my very first exposure to this was paying for parking. i worked at a large private university which had a beautiful but very big campus. ofc for some reason the institution decided that employee's had to pay for their own parking, which i disagreed with on moral grounds and the fact that parking was so far away it was like a 20 minute walk just to get to my work space...so i did an experiment where i basically never paid for parking in my entire 4 years there.
it would have cost me about 2 grand to diligently pay for parking. the actual expense from tickets? about 100 bucks maybe 200. and some of them got automatically thrown out just by challenging them. now towards the end of my time there i did see a guy get towed as he was walking up to his car. i started paying for parking then.
Interesting, I had the exact opposite experience as a student at a public university in California. There were meter maids patrolling the parking lots constantly, and it was common for people to be ticketed within minutes. It must have been a huge revenue driver for the school. The enforcers were so zealous I received multiple tickets despite having a valid annual pass displayed clearly in my window, which I then had to burn time fighting to get dismissed.
it would have cost me about 2 grand to diligently pay for parking. the actual expense from tickets? about 100 bucks maybe 200. and some of them got automatically thrown out just by challenging them. now towards the end of my time there i did see a guy get towed as he was walking up to his car. i started paying for parking then.