A quickie for you all. I just received an email from DublinWaste.ie with good news. Until now this freecycle service has been confined to Dublin supported by the four city councils. They are now going national and rebranding as as FreeTradeIreland.ie and letting current users know that they are porting their user database to this new site. This is good news and will expand the possibilities of finding the perfect second hand items on the site. I look forward to hearing more about the new service and indeed using it!

Ah parking. Everyone in Dublin has their clamping horror stories. Mine is when our car was clamped outside our house even though we were fully paid disc holders. To add insult to injury no-one answered the phone when we rang to have the car unclamped. Steam. Ears. You can imagine. Three months later I got my fine back. This happened over 5 years ago. I’m not bitter.

Parking is usually not something I worry about being a committed city cyclist. However, of late, I have had occasion to drive instead of cycle especially as I’m carrying a precious cargo. 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 the Coombe when the time comes.)

However since then I’ve actually started using ParkingTag.ie so I thought I would share my experience. After a few initial hiccups where their site continuously refused to take my payment details and therefore refused registration I finally managed to register after giving up but returning at a future date. I’m nothing if not persistent!

Firstly I really like the site and their understanding of how people use their cars. Like many families living in a city we only have one car so either of us could be out and about in it. Therefore it would make no sense if we could only register one mobile to the account. This means that either me or Himself can pay for parking from our own phones. Similarly if we ever own two cars (hah!) we could register both plates to the one account.

This last fact is very clever for business accounts in particular. You could register all those in the company to the one account with their mobiles, keeping trips to the meter to a minimum. It also allows you to download an Excel of parking costs from the “Recent Transactions” section which would allow the company to track payments made outside of work hours (if the boss was very pernickety!)

However it was when I was viewing this that I noticed a few figures that I didn’t expect and that were unexplained. I was charged 20c for every reminder SMS to tell me that I had 10mins left on my parking even though this service is not optional. I found this detail at the very bottom of their FAQ. Personally I would prefer to stick a reminder in my phone that doesn’t cost me a cent. The other fee was a 50c service fee which I suppose is fair enough – it’s a very handy service but surely a public service like Dublin City Council should factor these costs in to their arrangement with Payzone but that’s just scabby ol me and the taxes I’m already paying…!

When registering one has to give payment details for a credit or debit card and a regular top-up amount is debited from your card. However as an infrequent user the minimum top-up amount of €20 is a little high for me and I fear that there will be a surfeit of my cash languishing in the ParkingTag bank account over time.

The other bugbear I have (and I’m sorry to moan but I would prefer you not to panic when parking as I did) was that I followed the instructions carefully to activate my ParkingTag only to have my first few attempts rejected! Not a happy experience when you’re rushing for an appointment and I did the unthinkable and left my car unpaid for!

However, good news for those for those of you who prefer free parking*. Dublin City Council announced a free parking scheme in the run-up to Christmas to encourage shoppers to the city centre.

Under the scheme, on-street parking spaces will be free from 2pm every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday until December 27th.

Oho it’s a far cry from Operation Freeflow and my poor mammy spent three hours getting out of the College of Surgeons’ Car Park one Christmas Eve!

*I was also hoping to find a Google Maps Mash-Up of Free Parking in Dublin City but could only find this.