Park & Pay by Text at the station - No wheelclamps!
Earlier today I wrote about using the SMS payment mechanism for a parking ticket at my local station. I took a huge risk. I parked the NEW car there at the end of the station car park without any physical ticket.
The picture to the left shows the sign in the car park which promotes the service and gives the car park ID too.
As I got out the car I bumped into an old neighbour who had just parked his car. He and his wife were off up to see a matinee theatre performance in the city. He had done what everyone else does though — dropped his wife off at the station and waited… She then ran in and a) bought the train tickets and b) bought the parking ticket for the car park, came out and handed it to him.
He looked at me strangely when I explained I could ‘pay by text’.
I said it with some conviction and, since he knows I’m a bit of a mobile geek, he accepted that. Me, however… I’m having visions of some parking warden walking up to my car and deciding that since it doesn’t have a paper ticket, it should get a flipping huge fine.
I came out in a bit of a sweat standing on the platform. I could see the car in the distance and silently cursed my ‘oh come on, it’ll be a bit of research’ policy when it comes to mobile. What if some arse puts a wheel clamp on the car?
The train arrived. I was determined to do the whole SMS payment on the train and to leave it as long as possible before doing so. I didn’t want to stand next to my car typing out the transaction: that defeats the purpose, you see.
So I waited until the train was moving and quickly gave in. Got out the little instruction flyer.
There are two options:
1. Call them
2. Do it all by text
I didn’t want to phone them. I didn’t want to fumble about with someone on the other line trying to take my credit card details.
So I sat there and knocked out the text message. Took about 50 seconds. Then I sent it…….
Oh dear………
MINUTES passed. Now I am really sweating. I mean, seriously. What an idiot, I thought, poncing about living the mobile dream. I was definitely in the running for a £75 fine.
"F*CK, F*CK, F*CK!" sounded Hugh Grant (from Four Weddings & A Funderal). That’s my current text message announcement and alas I’d forgotten to switch the phone to silent when I boarded. Cue a lot of angry looks from fellow commuters.
One guy smiled though.
I had the biggest grin though. Pure relief. It took maybe 2-3 minutes for the confirmation text message to arrive.
Here’s what the first message looked like:
Cool! It didn’t say anything about confirming my order though so I continued to fret some more……
Then this one arrived:
Excellent! I finally relaxed.
Make no mistake, it was a quick transaction (2-3 mins tops) it was just me pouring with worry. I could actually take the car down to the station tomorrow morning because I’ve bought a 24 hour ticket 😉 — it’s valid until 1038am!
I returned to my car in the afternoon and found it without any fines sticking to the window or any wheelclamps in sight.
All in all, a superb service from verrus.com. I’ll be using that again!
