So, here’s a bit of a trick to get longer at a meter: pay with coins, but take note of the meter number. When the meter’s about to expire, call up and you can get additional time—up to the limit of that particular spot, often 1 or 2 hours. The fee for using pay-by-phone is $0.35 I think, which is totally worth it for being able to park twice as long in the same place without having to head back to your car.
The charge appears on your credit card, not your phone bill. Because, as we know, Rogers Wireless is the devil and can’t technologize its way out of a toaster.
