As of December 1st 2008 Park by Phone Irl (sic) Ltd cease operation of the phone parking system in Cork City, Ireland. Cork City Council have engaged another company trading as ParkMagic to operate the service.
Existing Park by Phone customers have been issued new windscreen stickers by ParkMagic, a photocopied generic welcome letter, which appears to have been completely written and posted by ParkMagic - as the headed paper, and frank does not match the current City Council version.
The system can be accessed by calling 0818 220101 or 0818 220330. The price has increased to € 2.00, which it appears is on par with the cost of a disc. Unfortunately the Cork City Council only provided an undated price list. But if the cost of both the paper disc and ParkMagic is now the same then the latter is unattractive, as a phonecall to a revenue sharing (i.e. think premium rate) must be made.
If you go to corkcity.ie and look at the most recent council minutes (late november) you will see that they expect approx 3.5 million euro via disc parking and approx 96,000 via park-by-phone…
Says it all really….
Hello,
Happy New year to you. Re your post, hopefully the right of reply applies?:) Just a couple of thoughts; indeed you are correct, we did begin service in Cork in December on behalf of the city council. The city council themselves set the parking rate and unfortunately we have no power at all in this respect. I am aware there was a previous incentive, however that, to my knowledge, was intended originally to be temporary.
The number range we use 0818 is not a premium rate number. It is controlled by the national regulator and defined as “Universal Access”. http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/odtr9839.pdf In short it is a non geographic number and the charge for it varies depending on your mobile operator. Typically, though not exclusively, this amounts to a few cents per call (single digits). We also dramatically reduced the call time from the old service. Our call times are typically around 20 seconds, faster for the seasoned user. Incidentally, I think it would be fair to point out that the old service also used an 0818 number.
I’m not sure I would agree that there is now no defacto difference between using a disc and using the ParkMagic service. On a price level, it is marginal and certainly imho, worth the few cent to save the drag of running around looking for discs, your time is valuable too right?
Perhaps a further value point would be that the same system and account also works in Limerick City (you’d be suprised at the level of intercommuting) plus, for the wider travelling, the system is also interoperable with all of the countries toll roads. If you have a tolltag.ie tag it works off the same account.
Anyway, thanks for the right of reply, we would be very happy to have you try the service and very happy to see your experience blogged. If you’d like to do this mail me and I will sort it out for you.
Regards
Philip
CTO, ParkMagic
Philip,
Thanks for your comment. Its nice to see there are actually real people working in ParkMagic. I recall my frustration trying to get a new windscreen sticker from the last crowd after I got a new windscreen and the installers tore the old sticker taking it off.. Emails bounced, not replied to, fax disconnected, too much hastle. I wrote an article on http://ambrand.com/2006/04/21/parkbyphoneie-service-review/ and emailed them a link, but I think the email bounced, or it went through and there was no response. Either way even thinking about it makes my blood boil.
I don’t like 0818 numbers. But I see you’re dilemma. On the one hand you want to have a number that is “socially acceptable”, for want of a better term, in Cork and Limerick, the traditional choice in such a scenario would have been a 01 number. A 1800 would cost you money, a 1850 would cost you a bit less. 0818 seems to be the best, the equivalent in the UK is 0870 http://www.saynoto0870.com/
what is the geographical number your 0818 goes to?
Ambrand
Hi,
currently that number goes to 01-2580321. I say currently in that we sometimes we move the service to different servers for operational reasons like upgrades etc and reroute the 0818. So for now thats the 01 number but no warranty expressed or implied:)it could change at any time.
Support wise, I’d like to think we are pretty good, not infallible but good. We do run several high volume services including tolltag.ie which as you can appreciate is a 24hr job so we have had to invest a lot in that respect
In any case, I hope you give us a whirl, we are an Irish company employing 7 people, hopefully more this year, not that it gives us a right to acceptance or even existence it is something worth considering.
/P