So an app which was correctly identifying parking tickets which were improperly issued, automating the completely legal dispute process, and making it easier for people to pay their fines was blocked because...?

I really want to believe that there's another side to this that's more substantial than, "we're too lazy to issue citations correctly, we're banking on the average person not knowing that their ticket was improperly issued, and we're counting on people forgetting to pay to rack up those sweet, sweet late fees" but I can't think of anything. Can someone possibly shed some light on these cities' reasonings?

My wife has used Fixed in SF a couple times, so my data is purely anecdotal. By in my view Fixed deserves to be banned. In the two cases we used Fixed (both of which were valid tickets btw) they sent the exact same form letter disputing the ticket, even though the two tickets had nothing in common. From what I could tell the business model seemed to be 1) send entirely generic form letter at very little cost to dispute every single ticket, regardless of merit 2) assume that you can overwhelm the system and they'll just give up on some percentage of the tickets 3) profit. It didn't seem like anyone at Fixed was reviewing tickets or coming up with legit justifications for disputing the tickets. If you parked for 3 days in a handicapped space that blocked a hospital emergency room they would send in the same form letter to dispute the ticket. If Fixed was successful then by definition every ticket issued would result in a dispute. That's simply untenable for a city to deal with.

To me it felt entirely like a "this is why we can't have nice things" scenario. Give legit people a way to dispute tickets and up springs a startup that takes advantage of the limitations of the system and fucks it up for everyone.

>From what I could tell the business model seemed to be 1) send entirely generic form letter at very little cost to dispute every single ticket, regardless of merit 2) assume that you can overwhelm the system and they'll just give up on some percentage of the tickets 3) profit.

But isn't that (claimed to be) the exact model used by the parking authority? Write tickets without a lot of care for getting it right, knowing that most people aren't going to fight it? What's good for the goose...

I'm just going to quickly jump in here. I'm David, one of the co-founders of Fixed.

Every single contest is custom written, and has an extremely thorough review which includes: 1) automated check (check for missing/incorrect information) 2) low level review (primarily done by a team in India that uses Google Street view to measure the distance to closest signs) 3) high level review (performed by an Advocate in SF who double check the previous steps, and also reviews all notes and input from the user).

The advocate in SF then finalizes the contest letter and submits.

In general, about 2/3 of the tickets issued by the SFMTA and other parking ticket authorities have some issue with them.

I'd also like to point out, that it is not in our interest to submit frivolous contests. Each submitted contest requires time and resources on our end to submit the contest AND monitor the contest and process the return letter.

Finally... if your wife had two similar contest submitted, I might suggest that the SFMTA has become fat and lazy from lack of oversight, and continues to make the same trivial mistakes in each ticket.

> I might suggest that the SFMTA has become fat and lazy from lack of oversight, and continues to make the same trivial mistakes in each ticket.

I'm having a hard time understanding how this isn't confirmation of exactly what I experienced and described. I'm sure there are lots of minor trivialities that might get filled out slightly wrong a decent percentage of the time, none of which have anything to do with the validity of the ticket. So if you know all the tiny trivial loopholes you have a decent chance of finding something done "wrong" for otherwise perfectly appropriate tickets.

So yeah, you're able to point out the tiniest unimportant mistakes on a parking citation and then take advantage of that flaw in the system to get people out of valid tickets. It's impressive I suppose, but not something I'd personally brag about.

That's not how laws work. You can't have one set of rules for one stakeholder, and another set of rules for another. Particularly when one of those stakeholders gets to acts as enforcement, judiciary AND beneficiary.

1 inch over the curb... we're going to tow your car with $700 worth of fines.

No visible sign on the street and nothing within 100 ft (which there has to be by law)... it doesn't matter, you should have known we intended that street to have no parking between 4-6pm.

If you tried to come up with a system with more adverse and broken incentives, you'd be hard pushed to come up with a better one than the SFMTA. 1) Let's saddle this organization with $10Ms of losses each year. 2) Let's give them the authority to issue tickets and fine the citizens for breaking an arbitrary set of laws. 3) Let's allow them keep the fines and treat it as 'revenue'. 4) Let's allows them to regulate themselves and decided if the tickets they issued are fair.

