Downtown Parking Using Some (Purposely?) Misleading Tactics

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what happened when I got back from Spain there,
Mattie boy, Huh, I had a ticket from the city
of Omaha. Eh I, Okay, here's the story. My wife's
brother had a birthday. He lives in Omaha as well,
and my wife's brother we took him out for a
dinner and then we went downtown. I followed his car
and we wanted to, you know, go drinking and stuff

(00:21):
down in the Old Market. He lives next to that.
He's in like that brickline building, a really nice building
down there, right. So I was sitting there, right, and
you pull in and it's hard to find parking down there,
especially like a Friday night, you know what I'm saying. Right,
So I couldn't find a spot like on the street
to park. And I was just like, you know what,
I'll just follow him into his parking garage and I'll

(00:41):
just park there something like that, right, And it looks
like they have prices on the board down there of like, hey,
if you park in here, you owe us this amount
of money kind of thing, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, Well,
usually when you go to parking garage, what do you
notice in those paid lots. What's the first thing that
happens to you when you pull into one of those?
You gotta take a ticket. You got to take a ticket.

(01:03):
There's like an arm that stops you from going in there,
and you press the button, it spits a ticket out.
You grab the ticket, and then you like carry the
ticket with you or you put it on your dash
or whatever you do with it, and then you go
about your merry way until you're done and you're ready
to leave, and then what do you do? And then
you pay for your ticket at the end as you're
pulling out. Usually there's like a machine there that you
put the ticket into or scan the ticket, and then

(01:27):
the machine will tell you how much you owe. That
arm won't let you out usually until you've paid the
money with you know, these days, it's easy to do
it with a card, like a credit card, and you
just like think, you know, just like that, and then
the arm lifts once you're paid and you're on your
merry way. How many times have you done that in
your life? Hundreds? It's pretty I think, pretty routine situation. Yeah, well,

(01:49):
my situation this parking garage underneath the brick line. And
again I'm not trying to villainize anybody here. I'm just
trying to explain what my scenario is and what my
beef is. The arm. There is no arm. If there
is an arm, it's not down. All right, You're able
to drive right in. I see the prices there, and
I see that it's like you're supposed to pay for it,
just like you're supposed to pay when you're on the street.
You know, until nine pm in the streets in Omaha,

(02:11):
you're supposed to pay for your parking. Otherwise you can
get a ticket. Well, nobody's going through these parking garages
given tickets as far as I know. So I pull in.
There's no place to just press a button and get
a ticket, you know what I'm saying. You're saying you
just drive in and then you can find a place
to park. I parked, and I'm like, wow, I'm surprised
they don't have to take a ticket or anything. I
don't know how this works down here, but it has
prices outside, but it doesn't have any obvious way in

(02:32):
which to like tell the machine how long you've been there.
You know what I'm saying, Yeah, following, I'm following you.
I got a letter from the City of Omaha saying
you owe us two dollars two dollars for you parking
down there before nine pm. They caught me on camera. Ooh,
and then because it took a processing fee for them
to find that mail it to me. I don't know

(02:55):
how they're doing this. They're charging me ten additional dollars
for them filing it that way. So I owe them
twelve dollars for me parking there for probably fifteen minutes
or so before nine pm. Twelve dollars. Oh that processing fee, Yeah,
somebody had to process in. I don't even know how
you find that. First of all, I'm not trying to
actively break the rules, but there's nothing in there that

(03:16):
makes it clear and obvious how you're supposed to pay
for your parking, So that, like, am I wrong for
kind of being a little peeved at this? Not trying
to make the City of Omaha. The people that designed
that parking garage, are the people that operate that parking garager,
the people who enforced the parking garage's rules. Not to
try to make them sound like bad guys, but this
sounds like it's designed to be a trap for people.

(03:37):
It does there's no obvious way. Like I pulled in,
I looked around. There wasn't a spot to get a ticket.
The arm was up. You drive right in, you park,
the arm was up for me to leave. A couple
hours later, I got my car, I left. There's nothing
there that prompts me to pay nothing. And then I
get a letter a couple of weeks later that I
owe them two dollars and now I owe them ten

(03:57):
additional dollars for them to as they found me on
camera that I did not pay because they had a
process at what's so hard about doing this in a
way that I know exactly how I'm supposed to pay you,
and I want to know about this processing? How do
they even find me? How do they even know that
I didn't pay for this?

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Like?

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Did I know they can see like your license plate,
but and they can see it that I came in
and I came out, But who's even looking for that?
Did they have to like, oh, did anybody with this
license plate like pay for parking down there? And the
answer was no, So maybe there's like an easier way
for them to figure that out. I don't know, man,
But am I wrong for being a little upset about this.
I don't think so. I want to follow the rules.
I have no problem paying you two dollars to park through.

