Fixed, the mobile app that will fight your parking ticket, has been blocked in three cities -- San Francisco, Oakland and L.A. TechCrunch reports that the suspension will impact around 100,000 users and that now Fixed will shift its focus to its Traffic Ticket business instead.
The way Fixed works is that users take a photo of their parking ticket, and then the app checks for a variety of common errors. If Fixed finds errors it writes a customized letter to the city on the user’s behalf. Fixed also uses Google Street View to verify if the city had the proper signs in place where the ticket was received.
Not surprisingly, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) hasn’t been Fixed’s fan for a long time.
Fixed’s “win” rate was 20%-30% which is pretty low considering that over half of the tickets have errors making them invalid. Why isn’t the win rate higher? The city didn’t always abide by their own rules when arbitrating disputes. But if your claim was one that did succeed, Fixed would charge a fee of 25% of the original fine.
If you didn’t win, the app automated the payment so you didn’t have to use the city’s website.
To illustrate SFMTA’s complete disregard for the app, when Fixed first started faxing their letters to the agency last year first they were told to stop using the fax machine. And when Fixed said it was legal for them to use it, the agency just shut off their fax machine.
https://www.techspot.com/news/62409-now-if-you-get-parking-ticket-sf-oakland.html