The "validity of the ticket" is determined by rules set forth by the city and the MTA. It also establishes the grounds for invalidity of a ticket. That's not taking advantage of the system, that's applying the system. The right way for the MTA to put Fixed out of business is to issue valid tickets that are held to a higher degree of scrutiny, otherwise the system just rots over time, as we see here.

Why not proxy all the communications with the parking authority through the Fixed app, instead of sending them directly from your servers? It seems like this (or something similar) would make it much harder to "block" Fixed. And the parking authorities have no teason not to block you, especially when it's so easy as blocking a list of known ip addresses. (Barring an injunction in your favor or something)

You're doing god's work <3

Did you just admit that you used Fixed for valid parking tickets that you received? Aren't you then the exact group of people you are describing that "fucks it up for everyone"?

From the article that we all read before commenting:

> Using its app, Fixed customers could snap a photo of their parking ticket using their phone’s camera, and then Fixed would check against a variety of common errors before writing a customized letter to the city on the user’s behalf.

The app is meant to do the ticket-checking, not the user. Additionally the website itself for Fixed mentions that they do the checking, not the end user.

I am questioning why he felt the need use the service when he knew that the parking tickets were legitimate.

Yup. a) it was my wife that used Fixed and I do remember rolling my eyes when she explained the ticket she submitted b) we're always fascinated by what seem to be too good to be true SF startups so we typically try them out, and c) they aggressively market it as a no-lose proposition and put their flyer on every car that gets ticketed in SF.

But yeah, you're entirely right.

> If Fixed was successful then by definition every ticket issued would result in a dispute. That's simply untenable for a city to deal with.

Heaven forfend the citizenry have the right to defend themselves before being punished by the state.

This is why I think cities should get out of the business of providing free street parking. Take away the street parking, remove parking requirements from residential/commercial development requirements, and let the price of land and market demand dictate how many parking lots get built and parking fees.

Otherwise entitled drivers refuse to accept that city parking space is an inherently limited resource that must be shared, and protest any regulation as if unlimited free parking is some kind of basic human right.

When you take a step back and think about it, it is really weird how many public roads are built two lanes wider than they would otherwise need to be, simply so that people can park their cars on public land.

for the most part I would have thought the idea was mostly to keep delivery and passenger services out of the traffic lanes

I'm sure this varies from one locale to another, but in my experience in various parts of the US, virtually all urban roads with extra width have it just for parking. Much of the time the parking is so full that there's no room for delivery vehicles and passenger dropoff/pickup to use anything but the travel lanes, and even when there is room they often can't be bothered.

There are places where space is carved out just for loading and not parking, but it's not the common thing, especially in residential areas.

As a property owner will tell you. That public land isnt public but is an easement on private land.

I thought it was the other way around, typically: the city owns not only the street but a fair distance beyond the curb, and the adjoining property owner is required to maintain that area even though it's not theirs.

Nobody is arguing that incorrectly issued tickets shouldn't be challenged. It depends if you think knowingly abusing the system to evade responsibility for wrongdoing is a reasonable and valid defence. This isn't just an us versus them situation. We all have an interest in parking space being appropriately regulated, to our mutual benefit. It's not inappropriately parking vehicle drivers versus 'the state' and sticking it to the man. It's inappropriately parking vehicle drivers versus other vehicle drivers, pedestrians and in fact pretty much everyone who lives in cities.

I happen to think that all accusations of crimes (or non-criminal infractions) should be challenged, not just those which are false.

I see this as a miniature version of the extremely worrying argument about plea bargaining, that it is necessary because the courts couldn't handle the huge volume of trials that would be required without it.

If you're handing out so many violations that you can't handle everyone engaging in an active defense against them, then you're doing something deeply wrong, and the solution isn't to discourage people from exercising their legal rights.

