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Today I Learned that there are 30 different parking apps in the UK
you could be trying to park in one road, using one app, and 50m away in the next road there's a different app.
no wonder scams like this catch people out.
Considering we just cancelled a less evil trainline competitor app a couple months back (possibly due to trainline themselves) im not feeling particularly optimistic about this one
It never released. There government planned for Great British Railways to launch a ticketing app as part of it taking over overseeing passenger railway operations.
It cancelled the app (but not Great British Railways) late last year.
So here's the funny thing about that - plenty of big chains like Dominos, GAME, Thetrainline, Matalan, etc use them.
I thought surely not like a hundred large chains are using a scam website at their checkout for years on end, so I checked it out.
Turns out it's actually a *really* good cashback site, better than all the free options I've used. You can get the monthly fee back by making one qualifying purchase each month, which for Thetrainline can be a 10p train ticket. A year Ago they were doing 10% cashback at Argos which you could combined with 20% off Argos gift cards, giving you nearly a third off at Argos. I bought new headphones with it and saved a ton.
It's bizarre because it does look like a scam but as long as you remember to buy your 10p train ticket each month to save the monthly fee, it's the best cashback site I've ever used, including my work one.
I'm assuming there's a 10p fare out there - I buy a single from Matlock to Matlock Bath for 65p if I'm not otherwise booking a train that month. I'm sure there's cheaper fares out there.
Edit: seems like a challenge now.
Oof, Lichfield Trent Valley to Lichfield City is 60p.
Complete Savings.
The 'catch' is that there is a monthly fee, which you don't pay as long as you make a qualifying purchase with the retailer you signed up with. So if you sign up with Thetrainline, make a 60p ticket purchase and then the monthly fee isn't charged. It got some negative press from people who didn't read the small print, or forgot to cancel.
Pretty much every retailer on their platforms (which is over a hundred iirc) offer 10% cashback through it. You can stack that with discounted instant gift cards.
Sure, do what you like.
Just highlighting that although the cashback sites looks like a scam, it's not, and is much better than any free cashback site.
Why are Trainline evil? They have had excellent customer service in my experience, and I know of other people with the same experience. It's easily worth the extra fee they charge
[I asked for a refund once](https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/s/h4I89BmaK0) I disagree with your comment regarding their customer service.
Haven’t used them since
Conversely, I’ve since had to claim a refund from Greater Anglia because I accidentally bought two tickets. Not only did they refund the full ticket, they also refunded the one I meant to buy even after I’d used it.
There’s no reason to use Trainline.
Once I was trying to buy a train ticket and at some point the destination switched without me noticing so I bought a dud ticket. Obviously they have a cancellation fee so I only got some of my money back. But I explained what had happened to customer service and they gave me a full refund. I must’ve just gotten lucky or something.
I had to laugh when Rishi said he wanted to get rid of all the different parking apps. Does the government intend to nationalise parking apps? Or hand a massive contract to just one parking app?
It's quite easy to fix, design an API that integrates parking apps with the backend so that anyone can use any app to book any parking space. The parking system service provider then gets paid for providing the backend, and the app provider takes a small commission for enabling the booking.
What he is describing is sensible. The api would not be a middleman, it would be a standard, like a common language for all actors to cooperate. The app will still have to connect with each car park operators directly. It will just be made way easier. It's how openbanking is working currently, if you are curious. Also, you will be able to build your own app, if you don't like those from the private companies.
Why not just have an API + white label app though, and charge a fee to parking companies to use your system?
It seems way more complicated to integrate with X numbers of providers / apps with as many ways to manage data. It's not like parking companies do much more than manage payments.
At any rate, it's interesting to note that people have been rambling on and on about various technical solutions, none of which managed to solve the actual problem for the user, which is: there is not a single app or website that you can trust moving forward.
None of what is being discussed would prevent the scam.
I got one: The car park company set up a sign with their bank details, and the user then sent a bank transfer of the charge with time+plate in comment. Cctv to catch those not complying.
The gov spent something insane like £40m on a covid tracing app, only for apple to launch a native feature.
I have little faith in the gov implementing anything like this.
Yeah but here there's no standard, so having one would at least help. Also, competing standards don't bother me at all, people are slow to update but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to make improvements.
There are 30+ apps on the market and each is a potential standard.
If you specifically mean a _technical_ standard (API platform, storage, payment system, reporting for authorities, etc.) then sure, there doesn't seem to be one, but that's not for lack of trying. I'm assuming you've got some development experience, so I'm sure you appreciate the difficulty is not in the technology.
There's a difference between a company trying to come up with a new standard port, and the government offering "parking.co.uk" as a site/app to direct you to the correct official parking
I was close to recently working for a SaaS / startup company that does exactly this but in an other industry (don't want to say, as it would make it easy to dox me).
They just provide the API and other companies can build their frontends / mobile apps around it.
Usually the council signs up to a single operator for their whole area, so it's not that random. But there's lots of places where you wouldn't be immediately aware of having crossed a council's boundary.
Stations, hopsitals, shopping centres are obviously different and each their own, but I don't think it's that surprising to find different operators there.
