A tough sell

Re: “Council gives OK for city to market ParkPlus,” Sept. 25.

What a great idea, to get some profit from Calgary’s grand parking scheme. My experiences suggest that any potential buyer should come here independently and experience the system first-hand through the eyes of its users.

For example, how come other operations operating credit card deposit schemes can do instant top-ups when you run low in your account? It takes ParkPlus at least two days! If B.C. Ferries can get it right, why not ParkPlus?

When this happened to me (during the Stampede), the system was simply unable to handle the situation where my account ran out of money during my parking stay. I couldn’t add money and I couldn’t cancel my session. While I spent a half-hour on hold on the phone at the parkade trying to reach a real person to help me with the situation, I was accosted by two different people, both tourists from out of town, seeking help with their own issues arising from what seemed to me to be slight misunderstandings of how to use the system. Neither seemed to me to be trying to cheat the system; only to understand how to deal with situations that were slightly out of the ordinary. However, I couldn’t help them.

So let’s see: a local and two tourists are frustrated by the system’s inability to understand and deal with their issues. Who is this system working for? I suggest that anyone purchasing the system today is getting flawed goods and ParkPlus needs to get its house in order before it markets its product.

Doug Macdonald, Calgary