Yes, we all have an interest in parking space being appropriately regulated, but we all have a much greater interest in the state's punitive power being appropriately exercised, and I'm sure there are ways to achieve both anyway.

I've not really seen much indication that they're abusing the system. The one commenter above claims the app sent the same letter twice, someone who works for Fixed said that they don't send the same form letter every time and both tickets must have had the same error (which would generate the same letter). In light of that, I don't see why a form letter specific to what makes the ticket invalid is an issue. Why should someone have to come up with a hundred different way to say "There isn't a 'No Parking' sign within X feet, as per city ordinance YYYY".

I also just want to point out, the SFMTA has brought this on themselves. If they didn't have such an egregious erroneous ticket rate, Fixed could never be profitable. They only get paid if you don't have to pay the ticket, so if the SFMTA had an error rate of 5% rather than 33% Fixed wouldn't have enough to work with.

Excellent! The system is obviously broken. And it's not self-correcting. So we must exploit the brokenness to force it to heal.

Probably more along the lines of "we can't afford to lose this revenue, especially due to technicalities over the issuance of an otherwise-legitimate ticket".

Our legal system and bureaucracies are built on technicalities. Do you think they wouldn't use a technicality to nail you to the wall for something? I've got little sympathy for an entity getting upset at it's own rules being used against it.

Just like a speeding ticket, even if the cop wrote your name wrong, it doesn't mean that you are going to get away with it.

Think of parking and speed trap tickets as tax collection, and it becomes clear.

A ticket is a legal document. Unless the pipeline involves sufficient human review, it's not that much of a stretch to construe the vendor as practicing law without a license.

The SFMTA is a racket. I've had the misfortune to have to deal with them on a few occasions and they are some of the least accountable people working for the government.

I went thru the whole process of contacting their supervisors directly to dispute tickets [they sometimes presume you're not home and aware] and it basically boiled down to their word vs mine. Such BS.

I would love to see the agency dissolved, but it makes too much money needed to sustain other pet projects that this sacred cow is going nowhere, unfortunately.

My vain hope is they sue these municipalities to get access to those county (public?) resources which would allow them to operate in those communities again.

I got a ticket once for not turning my wheels on 2nd between Townsend and Brannan. The law is your wheels must be turned if the grade is greater than 3%. The grade, according to the department of public works, is 3.09% (http://bsm.sfdpw.org/subdmap/subd/Key_Maps/319_gm.tif). Next time I'll bring my protractor.

the MTA is too lazy to do a lot of things. They employ antiquated technology and pass the cost of their own inefficiency to the consumer in every place they can.

-Adding money to a Clipper Card from the website takes several days before the credit can be used. Apparently this has to do with the specific scanning hardware they have on the buses and some legacy Translink interoperability issues or something.

-Many of the parking kiosks interface are confusing (I once tried helping a lady only to find out she'd put in $20 because she kept not understanding she had paid).

-Fare-checkers are extremely self-righteous and rude. I once got off the back door of a Muni train because I'd realized my Clipper card was empty. On the way to the front door to pay in cash, the fare-checker told me he was going to write me a ticket because I got on and off the bus and that, despite my honest intention to pay the fare, he was going to write me up.

-Towing is $600, which includes $250some in SF admin fees, $250 is towing, and other other fees the towing company can freely tack on to work around the maximum "towing" fee that the city allows (in my case, a Flatbed Truck fee of $80).

-If you car gets stolen, and the police find it you get a 30 minute "courtesy" window to get to your car before they tow your car and you pay $500-$600 to get it out of the impound.

A friend that works for the city was telling me that the MTA has a lot of inefficiencies because they have humans in the process every step of the way and no incentive to change that. When they need to modify the process, they just add another human and another fee.

> -Adding money to a Clipper Card from the website takes several days before the credit can be used. Apparently this has to do with the specific scanning hardware they have on the buses and some legacy Translink interoperability issues or something.

…except that Walgreens is able to make adding value happen instantly… somehow.