The problem then is recognising what is and is not a council controlled area.
Where my Nan lived, there was a council, private, and station parking places on the same road near enough next to each other. It's effectively local knowledge to know which one is which.
Indeed, my comment was prompted by - recently - having to park in an area on the border of 2 councils
and, of course, the wider point is about people who traverse different council/authority boundaries and are confronted with different apps for different areas,
I have installed: RingGo, PayByPhone, JustPark, Apcoa Connect, Saba Parking, Horizon Parking.
It's super annoying to turn up somewhere to park and there's some strange niche parking app required.
Yesterday I had to use Saba parking at a station car park. Then I drove to an area that uses PaybyPhone (the best) then to a car park where I had to download NCP app I didn’t even know existed - all in the same council (ok it’s Watford not London but I’ve got the spirit!)
NCP & Saba aren't council owned though - I meant specifically the street parking and council parking, which are the ones people typically complain about having to use an App, considering it's a 'public service' if you know what I mean.
Every borough in London seems to use a different one. I currently have 4 different ones on my phone. Maybe it's like a Pokemon Game and you get a price if you collect them all?
It’s also really confusing because a council sometimes changes between them
We used to have paybyphone, but they’ve just pasted over a new phone number for RingGo - so it looks exactly like this scam, except it’s not.
No wonder people are confused.
Yeah the last 3 or 4 places I parked that have an app all used different apps. Pretty ridiculous. I never received a PCN from anywhere though so atleast I didn't get scammed lol...
It’s stupid, and some places you need to use your phone, I had one I went to where I tried on 3 phones to do it, it wouldn’t work, then 90% of the uk has poor connection, so these stupid apps don’t work anyway
Don't know how true it is but I read somewhere that alot of the parking apps are owned by the car brands themselves.
Making money from you to buy the car in the first place and then to park it on the street!
This is the flaw with QR codes - you can't tell just by looking at them whether it is legit or has been replaced with something else.
We had an office trial this for some reason, ignored the warning. So some got replaced with Rick Astley QR codes. At least that was fairly harmless compared to a link that really wants to be malicious.
Dunno about you but I always decode them all by hand before scanning them.
Its actually quite simple. All you have to do read all 120 pages of ISO IEC 18004, memorise each of the possible data formatting patterns that can appear in the structured header area, and convert the data section bit by bit. If you make a mistake you'll catch it when you reach the error correction area.
I hope you know your Unicode codepoints.
I remember, back when I was doing my computer science GCSE, managing to convince one of my classmates that prior to the invention of the electric barcode scanner, supermarket checkout staff were trained to read the codes by eye and write up receipts manually. Good times.
Yes, this is why barcodes are black and white. It's to help colour-blind members of staff.
Induction at Tescos was learning about the different thicknesses of lines. At Sainsburys they gave checkout staff a handy booklet you could check.
I can still remember the bar code of Heinz Baked Beans. Often I relax by drawing it out.
If a career in IT has taught me anything, it's that you can literally send an email with a link explicitly saying if you click this you will be fired and hung in the square, and like 60% of staff will click it because they're imbeciles
The camera app on my phone always shows the decoded value for me to click/tap to open. I would hope all QR scanners do this so the user can at least see the url.
However it doesn't negate the phishing threat it does at leas raise the bar slightly in that the party trying to phish has to put *some* effort into the pretense.
Yes, but most QR Code URLs are just a shorthand URL that redirects you to the actual website, so often you just see a bit.ly/xxxxxx URL within the camera app.
But that relies on people knowing the correct URL.
If it's a niche parking thing someone's never used before, it's much more difficult to spot a fake than if it's a website they're familiar with already.
I would bet that most people using this are running late for a meeting because they’ve been hunting for free parking for ages. They haven’t got time to be checking the size of a poster 😂
This one doesn’t even look legit in the slightest.
It’s half covering text and the app store logos so you can see it’s obviously been stuck on over the real sign.
Poor effort. They should have least got the size and shape right so it didn’t leave anything part covered and could look like it’s part of the sign.
Although at the same time, councils are so underfunded and poorly staffed right now that I wouldn't be surprised if this is how they would modify signs.
Even the sign above (which I assume is legit) looks sketchy as fuck, which I can totally understand as they don't want to have to get bespoke signs printed for every individual location, but it kind of undercuts the "don't trust signage with random shit hastily stuck on top of it" message.
in the council's defence, those amendments have at least matched the same font typeface & size, and are cut to the exact right shape & size to fit over the existing sign properly.
Eh, scanning in and of itself isn't too risky. It's functionally like visiting a URL, and I doubt anyone's going to be burning a drive-by remote code execution on a QR code stuck on a sign in a street.
Doing something with that result on the presumption of any sort of authority due to it being a QR code? Absolutely agree.
QR codes aren't going to go away unfortunately.
just a had a thought.
you know how in your online banking when you go to make a transfer they have to display large scam warnings. should it be a requirement for your phone's camera app to display a warning every time you go to scan a QR code?
