Pay & Display Gets a Technology Upgrade in the City Centre
Brandon | June 2, 2009There’s a convenient new way to pay for parking in Dublin city centre. On the 21st of May, Dublin City Council started a new service that allows registered users to pay for street parking without having to dig under your car seats for change or worry about rushing back to your car before the time expires. You can register for free and even get €5 free credit if you register online (CLICK HERE).
When you register with your credit card or bank details, you get a parking tag with a bar code sent to you in the post to be placed on the windscreen of your car. Then when you park in designated “pay and display†areas of Dublin, you just call or text to pay for the parking.
Fathers-to-be will find this particularly helpful while pacing around in Holles Street maternity hospital awaiting the arrival of their child since there’s no designated parking for patients other than the “pay and display†parking around Merrion Square. (Speaking from personal experience here.)
So if you’re a bit disgruntled by the fact that you live in Dublin but there’s no reliable public transportation near you (and especially if you find yourself getting rather red in the face about all the talk of introducing congestion charges in the city centre), at least the council have made it a bit more convenient for you to take your car into the city centre.
Has anyone else experience with trying to use this system? I have to say my experience has been really bad.
The silver machines that allow you to pay using the old M-Park system have been removed. So fair enough, change to the new system. However it requires you to register and wait for a tag to be posted out to you. Not much good if you’ve no change and have already parked. I decide what the hell, it’ll be handy next week. So I spend 5 minutes or so of my life on the phone giving them my name, address, credit card, blood type (kidding) and eventually she tells me the system isn’t working and I should call back later and go through the whole process again!
So there’s a retail tag option, but nobody seems to know which retailers sell the tags. After trying shops on Leeson St. and Baggot St., I eventually found Londis on North Stephen’s Green do the tags. But guess what, you have to activate the tag before you can put any money on it. Luckily there’s an “activate by SMS” option. I try this method and I get a text back saying “Invalid details”. So I call the helpline number and they claim ignorance. They say they have no information on retail tags and only do the credit-card tags that have to be posted out (and by the way, DCC will help themselves to a minimum of 20 euro of your hard earned cash, and will never let the balance drop below 10 euro!).
So I resort to going back to the office and trying the online activation for my retail tag. After going through the steps, it tells me “Vehicle Does not Exist”! Well it clearly does cos I drove it to work this morning!
All in all a very poor experience. I accept all new systems have teething troubles, but this one doesn’t seem to have been tested at all. Why have DCC started removing the M-Park machines before this new system is up and running? If only they were as efficient on other areas of their responsibility…but that’s another story!
Cathal, thanks for taking the time to tell us about your experience with this. I’m sure it will be VERY helpful to other readers who are hoping to avail of this new service. I’d certainly say it’s more than “teething” issues that are going on here.
I’d venture to say that your experience is reminiscent of the way the new barrier-free tolling was introduced on the M50 last year. =)
Wow Cathal. I commend your perseverance. I don’t think I’d be able for it!
M50 barrier free: Well at least you could still use the toll road even if it didn’t take the right toll amount off you :-p
I had more feedback since my post. After my conversation with the call centre people, they did call me back and told me that the online system for activating the cash tags isn’t fully implemented yet…ie. it doesn’t work! She went on to tell me that I need to top-up my cash tag first and then activate it using the SMS method, which is currently the only working method for activating the cash tags.
I told her that this is contrary to what the information leaflet says, and she said that the leaflets are wrong and will need to be corrected. You know what, I don’t believe her! Am I prepared to put a minimum of €20 on my tag and then find that I still can’t activate it…no thanks! No sense throwing good money after bad.
I’ll continue my 600m round trip trek to the nearest M-Park machine (assuming DCC don’t remove it) until the tag system is fixed.
I used to use the old M-Park solution. Thought it was good but found it harder and harder to find the M-Park machines.
I signed up for aParking Tag account online using their website. I found it straight forward – less than 5mins to register all my details (Name, address, car, mobile and credit card). I signed up on Fri before the bank holiday and received my tag on the Tues morning and was using it by lunchtime.
Is simpler to use than M-Park method and no need to look for an on street meter – just use your registered car reg and the colour coded zone.
Tried both the text top up and IVR – text is handier but they automatically send you a txt reminder 10mins before your parking is due to expire and charge you 20c for this (txt reminder is optional if you dial the IVR)
Over all I think the service is good – quick and hassle free. Haven’t any experience of the cash a/c tho but certainly the credit/debit card one worked smoothly for me
Dave, thanks for that. Glad to hear you had a positive experience!
When I first heard about this I though excellent and what a brilliant idea. I work all over town paying for parking up to 5 or 6 times a day in different locations. Now the downfall which are the hidden charges. To text after you park cost me 42 cent. 12 cent standard text rate and an additional 30 cent for texting the 53311 number. I then went online to see my account and to find out I was charged an additional 20 cent per reminder which I didnt even receive. There was 2 of them charges for the 2 hours I was parked. So basically what should have cost €2.40 for 1 hours parking ended up costing €3.22. I know where the tag will be going after I take it back down off my windscreen.
Hi,
I just checked by calling payzone directly about the 30c SMS they have no plans to reduce the cost of it but say the IVR is charged at opperators costs to a Dublin number. A much better option if you ask me… so no surcharge for using the system
Ted
[...] I had planned this post to be aimed at expectant fathers in the Dublin region but I discovered that Brandon beat me to it in a post in June. Seriously he’s right: Dads-to-be get your ParkingTag on! (Me I’m planning to cycle to [...]