The cards are stored-value - meaning that the card actually stores how much money it is worth. For cost saving and legacy reasons, most Clipper readers are offline and simply read and update the card value.

When you add value online, there is no way for the service to write to your card, so instead Clipper terminals throughout the system are informed of the value add and apply it next time they interact with your card. Online terminals, e.g. most vending machines, frequently synchronize with the online service and can transfer value added online almost immediately. Offline readers like those on buses, though, obtain a batched list of online value adds from time to time, often in the bus yard overnight via short range wireless networking - but in some areas this may happen less frequently than once a day. For Muni, I believe it should always happen overnight.

When you add value at Walgreen's, they set your card on a terminal that updates it directly.

This limitation is common to all stored value systems with offline terminals, including all Cubic transit card systems such as Clipper, Oyster, SmarTrip, etc. It's a compromise involved in rolling such a system out to a vehicle network without the expense of long range radio networking in every terminal - these systems were designed and implemented well before this was practical.

As a side note, design of offline systems that would generally be online is an interesting problem. For example, Onity/TESA door locks store an incrementing counter for determining the validity of keys. If you need to revoke a key, you make a new key with a higher counter value and insert it in each lock. When the lock sees a larger number, it increments its internal counter, and the old key will then have too small of a number and not work.

What's even trickier is when you want thorough logging. Clipper terminals report back card usage information when they update on value adds. Some locks struggle with this - for Onity locks, retrieving user history requires connecting a bulky diagnostic device to the lock. An interesting solution is that used by Cyberlock. In that system, an audit log is stored in the key itself and the key has a short expiry, forcing the holder to frequently reprogram it, during which the log is retrieved. The locks must still store a log too in case of disappearing keys, but it allows for fairly accurate logging without frequently having to visit every lock.

Thanks for that post — that's interesting, and explains a considerable bit. I ride CalTrain often, but their readers are bolted to the concrete… I'm surprised they're not updated more frequently? (Even the CalTrain operators say to give a week.)

The whole "tag on/off once at the beginning of the month" (which I've always thought was the weirdest thing…) then is to sync the on-card value w/ what you own I suppose, so that it scans properly on their readers. Now I wonder that given that I buy from Walgreens, if that's an absolute necessity, or a hardship imposed by people being too lazy to explain the inner workings of the card; it's a pain b/c if you forget to tag off, you get charged full-fare (and your monthly pass is deactivated until you re-add value to the card…), as I'd much rather just buy the monthly pass and not have to do the monthly tag dance.

Probably because they have "the specific scanning hardware" mentioned?

If it's the case that Walgreens has "the specific scanning hardware" (note that the parent to my comment had that hardware on a bus), then that's exactly my point.

I don't ride the buses; I take CalTrain. There's three pieces of hardware of concern here: the scanner that checks your pass, the Clipper website, and whatever Walgreens uses. The scanners take a week to pick up payments through Clipper (first party), and instantly from Walgreens (third party). I find it exceptionally odd (and mightily inconvenient) that a third-party is able to add value into the system faster than the owners of the system themselves.

(edit: and see the sibling response to yours from jcrawfordor for more info!)

The "fare enforcement" folks are not police, they cannot legally detain you and you are under no obligation to answer their questions. Just like the security guard at the front of Best Buy who wants to check your receipt, you can say "no thank you" and continue on. However if you give them your ID or information to write a ticket, it is binding.

Careful with this advice since cops are normally around when they check the fares.

My favorite thing about Fixed was that they paid my ticket and I didn't have to worry about it.

Most tickets I got, I deserved. Okay, all the tickets. But I constantly put off paying them since it was such a hassle. It was nice to have Fixed just pay them for me.

I was listening to an interview recently (though I can't remember where) that was discussing how some people park violating the rules knowing they will likely get a ticket, but justify it because the cost of a parking permit or lot fees will end up being more expensive that their accumulation of parking ticket fees.

I did that for years. Parking at my apartment building was $350/mo (and was valet only, so it was also a major PITA).