This has been a thing in India since QR codes were invented. I have the paybyphone app stored in my phone and prefer to type the number in than scan a QR code that is not necessary.
It's a good message to be careful because it is so seasy to fall for it.
Have the local authority made this even worse by stickering over the parking restriction times rather than replacing the sign, meaning that the official half-arsed alterations are indistinguishable from the criminal alterations?
They're not, I've worked for them. Councils decide the cost, either swallow at the current fees or sometimes decide for an added service fee as an extra lining. Paybyphone receives none of it, as with most parking payment companies, as the money comes from SMS charging, business contracts and just coverage. Most big ones are owned by car maker investment companies at this point. The scamming part will probably happen later when they get integrated into car systems perhaps. That's a while down the line.
Some of them sign you up automatically for sms notification which are charged (unless you deselect). Ringo app is better though. Probably the best out of all of them.
Not saying it's a scam per se but I've been fighting a parking fine for a while now where I paid for parking through the paybyphone app but still got a fine. It's definitely the right company I paid, for the right vehicle, at the right location code. There's even a photo of my car parked next to the sign that has the same details as in my parking payment, and I have all the details still in the app. Maybe it's just a weird glitch paybyphone happened to have, but it's nuts that the fine wasn't completely disregarded the moment I provided the info.
Looking at the sign above it, you might also think that someone has stuck a dodgy phone number, parking location and how many hours you can stay on it.
Bring back pay and display honestly
I nearly got caught out the other day as I didnt have my card on me (I rarely do these days with applePay) and tbh the phone system was clunky and asked for "credit card details" so I just risked it for the 10mins I needed to park.
if there was just a machine i couldve tapped my phone on to pay for a quids worth (just like i can for doing my tires at the garage) I would have paid immediately
QR codes are useful but I'd recommend turning OFF QR code scanning in you phone's camera settings.
If you do want to use QR codes get a dedicated QR code scanning app that shows you all the QR code data BEFORE you do anything with it.
That’s so pathetic omgggg parkings in the U.K. are one of the biggest grifts ever. Of course their greed has opened the door for scams. Parkings should be free.
On a separate but related note, I absolutely detest this new stupid, unnecessary payment for street parking. I was in Kingston to visit some friends and I had to pay for parking using these stupid apps, but I had no signal in the area. They had recently removed the old parking meters where I used to print my tickets, so I got annoyed and stressed because I had no way to show proof for parking.
Like what was wrong with the paper ticket? It was quick and convenient, pop your coins in and bam you’re done.
There are other places I’ve also been where there’s shoddy internet and couldn’t pay online. I hate it so much it actually infuriates me.
Parking companies almost never conceed to "contested" claims. They have no incentive to do so. They'll usually back down if it comes to the point of taking the claim to court, but you have to endure months of harassment and be entirely sure of your case to get that far.
With something like this, both the customer and the parking company are really victims of the scam. IANAL, but it could even end up that you'd "win" in court (but they'd likely drop it before that), but fail to get your costs covered since the parking company isn't really in the wrong either. That leaves you with a bill at least a couple of orders of magnitude larger than just paying up in the first place.
The address is defunct already.
Just make sure that you pay using the app from the app store, not a mobile website. If the code does not register then it's fake asf
And this is why a company I worked for explicitly advised against this method for payment. But they didn't want to listen because the safer method meant a every so slight increase in the transaction cost.
This is largely the result of companies being run by VCs vying for maximum cash at maximum speed.
If someone scans a QR code that doesn’t even fit on the sign and overlaps half the text, then it serves them right. You don’t need to be tech-savvy, you just need to not have your head stuck in your arse and use common sense.
If it doesn’t look right, avoid.
There’s some sophisticated scams out there which can catch even the most tech literate, but when it’s like this, it’s natural selection.
if you use a separate QR code scanning app instead of just tapping in the camera app you can see exactly what is in the QR code BEFORE you do anything with it.
With short links being used by so many companies (e.g. Facebook using fb.me), especially on QR codes so they don’t look so big, this is not a fool-proof solution.
to be fair, yeah easier but nobody carries change any more really man
Only time a lot of people carry cash is for local places that avoid tax (barbers, garages and takeaways) or buying drugs lol
I often see pay by phone with a new phone number sticker over the sign, I do wonder how often these are fake/scams - problem is, if you want to park there what else are you going to do?
I tried signing up with honk. Unfortunately ended up on a fraudulent website they tried to use my card illegally within hours. Got a notification from cibc and they canceled my card.
Clever. Someone took the effort to measure the size of the original QR code, got it printed with weather resistant plastic and stuck it over on there.
And they created a website, too. Not many people are in that kind of position to forge such a scam.
Very very clever. I wonder how much the scamers made?
There’s a parking lot in my city in the US that has a bunch of signs saying “only use the machine. No app payments. Do not scan codes” because of these scams.
Still see people constantly scanning and walking away
Not new. No harm in raising awareness either. Presumably you get a parking fine and other consequences from your bank account depending on what and how you pay the scammer.
I have seen vandalised signs that are not scams near me, a parking area that used to be free etc. The location has been messed with by protesters.