(04:35):
I'm not trying to actively break the rules. You have
made it very difficult for me to understand what I'm
supposed to do to pay you. How is that my
problem unless you're trying to track people instead of me
paying two dollars for parking down there, Now you got
me for twelve dollars because you had to process it
or your AI software had to process it. Oh, so
we're paying for so what do we pay in the

(04:56):
little robot junior's salary to go to college? What are
we doing here? Isn't this very similar to like those
speed cameras right that they kind of put on different spots.
They tell you where they are, but if you're not
paying attention to the right sources, you're not gonna know
where they are, and you're getting caught like one over
the over, like you shouldn't be speeding. But if you're
going like eight or nine over, some of those cameras
will just bang. They get you real quick, real quick like,

(05:18):
and there's no getting out of those tickets. Yeah, I
don't know. Some doesn't sit right with me on this
if anybody's had a similar situation, And again I'm not
here to bash on the parking system. I think the
City of Omaha does a very good job with that
app that they have now for you just to be
able to like search the spot that you're parking in,
say that you're parking there. You can do it all
through the app and you know, park your car for

(05:38):
however long you need. I think they do it very well.
That parking garage is a mess. Put an arm down,
make it obvious how you're supposed to pay them. That
is not easy down there, nor is it obvious that
you're even supposed to pay for anything. I've never seen
a parking garage ding you like this that didn't have
an arm there to try to tell you, hey, you're
gonna have to pay for this when you come in now.

(06:00):
So there was no sign that indicated that you had
to pay. Well, there was a sign that I looked
like there were prices there, but it didn't look like
it was active because the arm wasn't down. It just
let me come in and go out right like every
other parking garage I've ever parked in that I was
supposed to pay. Either had a person up front that
was like, hey, it costs this much to get in here.
It's like sometimes for an event or something, they'll say

(06:22):
it's ten dollars to park in here for the event tonight,
and then you pay them ten dollars up front. They'd
let you in. They manually open the gate for you,
and then you go in, and then the gate is
open when you come out, so you can leave. You
know what I'm saying. Yeah, but this wasn't like that.
If there's not a person there, usually there's an arm
there and you get a ticket so they know when
you've come in. That was not the case this time.
If somebody else has a better answer on this, or

(06:42):
you've experienced something like this yourself, four roho two five
five eight to eleven ten, four H two five five
eight to eleven ten, News Radio eleven ten KFAB And
there wasn't any obvious way to know that I was
supposed to pay to park in there in the first place.
Michelle's on a phone line of four roh two five
to five, eight to eleven ten, Michelle, what's on your
mind today?

Speaker 3 (06:59):
Yeah, I got caught by the same thing and I
ended up having to pay the parking fine. I didn't
even know I was supposed to have paid anything. It's
just as you described. Yeah, it's completely blind to the
user what you are.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Supposed to do, right, And I mean all of this
could be resolved if there was just like instructions or
like an arm that would not let you in er out,
so you know specifically that yes, I have to pay somewhere,
then at least I can look for the place I'm
supposed to pay, or how I'm supposed to pay. I
don't know.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
And I would have been happy to pay three dollars
or five dollars right exactly, and the fine I had
to pay. But the city is making exponentially more money
doing it the way.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
That they're exactly they're getting us, which is what really
angers me even more. It's almost set up like a
trap to get us like this. Michelle, I'm hearing you
one hundred percent. I really appreciate you calling in Roger's
on our phone line of four h two, five, five,
eight eleven ten. Roger, what do you think you.

Speaker 4 (07:56):
They were able to track you down as they ran
you to and cic on the camera system and just
lay the City of Omaha.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
That was how they were able to get your address, right,
And I mean, I'm also in the app. I don't
know if it's the same app. If they could explain
that I can pay in a parking garage like that,
if there was a way to tell them where I
was in the app, I'd pay on the app. I'm
registered on the app, so there's a chance that they
I have to, like you register your car and vehicle
with the city anyway, So they were able to figure

(08:23):
out where we were and that's probably what took it
two and a half weeks. But I don't know. Roger.
To me, it's still I'm still not a big fan
of the way that they're doing this. Teresa's on the line. Teresa,
thanks for the call.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
What do you think, Well, I don't have any dealings
with Omaha parking, But in Kansas now, when you go
over the toll roads, m hmm, they don't have anybody
taking money anymore, right, so they just get your license plate,
look it up, and send you a bill. But then
they put a service.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Fee on top of that, right, And this is I
hate this too, Teresa, And I appreciate that moment because
I have a lot of people that are sending me
emails about that. That's another thing Spain gets right as well.
There's a toll road. The only way to get to
indoors through a toll road on and there's a highway there.
It's really it's a beautiful place. But I got to
tell you. You have no choice but to stop and
then pay, and you can pay with a card. It

(09:08):
tells you how much it is. You tap your card,
it'll say you've paid this, thank you for your patronage.
You can get your receipt, and then it opens the
arm and lets you go. There is no confusion about
driving through that and the cameras and all that stuff.
You don't have to worry about that because you have
no choice but to stop and pay, and it tells
you your instructions when you get there. Somehow Spain, in
a different language, made it more clear about how to

(09:29):
pay for a toll road than any place I've been
on a toll road in America. Weird how that works.
Mike's on the line, real quick, Mike, you got thirty seconds.
What's up?

Speaker 4 (09:38):
Just real quick for tomorrow's debate. I hope Jade Vance
ask Tim Wallas about his tige the communist China. He's
made a lot of your trips with students there, bought
a lot of mouths little red books. So I think
it's a big intelligence concern and security rip.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
Interesting. Thanks Mike, I appreciate you bringing that up. We'll
of course talk plenty about that debate tomorrow night tomorrow
ahead of the debate, and have plenty preview on that
as well. Yeah, it's four fifty five. We're gonna come back.
We're going to talk to Shawn Callahan recapping another Husker win.
Off to a good start this year, everybody. We'll talk
about that coming up, So stick around. You're listening to

(10:14):
Emory Songer along with my friend Matt Case on news
radio eleven tin Kfab