I often parked at my work garage and walked home, but many times parked on the street/at meters, and didn't sweat it too much if I got the occasional ticket (not getting back to the car early enough, usually) It was virtually impossible to run up a total anywhere near the cost of the less convenient valet parking.

For the longest time in college, garage parking in Harvard Sq was $14-20/evening and a residential parking violation in a nearby neighborhood was $10 or $15. So we often used the "stochastic parking garage".

In New York, they put a boot on your car after a while. Or tow it. And then it becomes more expensive.

In NYC I paid $44 for parking on the street cleaning side, and you are pretty much guaranteed to get the ticket if parked incorrectly. So it only takes 8 tickets to reach $350. Don't see how that scheme would work, plus you have to pay for each ticket, which is a hassle.

New York City has 2 programs where companies with vehicle fleets can just pay the parking tickets automatically, often at a discount http://www1.nyc.gov/site/finance/vehicles/commercial-stipula...

Just the cost of doing business... http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20130526/ECONOMY/305269...

San Francisco has something like this as well; http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Parking-tickets-by-the-tr...

I did this at my last office. It's a bonus to have to take a break every 75-90 minutes to go outside and move your car - especially when you're not a smoker.

My office has a direct street view of a red no parking zone that stretches an entire block of Santa Barbara. I'm amazed an how many people park their cars with the hazards on to run into a shop and come protest when parking enforcement inevitably rolls around and issues them a ticket. Especially because there are two "free for 75 minute" lots around the corner.

I've even watched parking enforcement sit and wait for five or so minutes to start issuing the ticket and the driver came out and said they had only just stopped in for a second.

No idea how it works elsewhere but it looks like the officers have some sort of device that they take a picture of the vehicle doing whatever they are doing incorrectly, which is kind of the opposite of what this app is for. I imagine it records time and location as well for the same reasons and Fixed which is to keep people honest.

I find this interesting because even though there is a market for this tech to the people receiving tickets, there is also a market to help improve the way tickets are given by enforcement. Though of course there may not be incentives to improve when $$ is at stake.

I've watched them from up close; that "device" is simply an Android smartphone. If you've parked over time (in 75 or 90 minute zones, they'll take a picture of their chalk mark too.)

The ones I don't like are the robot "meter maid" cars studded with license plate readers and cameras - no need form them to mark each car, it just alerts when they're passing one that was there during their last lap. Easier for them maybe, but as a parker I prefer the chalk so I can tell whether they've come by yet or not.

p.s. I'm in SB too - let's grab a coffee.

I can't even remember a parking ticket I got that wasn't my fault.

Same here. One time I received a parking ticket in addition to an expired registration ticket on one day and then another expired registration ticket a couple days later.

When I went to the police station to pay, I politely mentioned that I hadn't time to pay my registration fee yet in the allotted "fix it" time and they were totally fine to waive the second ticket.

That said, Santa Barbara has also made their fair share of mistakes like ticketing entire zones of the city on Labor Day a few years ago when people assumed street sweeping wouldn't be happening. After issuing a few hundred tickets in a couple hours, they ended up halting ticketing and canceling all of the tickets. [1] Though people should have phoned into the city to ask about the closures, it was nice of the city to waive them.

[1] http://www.independent.com/news/2011/sep/06/street-sweep-sna...

I can. And my options were:

Fight it and risk losing anyway and wasting a day defending myself. In LA and OC you also have to prepay the ticket and then they refund if you "win". Oh btw they also charge fees to defend yourself.

Just eat the cost of a 45 ticket.

I was just starting my first job but this was before this new boom so I didn't get paid a whole bunch. But I can see why tickets are considered a tax on the poor. If you get hit with one and you don't make enough $$$. You are fucked.

Even though I could afford to just pay the 45 ticket it ate away at me that I didn't fight it. Why am I being punished when I am pretty certain the meter maid didn't even know the law?

Thankfully the pay-to-play has been changed going forward, at least: http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-traffic-fines-...