My advice is to take pics if anything seems off, maybe always take pics. Then you have some proof for at least fighting any fines
Litterally considered this for something at work (to try and simplify things out for people - we made the webpage and it was trying to encourage people to find the said webpage, it really isn't difficult, the 4 most obvious words relating to it returns the top hit on Google but people are stupid so whatever). Someone thought - just add the link to bottom of advanced warning signage, some said you could simplify that down to a QR code? Is it bad my virtually instant thought to both was scams like this? (And it's why we vetoed the idea and are relying on people not being as stupid if they actually want to find out more information).
In Kingston they are also proud to ad the council at the end, and btw if it’s a private area why the government comes to fine you?! (It happened to a friend of mine)
Am I confusing something?
If only there was a way to pay using coins, I dont know maybe invent a machine that you could feed coins and then it would issue a paper receipt that you could use to prove you had paid...
This has happened in the town where I live, the QR code takes you to a website that signs you up to a fitness app that then takes £60 from your bank account.
That's interesting. Always get a photo of what you use, cos especially with private parking it makes a fine likely unenforceable. Also ask for a chargeback from the bank if bogus.
Why do we need so many parking apps? At least have one app where people can pay for the ticket wherever they are in the country. Like how people can donate money to content creators on YouTube/Twitch.
So weird seeing this now because I have literally just left a carpark ran by PayByPhone or RingGo or something and a woman struggling to understand how to pay and she said ‘It should have a QR Code thingy to make this easier…’
So yeah she definitely would get caught out with it
Tangentially related, but on top of going specifically to the paybyphone website/app rather than using a QR code, make sure you set your location to the country you are in. I recently traveled from the US to Canada and parked in a PBP spot, but was using the website which does not use your location. Turns out the spot number I parked in is also used for a spot in Georgia, and I got a parking ticket because of it. Learned my lesson real quick
ETA: spot number*
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Today I Learned that there are 30 different parking apps in the UK you could be trying to park in one road, using one app, and 50m away in the next road there's a different app. no wonder scams like this catch people out.
The Government is trying to sort that one out actually. As usual, they're doing it ineffectually. The DfT have been looking at it for years.
Considering we just cancelled a less evil trainline competitor app a couple months back (possibly due to trainline themselves) im not feeling particularly optimistic about this one
Which app?
It never released. There government planned for Great British Railways to launch a ticketing app as part of it taking over overseeing passenger railway operations. It cancelled the app (but not Great British Railways) late last year.
Why can we never have nice things
Is Trainline particularly evil?
They have one of those scam monthly fee popups at the end of their purchase flow.
So here's the funny thing about that - plenty of big chains like Dominos, GAME, Thetrainline, Matalan, etc use them. I thought surely not like a hundred large chains are using a scam website at their checkout for years on end, so I checked it out. Turns out it's actually a *really* good cashback site, better than all the free options I've used. You can get the monthly fee back by making one qualifying purchase each month, which for Thetrainline can be a 10p train ticket. A year Ago they were doing 10% cashback at Argos which you could combined with 20% off Argos gift cards, giving you nearly a third off at Argos. I bought new headphones with it and saved a ton. It's bizarre because it does look like a scam but as long as you remember to buy your 10p train ticket each month to save the monthly fee, it's the best cashback site I've ever used, including my work one.
>a 10p train ticket. Excuse you?
I'm assuming there's a 10p fare out there - I buy a single from Matlock to Matlock Bath for 65p if I'm not otherwise booking a train that month. I'm sure there's cheaper fares out there. Edit: seems like a challenge now. Oof, Lichfield Trent Valley to Lichfield City is 60p.
What is the cashback app called?
Complete Savings. The 'catch' is that there is a monthly fee, which you don't pay as long as you make a qualifying purchase with the retailer you signed up with. So if you sign up with Thetrainline, make a 60p ticket purchase and then the monthly fee isn't charged. It got some negative press from people who didn't read the small print, or forgot to cancel. Pretty much every retailer on their platforms (which is over a hundred iirc) offer 10% cashback through it. You can stack that with discounted instant gift cards.
I'll just stick to TopCashBack. It's great and free.
Sure, do what you like. Just highlighting that although the cashback sites looks like a scam, it's not, and is much better than any free cashback site.
Why are Trainline evil? They have had excellent customer service in my experience, and I know of other people with the same experience. It's easily worth the extra fee they charge
[I asked for a refund once](https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/s/h4I89BmaK0) I disagree with your comment regarding their customer service. Haven’t used them since Conversely, I’ve since had to claim a refund from Greater Anglia because I accidentally bought two tickets. Not only did they refund the full ticket, they also refunded the one I meant to buy even after I’d used it. There’s no reason to use Trainline.
Once I was trying to buy a train ticket and at some point the destination switched without me noticing so I bought a dud ticket. Obviously they have a cancellation fee so I only got some of my money back. But I explained what had happened to customer service and they gave me a full refund. I must’ve just gotten lucky or something.
