There's an app for that

Ask and ye shall receive. There's an app for parking in the City of Miami. Who knew?

I mentioned in my rant yesterday, about Saturday's parking nightmare that an app or QR code or something would be perfect for parking and lo and behold there is an app.

I don't know why I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere. I knew about the pay by phone, where you call in the info, which is what I tried to do on Saturday, but there was never any mention by the guy on the phone about the app and I took a couple of photos here of Coconut Grove meters, which don't mention it either. The sign here doesn't even have the Location Number, so that could be a problem when the app or pay by phone asks for it.

I ran into a friends at the Bookstore and one had the app on her phone; she showed me how it works. I liked what I saw.

I downloaded it and I'll let you know how it goes the next time I use it. It did take some time to get it working and when I called a help number, which was in Canada, they told me that the City of Miami's parking sign-up, "causes lots of confusion," so I don't feel stupid, one reason is they don't take all credit cards, even though the system says they do, so when you try to use a card like American Express, it just locks the system without telling you why. The guy told me that Ft. Lauderdale, South Miami and other locations in South Florida are very easy to navigate, their systems work much smoother. They probably don't have every angle on how to screw their citizens worked into the plan like Miami does, so it works much smoother.

Here's the app. It's called Pay By Phone Parking and it works on Androids, Blackberry's and of course iPhones. It's free.

Ahh, those good old days of the Coconut Grove Meter Fairy, where is she now that we need her?