I can see the "tax on the poor" argument on one hand, but on the other hand permit parking areas are soooo much nicer to live in than playing a parking lottery every night, if you don't have on-site parking. And that wouldn't work without enforcement. I'm not in favor of free parking for all, there just isn't enough public road space out here.

I'm glad they're ending pay-to-play, and that article shows why it's terrible.

I am not really sure permit parking violations and tax on the poor are one or the other. Most people who are poor are not worried about tickets caused by permit parking violations more being randomly stopped for fixit tickets and the like. Again pay-to-play being taken out is a great first step. And there's just no real balanced way to handle this and thus the lawmakers balance the odds in their favor rather than the people they serve.

That's easy. If you live in Philly, it's hard to remember one you did deserve. (No, I'm not joking.)

Could you give me an example? They just write a ticket for something that never happened?

Not Philly, but I got one in SF that was pretty unreasonable.

I was parked in my neighborhood and had a valid residential permit that only required that I move my car for street sweeping. So when I parked on Wednesday, there was no sign that said I needed to move my car before the next Tuesday. On Friday evening (I know, because I checked my car on Thursday evening), someone who was moving posted a temporary permit they'd applied for their moving truck to park outside their apartment. I received a ticket on Saturday morning despite the requirement that the temporary permit be posted 72 hours in advance of the moving period.

I waited in a 90 minute line to contest it (the building where you contest/pay parking tickets is one of the few areas in the city where you'll find nothing but 30 minute meters, so it's virtually impossible to drive to contest a ticket without getting another ticket) and was told 'no' without any explanation.

I don't care how dishonest or sleazy Fixed is/was, if they're successfully fighting SFMTA's parking enforcement, I support them. Fuck SFMTA's parking enforcement...it is so beyond corrupt that the people involved need to be put in their place.

FYI, even with a residential permit, you still need to move your car at least every 72 hours:

https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/parking/how-park-legall... https://www.sfmta.com/services/permits-citations/parking-per...

(Wednesday (presumably afternoon) to Saturday morning is less than 72 hours, though, so it still sounds like that one was illegitimate.)

When I lived in SF, I went to the dpv building to get my California plates and was amazed to see the same thing! You cannot park anywhere nearby for anywhere near long enough to do anything there.

I was also amazed at the amount of "street cleaning" that happens there, we do it twice a year, and have significantly cleaner streets.

One time I parked in chinatown at 5:30 am on a Sunday in a spot that has free parking on Sunday. At 2:00 pm when I left there was a protest, with a full band, bleachers, and a dancing dragon around my car. Along with a temporary no parking sign, and a ticket. That sign was definitely not there in the morning, but I had no proof, so I just paid it.

Interesting side note, I recently had an Uber driver who worked for the PPA.

I received a parking ticket in Oakland for parking in a 2-hour for less than 15 minutes, leaving, and then returning 3 hours later. I had evidence that I was not at the location in between. The parking department didn't care, because their claim wasn't that I couldn't prove I had left, but rather that even what I claimed was illegal.

My online appeal was denied, my written appeal was denied, and my administrative hearing was denied. I paid an $83 fine and a $25 fee to file an appeal in court. Three months exactly after the supposed violation, a county judge dismissed my ticket. The city returned my $108.

The judge said there was literally nothing I could do to prevent the same situation in the future (ie, there is no feedback loop), but that I would prevail in court again.

This situation affects me regularly because I don't own a car, so I rent one hourly, drive to my residence, pick up my wife, go grocery shopping, return to my residence, and then eventually return the car. The Oakland parking department continues to believe that my actions are illegal.

Well shit man, I guess the system works perfectly.

I just finally read the article about why it was getting blocked (TC wouldn't load on my mobile) and it is completely laughable how corrupt SFMTA is about this matter. "Hey you're helping people not pay us!"

Again, tickets are a fucking racket.

Just shows that parking fonts are used as an indiscriminate taxation on car owners. Local authorities use them to raise revenue and have become dependent on them. This leads to an abuse of traffic control which instead of being related to safety, becomes related to profit.

That includes the actions of local authorities in deliberately reducing legitimate parking spaces for car owners in order to force car owners to park illegally.