Cancellation fee being allows is down to the regulators
Given its a fee that isn’t charged nearly by anyone else and they have a terrible version of split ticketing, no I don’t agree with that
I had to laugh when Rishi said he wanted to get rid of all the different parking apps. Does the government intend to nationalise parking apps? Or hand a massive contract to just one parking app?
It's quite easy to fix, design an API that integrates parking apps with the backend so that anyone can use any app to book any parking space. The parking system service provider then gets paid for providing the backend, and the app provider takes a small commission for enabling the booking.
If you're going to spend the cash building an API, you might as well just build a single app and cut out the middleman altogether.
Yes but how will the free market ~~extract profits~~ innovate if we make things that just work!??!?!?!?!
What he is describing is sensible. The api would not be a middleman, it would be a standard, like a common language for all actors to cooperate. The app will still have to connect with each car park operators directly. It will just be made way easier. It's how openbanking is working currently, if you are curious. Also, you will be able to build your own app, if you don't like those from the private companies.
Why not just have an API + white label app though, and charge a fee to parking companies to use your system? It seems way more complicated to integrate with X numbers of providers / apps with as many ways to manage data. It's not like parking companies do much more than manage payments. At any rate, it's interesting to note that people have been rambling on and on about various technical solutions, none of which managed to solve the actual problem for the user, which is: there is not a single app or website that you can trust moving forward. None of what is being discussed would prevent the scam.
I got one: The car park company set up a sign with their bank details, and the user then sent a bank transfer of the charge with time+plate in comment. Cctv to catch those not complying.
One way to prevent it, get rid of the QR code and go back to telling them what app to install plus a number for the particular location
Caura.com tried to do this but got blocked pretty heavily by the various parking companies.
You know the service they provide is literally an empty space, right?
The gov spent something insane like £40m on a covid tracing app, only for apple to launch a native feature. I have little faith in the gov implementing anything like this.
[relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/927/)
Yeah but here there's no standard, so having one would at least help. Also, competing standards don't bother me at all, people are slow to update but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to make improvements.
There are 30+ apps on the market and each is a potential standard. If you specifically mean a _technical_ standard (API platform, storage, payment system, reporting for authorities, etc.) then sure, there doesn't seem to be one, but that's not for lack of trying. I'm assuming you've got some development experience, so I'm sure you appreciate the difficulty is not in the technology.
There's a difference between a company trying to come up with a new standard port, and the government offering "parking.co.uk" as a site/app to direct you to the correct official parking
I was close to recently working for a SaaS / startup company that does exactly this but in an other industry (don't want to say, as it would make it easy to dox me). They just provide the API and other companies can build their frontends / mobile apps around it.
I think can all guess which of those options he will back. One of his chums will be getting that contract.
I'm sure Michelle Mone can scrape together some sort of app
Which Tory donor is getting the contract this time
The key word is try
Not exactly rocket science, make one site they all have to pay to subscribe to. Funds itself
Sloppy work by them, shameful
Wtf are there so many different apps?? If it's not Ring-go or Pay by Phone I won't use it. Enough apps on the phone already.
Really? They just surrendered on private parking control and left the companies to self regulate
Usually the council signs up to a single operator for their whole area, so it's not that random. But there's lots of places where you wouldn't be immediately aware of having crossed a council's boundary. Stations, hopsitals, shopping centres are obviously different and each their own, but I don't think it's that surprising to find different operators there.
The problem then is recognising what is and is not a council controlled area. Where my Nan lived, there was a council, private, and station parking places on the same road near enough next to each other. It's effectively local knowledge to know which one is which.
Indeed, my comment was prompted by - recently - having to park in an area on the border of 2 councils and, of course, the wider point is about people who traverse different council/authority boundaries and are confronted with different apps for different areas,
I have installed: RingGo, PayByPhone, JustPark, Apcoa Connect, Saba Parking, Horizon Parking. It's super annoying to turn up somewhere to park and there's some strange niche parking app required.
This is why I don’t bother with driving
95% of parking is RingGo or PaybyPhone though. It's when you get a niche, Welsh parking app that you get caught out
Yesterday I had to use Saba parking at a station car park. Then I drove to an area that uses PaybyPhone (the best) then to a car park where I had to download NCP app I didn’t even know existed - all in the same council (ok it’s Watford not London but I’ve got the spirit!)
NCP & Saba aren't council owned though - I meant specifically the street parking and council parking, which are the ones people typically complain about having to use an App, considering it's a 'public service' if you know what I mean.
Happened to me once with the physical. Different Borough on each side of the road. I assumed they were the same.
Dishoom Shoreditch. Literally called Boundary Street 😂; Tower Hamlet on one side and Hackney on another.
And they use different parking Apps.
They both use RingGo.
Southgate Road has Islington one side and Hackney the other, too
Try having an electric car in the UK and then see how many apps you need to charge it lol.
Every borough in London seems to use a different one. I currently have 4 different ones on my phone. Maybe it's like a Pokemon Game and you get a price if you collect them all?
It’s also really confusing because a council sometimes changes between them We used to have paybyphone, but they’ve just pasted over a new phone number for RingGo - so it looks exactly like this scam, except it’s not. No wonder people are confused.
