I’m training a new Clarence Darrow for my legal ethics seminar employing many of Darrow’s Greatest Hits, and met him at his apartment in Arlington, VA. There is usually street parking which now is a absurdly 1) expensive and 2) automated, but as we all should know by now, the Unabomber was right, and we are slaves to gratuitous technology.
I had to park in an open space, then, instead of easily depositing a fre coins in a meter, had to walk half-a-block to the nearest parking station (and half a block away from my destination). Then I pushed a start button, plugged in my credit card, and pushed the maximum time allowed, 2 hours. I was informed that my “payment was complete” ($9.85!) and was to take the ticket the station would print and walk back to my car, get back in it, put the ticket on the dashboard visible through the window, and voila! A longer, more complicated, more expensive parking process, made so by the wonders of technology!
But no ticket came out. It churned, and it churned, then a red message flashed saying “Out of Order! Please go to another station.”
Oh no you don’t! The machine said my payment had already been accepted. I was not going to meekly allow this stupid system to make me pay TWO exorbitant fees for parking once. Nor was I going to abandon the space, which is what I saw another driver do when confronted with the same malfunctioning station.
Assuming that getting a sledge hammer and destroying the parking stations is out of the question, what ethical solution to the problem would you employ?
I’ll tell you what I did in the comments eventually. (Hint: It worked!)
Ethics Alarms 
would you believe The Twin Cities has a better system.
you park, pay at the station, and they text you the receipt
I think you can also use an app
I am not entirely sure how enforcement works, but I figure it is similar to when they had individual meters.
for your case, I would take a photo of your car, which has metal data in it
and just track the bank info in case you ever get a ticket
and you could leave a note in your window, in case someone comes by.
-Jut
I would do a picture and a note in the windshield.
Ticket dispenser are antiquated. Recently, in Halifax, NS everything was via an app and by plate number.
This story seems oddly familiar, you might have spilled the result in an earlier post.
Overall, if a technology failure causes a customer inconvenience, that should invalidate enforcement of the rules. If the owner gets a higher margin of double-billed sales than he loses due to consumer chargebacks, there’s a negative incentive to solve the problem.
i would park there, use proof of payment on my account if they get nasty, AND request a chargeback from my card provider because the machine failed the contract terms.
“This story seems oddly familiar, you might have spilled the result in an earlier post.”
Not the first time he’s tangled with technology and parking, but it was a different situation last time. Previously, he was stuck when a garage required the use of a cell phone to get a text after forgetting his phone.
Did not the designers even think of what would happen if the driver did not have a cell phone?
Same as the people who do the digital coupons for the grocery stores: they cannot conceive of anyone having something as pedestrian,, low-tech, as a flip phone. No smart-phone, no discount for you.
Note: in the previous parking mess, I did not forget my phone. I just saw no need to take it with me. I was going somewhere familiar, I was teaching a course, I would be coming right home, and because my wife is dead now, there is no reason for me to call anyone. Naturally, no one told me that the garage had fired its attendant and gone to a dystopian cell-phone system since the last time I had been thee.
This is what happens when I get too cocky about my good memory.
I like this approach. Especially the idea that a machine failure negates enforcement. Otherwise there is zero incentive to keep these machines working.
To answer the quiz, I would take a photo of the machine showing the error message and simply get on with life. You paid for the service, you are entitled to the service. You can PROVE, via your credit card bill, that you did indeed pay for the service. You did everything expected of you and it was the VENDOR who failed to carry out its end of the deal, not you.
And yes, I’d periodically check for extra charges, just in case.
–Dwayne
I haven’t read the comments yet but it would seem that the actual parking ticket is unnecessary because your car is registered in the machine. A meter reader person simply runs the plates and sees that the time is still running.
jvb
No, because the system doesn’t request the license plate number. I know some systems do. I paid, but there was no way to prove I paid before I got a ticket. Nor was there any way to tell whether my credit cared was actually charged for the parking: I’m going to check today on my card.
An incompetent system then. They are forcing you to use a halfway automated system because they didn’t want to take the next step to complete the loop.
Don’t tell me that meter maids would rather just scan your plate and have the parking system issue you an electronic ticket. Like the systems that are used for toll highways, I think.
There is a big brother incentive to that system of scanning plates too.
Did you park and when time expired, moved less than X blocks away? Ticket. (That’s a common parking rule, you can’t just move spaces to stay longer than the allotted time.)
Plate flagged by the police with a BOLO? Email dispatched to police dispatch.
Plates expired? Ticket and police notified.
And the really big brother part: The police can track your whereabouts as the plate readers scan all plates, not just the parked ones.