Sorry, I meant "parking fines". Mobile auto-correct...

"Parking fonts" must just be extremely hard to read fonts especially for no parking signs!

>Was Fixed evaluating the inquiries before forwarding them on?

Yes, they were.

>Using its app, Fixed customers could snap a photo of their parking ticket using their phone’s camera, and then Fixed would check against a variety of common errors before writing a customized letter to the city on the user’s behalf. The app also cleverly tapped into Google Street View to check to see if the city had the proper signage in place in the area a ticket was received.

>Founder David Hegarty once noted that over half of tickets have an issue that would make them invalid, but the city didn’t tend to play by its own rules when arbitrating disputes. That made Fixed’s “win” rate only 20%-30% on tickets, as of earlier this year.

>It's something you would definitely need to be very sensitive to how much useless work your triggering at City Hall.

The city could simply not issue invalid tickets, the issue would then resolve itself.

>Using its app, Fixed customers could snap a photo of their parking ticket using their phone’s camera, and then Fixed would check against a variety of common errors before writing a customized letter to the city on the user’s behalf. The app also cleverly tapped into Google Street View to check to see if the city had the proper signage in place in the area a ticket was received.

They should open source that so it can just be a web app, entirely possible it could still be really useful.

Surely they must have been checking these errors manually, so open sourcing wouldn't really do anything other than getting the map location - which I think you could find yourself.

Ah I misunderstood, I thought it was OCR.

@garrett I beg to differ. At first I thought it was a terrific service. After using it twice, their true business was revealed. They leave advertisement cards on vehicles with tickets and indeed is how I learned of the service. The card states there's an error with the ticket (regardless of whether there is ... every ticketed car will be canvased by Fixed). While I do believe they legitimately file a contest through the official channels, I don't believe they expect or care to win the contest. Here's why - by using the service you agree that Fixed will autopay on your behalf with a few-dollars service fee. I'm convinced their business model is fairly scammy in that they hook you with the promise that you've received an invalid ticket that can be dismissed. When in reality they know the majority of the tickets are valid, have no chance of dismissal, and reap the service charge you agree to when you file your contest with them.

Fixed is clearly not a sustainable business anyway - really, what percentage of tickets are not valid? A very small percentage I'm sure. And if their revenue is seriously modeled around winning contested invalid tickets then there is very little money to be made.

Edit - I missed the Founder David Hegarty reference. Maybe someone can fact check me but I think this is fairly inflated to spin his case for his business.

> Saying that a parking ticket is "invalid" is a legal argument, and a company that makes legal arguments for people is a law firm. "Fixed" seems to be practicing law without a license.

I beg to differ. Your thinking is wrong IMO. Anyone can dispute a parking ticket and they don't need a law license to do that. What Fixed is doing is just doing it on their behalf. Let me ask you question, do you hire a lawyer to file a dispute for a $350 parking ticket?

Your question isn't particularly useful, some people might not hire a lawyer to fight against an accusation of murder, but it doesn't mean if you did hire someone to do it they wouldn't need to be qualified. Equally I'd be shocked if nobody had ever used a lawyer to contest a parking ticket.

>Your question isn't particularly useful, some people might not hire a lawyer to fight against an accusation of murder, but it doesn't mean if you did hire someone to do it they wouldn't need to be qualified.

You and I are thinking different things. A parking ticket and murder are 2 different things and should not be lumped together. Consider how much a lawyer charges an hour hence my question. If the parking tickets where $5,000 then my question wouldn't be useful. Why would I pay a lawyer $450 an hour to dispute a $350 charge?

Fixed does not need a legal license to dispute tickets on behalf of others.

I'm not saying you need to be a lawyer to do what Fixed is doing, just that the question of "would you hire a lawyer for X" isn't the way to argue that point. Because there are people who would get their lawyer to deal with it, and there are also people who would go into serious legal battles and defend themselves without hiring a lawyer.

they should move their operations to Belgium, the country where police tow cars just because they can :)