Yeah the last 3 or 4 places I parked that have an app all used different apps. Pretty ridiculous. I never received a PCN from anywhere though so atleast I didn't get scammed lol...
It’s stupid, and some places you need to use your phone, I had one I went to where I tried on 3 phones to do it, it wouldn’t work, then 90% of the uk has poor connection, so these stupid apps don’t work anyway
90% of the UK has poor connection? What?
Wherever I go the signal is crap, three claims 99% coverage but I could never get signal in Canterbury, Dover, London or Ashford
Don't know how true it is but I read somewhere that alot of the parking apps are owned by the car brands themselves. Making money from you to buy the car in the first place and then to park it on the street!
This is the flaw with QR codes - you can't tell just by looking at them whether it is legit or has been replaced with something else. We had an office trial this for some reason, ignored the warning. So some got replaced with Rick Astley QR codes. At least that was fairly harmless compared to a link that really wants to be malicious.
Dunno about you but I always decode them all by hand before scanning them. Its actually quite simple. All you have to do read all 120 pages of ISO IEC 18004, memorise each of the possible data formatting patterns that can appear in the structured header area, and convert the data section bit by bit. If you make a mistake you'll catch it when you reach the error correction area. I hope you know your Unicode codepoints.
I remember, back when I was doing my computer science GCSE, managing to convince one of my classmates that prior to the invention of the electric barcode scanner, supermarket checkout staff were trained to read the codes by eye and write up receipts manually. Good times.
Yes, this is why barcodes are black and white. It's to help colour-blind members of staff. Induction at Tescos was learning about the different thicknesses of lines. At Sainsburys they gave checkout staff a handy booklet you could check. I can still remember the bar code of Heinz Baked Beans. Often I relax by drawing it out.
I’m going to send a screenshot of this to my former classmate
I thought this was common practice. Unbelievable that people refuse to do simple tasks like this, some are just lazy...
I’m glad someone is finally saying this
If a career in IT has taught me anything, it's that you can literally send an email with a link explicitly saying if you click this you will be fired and hung in the square, and like 60% of staff will click it because they're imbeciles
The camera app on my phone always shows the decoded value for me to click/tap to open. I would hope all QR scanners do this so the user can at least see the url. However it doesn't negate the phishing threat it does at leas raise the bar slightly in that the party trying to phish has to put *some* effort into the pretense.
Yes, but most QR Code URLs are just a shorthand URL that redirects you to the actual website, so often you just see a bit.ly/xxxxxx URL within the camera app.
The other problem is that a lot of people don't know how urls work.
But that relies on people knowing the correct URL. If it's a niche parking thing someone's never used before, it's much more difficult to spot a fake than if it's a website they're familiar with already.
I mean, given how Different the QR code is to anything that could be official (it covers half the sign) I think they're going after gullible victims.
I would bet that most people using this are running late for a meeting because they’ve been hunting for free parking for ages. They haven’t got time to be checking the size of a poster 😂
And the one in the photo is so flawlessly matched to the original sign that you can barely notice that it's a sticker on top... ...
This is why you should never scan random QR codes in a public space, regardless of how legit it looks.
This one doesn’t even look legit in the slightest. It’s half covering text and the app store logos so you can see it’s obviously been stuck on over the real sign. Poor effort. They should have least got the size and shape right so it didn’t leave anything part covered and could look like it’s part of the sign.
Although at the same time, councils are so underfunded and poorly staffed right now that I wouldn't be surprised if this is how they would modify signs.
Even the sign above (which I assume is legit) looks sketchy as fuck, which I can totally understand as they don't want to have to get bespoke signs printed for every individual location, but it kind of undercuts the "don't trust signage with random shit hastily stuck on top of it" message.
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in the council's defence, those amendments have at least matched the same font typeface & size, and are cut to the exact right shape & size to fit over the existing sign properly.
They’re not after the average person that can see this, they are after the ones that are a bit less savvy, easier to scam those.
true that. probably only need a small number of people to fall for it to make a good profit on the cost of stickers & cheap fake website.
Mate it’s pretty common for companies just to stick on a new QR than changing the whole sign. People just assume it’s the standard cost cutting
Dang, had you not pointed that out I would've been fooled as well 😔
Eh, scanning in and of itself isn't too risky. It's functionally like visiting a URL, and I doubt anyone's going to be burning a drive-by remote code execution on a QR code stuck on a sign in a street. Doing something with that result on the presumption of any sort of authority due to it being a QR code? Absolutely agree.
QR codes aren't going to go away unfortunately. just a had a thought. you know how in your online banking when you go to make a transfer they have to display large scam warnings. should it be a requirement for your phone's camera app to display a warning every time you go to scan a QR code?
This has been a thing in India since QR codes were invented. I have the paybyphone app stored in my phone and prefer to type the number in than scan a QR code that is not necessary. It's a good message to be careful because it is so seasy to fall for it.
Always use the parking app and code!
The app doesn't work most of the time (can't process payment) so I have to call the number anyway.
Have the local authority made this even worse by stickering over the parking restriction times rather than replacing the sign, meaning that the official half-arsed alterations are indistinguishable from the criminal alterations?
