Welcome to the city’s new parking meter system

We reported a few weeks ago that the city council directed the city manager to work with its parking meter company to extend the grace period to pay for parking to 15 minutes instead of five after you first pull into a parking space.
Well, the key phrase in the council resolution turned out to be “… to work with contractors to extend the grace period…”
City Manager Kathy Angerer said the company agreed to extend the grace period for city parking lots, but not for street parking, which remains at five minutes from the moment you park to the moment you feed the parking meter.
While the extended grace period at city parking lots is nice, it doesn’t quite match up to the main intent of the council’s resolution, which stressed that “business owners have complained about not having enough time to even unload their own vehicles …”
The new meter system has come under increasing criticism from residents who say there have been a number of difficulties with it. The frustration even has some folks saying the city should get rid of the meters.
Eliminating the meters would likely come at a hefty price, since the city did sign a contract with the company.
In the meantime, here’s a bug in the meter system that we experienced first-hand. An office mate here at The Review prepaid $40 to park so it would be easy to park and go about her business without fumbling for cash or a credit card.
Well, even though our office buddy parked for less than two hours in the Yemans St. lot on Sunday, she was charged for two hours.
Problem is, parking is supposed to be free on Sundays, even though the current parking signs incorrectly say parking is enforced seven days a week.
Those signs were supposed to be replaced months ago to reflect the correct enforcement days, which are Monday through Saturday. So far, there is no “sign” of new signs being installed.
One has to wonder how many unsuspecting people have been paying to park on Sundays.
Anyway, while the Sunday charge was only $2 for our Review pal, it’s the principle that counts.
Why is the company charging on Sundays?
We were told by the city to lodge an inquiry with the company, but the only way to do that is via email. Our office buddy did just that, and the company’s response was to list all of her parking charges.
That’s it.
It did not offer a refund, nor can anyone be reached at the company to ask why there was a charge in the first place.
We were told by the city that a refund is coming, and that the company is too backlogged with other inquiries to explain why there was a charge in the first place.
On Thursday, the day The Review went to press, we received this email from city hall, that is the company’s response to why there was a Sunday charge:
“Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. This parker was charged a concierge session on Sunday due to a design flaw only pertaining to the lots right now.
“We have a solution in place and no parkers will be charged for lot sessions moving forward. I suspect the impact to have been low here but If anyone else reports this issue from the past we’d be happy to validate and refund that parker.”
Yeah, right “concierge session.” Sounds like pretentious corporate-speak to us.
Hamtramck is not the only municipality to hire this company, which is Municipal Parking Services.
The company certainly has some explaining to do, but more urgently, the lines of communication need to be opened up. Sadly, this is happening with more and more companies; as they get increasingly tech-dependent, it gets harder and harder to actually talk to someone about a problem.
Also, note this: the company had months to work out the bugs of this system.
Why do we feel like the city should have buyer’s remorse with this company?
Posted Feb. 11, 2022