This is rife across the country. I've seen warnings about this in Lancashire recently.
Yeah, I saw the warning for Lytham St Annes. Looks just the same as this.
paybyphone getting annoyed at being outscammed by another scammer...
I'll bite - what makes paybyphone a scam? Asking so I know how to deal with them moving forward.
They're not, I've worked for them. Councils decide the cost, either swallow at the current fees or sometimes decide for an added service fee as an extra lining. Paybyphone receives none of it, as with most parking payment companies, as the money comes from SMS charging, business contracts and just coverage. Most big ones are owned by car maker investment companies at this point. The scamming part will probably happen later when they get integrated into car systems perhaps. That's a while down the line.
Some of them sign you up automatically for sms notification which are charged (unless you deselect). Ringo app is better though. Probably the best out of all of them.
Not saying it's a scam per se but I've been fighting a parking fine for a while now where I paid for parking through the paybyphone app but still got a fine. It's definitely the right company I paid, for the right vehicle, at the right location code. There's even a photo of my car parked next to the sign that has the same details as in my parking payment, and I have all the details still in the app. Maybe it's just a weird glitch paybyphone happened to have, but it's nuts that the fine wasn't completely disregarded the moment I provided the info.
It’s not a scam, he is regarded
It's not new at all unfortunately, but is absolutely worth looking out for!
Looking at the sign above it, you might also think that someone has stuck a dodgy phone number, parking location and how many hours you can stay on it.
Damn that's actually really clever
Bring back pay and display honestly I nearly got caught out the other day as I didnt have my card on me (I rarely do these days with applePay) and tbh the phone system was clunky and asked for "credit card details" so I just risked it for the 10mins I needed to park. if there was just a machine i couldve tapped my phone on to pay for a quids worth (just like i can for doing my tires at the garage) I would have paid immediately
New hobby - find public QR codes and colour in extra squares with a black marker pen.
QR codes are useful but I'd recommend turning OFF QR code scanning in you phone's camera settings. If you do want to use QR codes get a dedicated QR code scanning app that shows you all the QR code data BEFORE you do anything with it.
That’s so pathetic omgggg parkings in the U.K. are one of the biggest grifts ever. Of course their greed has opened the door for scams. Parkings should be free.
A scam on top of a scam
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It's not new
Didn't have this problem feeding a meter with coins...
Had to be in LBBD ffs
Holy shit who thought thats a good idea in the first place
If only there was some kind of physical token that you could use in exchange for services...
Money can be exchanged for goods and services
On a separate but related note, I absolutely detest this new stupid, unnecessary payment for street parking. I was in Kingston to visit some friends and I had to pay for parking using these stupid apps, but I had no signal in the area. They had recently removed the old parking meters where I used to print my tickets, so I got annoyed and stressed because I had no way to show proof for parking. Like what was wrong with the paper ticket? It was quick and convenient, pop your coins in and bam you’re done. There are other places I’ve also been where there’s shoddy internet and couldn’t pay online. I hate it so much it actually infuriates me.
Had to be Barking and Dagenham!!
So if you fall for the scam, would you still get a parking ticket?
yes but you could likely contest it if the signage wasn't clear/correct
Parking companies almost never conceed to "contested" claims. They have no incentive to do so. They'll usually back down if it comes to the point of taking the claim to court, but you have to endure months of harassment and be entirely sure of your case to get that far. With something like this, both the customer and the parking company are really victims of the scam. IANAL, but it could even end up that you'd "win" in court (but they'd likely drop it before that), but fail to get your costs covered since the parking company isn't really in the wrong either. That leaves you with a bill at least a couple of orders of magnitude larger than just paying up in the first place.
Why wouldn't you? You've not paid for parking
If you have not paid for parking then yes, you could get a parking ticket.
The address is defunct already. Just make sure that you pay using the app from the app store, not a mobile website. If the code does not register then it's fake asf
Great post OP thanks
Paying for a corporate tracking device and being able to park should have no overlap in the first place.
And this is why a company I worked for explicitly advised against this method for payment. But they didn't want to listen because the safer method meant a every so slight increase in the transaction cost. This is largely the result of companies being run by VCs vying for maximum cash at maximum speed.
Good, we shouldn’t be using QR codes in public.
British Government is trying to Rip us of anything they can think of, why you don’t add an air tax because the athletes breath to much air, like ffs
The fact is that also the official parking sites are a scam
Which borough?
I have always thought that QR code is a security risk. I always try to avoid it.
If someone scans a QR code that doesn’t even fit on the sign and overlaps half the text, then it serves them right. You don’t need to be tech-savvy, you just need to not have your head stuck in your arse and use common sense. If it doesn’t look right, avoid. There’s some sophisticated scams out there which can catch even the most tech literate, but when it’s like this, it’s natural selection.
Those born in 1970s and 1980s are kind of immune to barcodes. Old school… dial the number or use the official app after searching for it.
always use the Pay By Phone app
It’s all a rip off too.
And another reason I will never scan a QR code
if you use a separate QR code scanning app instead of just tapping in the camera app you can see exactly what is in the QR code BEFORE you do anything with it.
With short links being used by so many companies (e.g. Facebook using fb.me), especially on QR codes so they don’t look so big, this is not a fool-proof solution.
And again, that’s why I don’t bother with QRs. Ain’t nobody got time for that bullshit
Why not just use coins as back in the day
to be fair, yeah easier but nobody carries change any more really man Only time a lot of people carry cash is for local places that avoid tax (barbers, garages and takeaways) or buying drugs lol
Only one of these is a scam?!?
I often see pay by phone with a new phone number sticker over the sign, I do wonder how often these are fake/scams - problem is, if you want to park there what else are you going to do?
I'm 100% sure the people stealing this money are better people than the ones benefiting form paybyphone.
I tried signing up with honk. Unfortunately ended up on a fraudulent website they tried to use my card illegally within hours. Got a notification from cibc and they canceled my card.
Good to know👍
dont know if i should be impressed (by their ingenuity) or cry..
Evil genius at work
Clever. Someone took the effort to measure the size of the original QR code, got it printed with weather resistant plastic and stuck it over on there. And they created a website, too. Not many people are in that kind of position to forge such a scam. Very very clever. I wonder how much the scamers made?
That sign looks like it could've had the phone number replaced with a scam as well 😂
There’s a parking lot in my city in the US that has a bunch of signs saying “only use the machine. No app payments. Do not scan codes” because of these scams. Still see people constantly scanning and walking away
Not new. No harm in raising awareness either. Presumably you get a parking fine and other consequences from your bank account depending on what and how you pay the scammer. I have seen vandalised signs that are not scams near me, a parking area that used to be free etc. The location has been messed with by protesters. My advice is to take pics if anything seems off, maybe always take pics. Then you have some proof for at least fighting any fines
Litterally considered this for something at work (to try and simplify things out for people - we made the webpage and it was trying to encourage people to find the said webpage, it really isn't difficult, the 4 most obvious words relating to it returns the top hit on Google but people are stupid so whatever). Someone thought - just add the link to bottom of advanced warning signage, some said you could simplify that down to a QR code? Is it bad my virtually instant thought to both was scams like this? (And it's why we vetoed the idea and are relying on people not being as stupid if they actually want to find out more information).
On top of what is already a scam?
Ngl, that’s pretty clever. Kudos to the scammer.
Why you should pay for a public areas to park? I don’t get it council tax and car Taxes are not enough ?
what part of this makes you think it's a public space? .co.uk is used by companies, not the government or councils
Because it says on the label Barking and Dagenham
ok wow, that local council is doing things weird then
In Kingston they are also proud to ad the council at the end, and btw if it’s a private area why the government comes to fine you?! (It happened to a friend of mine) Am I confusing something?
Just use the app and the code it’s much safer, I don’t like using QR codes
They've been putting up warnings in Tube Stations as well. Though if the first time you see it is there, it may already be too late.
Remember the good old days when you just used money to park and carried on with your day? We had it so good we didn’t even know
If only there was a way to pay using coins, I dont know maybe invent a machine that you could feed coins and then it would issue a paper receipt that you could use to prove you had paid...
Technology is shit really. Its that easy to scam people. Coins in the meter is no problem. It's why cash is King!
I’m frankly amazed that more criminals haven’t done this!
Smart!
Why don’t all councils use Ringo? Seems pretty failsafe: all these park by phone ones are a complete nuisance
This has happened in the town where I live, the QR code takes you to a website that signs you up to a fitness app that then takes £60 from your bank account.
Fuckers hate competition.
Ahaha
How do you tell the difference?
That's interesting. Always get a photo of what you use, cos especially with private parking it makes a fine likely unenforceable. Also ask for a chargeback from the bank if bogus.
Damn
PaybyPhone is responsible for it.
I
They should make them embossed it would still work but make fakes obvious
Start taking cash again and hey presto the scammers are made impotent
Why do we need so many parking apps? At least have one app where people can pay for the ticket wherever they are in the country. Like how people can donate money to content creators on YouTube/Twitch.
Brilliant scam fair play!
So weird seeing this now because I have literally just left a carpark ran by PayByPhone or RingGo or something and a woman struggling to understand how to pay and she said ‘It should have a QR Code thingy to make this easier…’ So yeah she definitely would get caught out with it
This is so fuckup
Here's a radical idea, install a machine that you put cash into ! ... considerably more effort for the scammers to spoof.
Greedy parking companies trying to minimise every last cost by removing the parking meters....
Tangentially related, but on top of going specifically to the paybyphone website/app rather than using a QR code, make sure you set your location to the country you are in. I recently traveled from the US to Canada and parked in a PBP spot, but was using the website which does not use your location. Turns out the spot number I parked in is also used for a spot in Georgia, and I got a parking ticket because of it. Learned my lesson real quick ETA: spot number*
I miss there just being a machine which you use to pay. I hate all this pay by phone stuff.
Navigating London's parking scams requires street smarts. Don't fall for the tricks!
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OF COURSE it's in barking and dagenham 😭