Communicating with City Councillor about EasyPark Wrongly Ticketing Customers in Vancouver

I was issued violation tickets and fines after I had paid for parking properly at the meter at a Public Pay Park operated by EasyPark on Jan. 09, 2024. The photo above shows the ticket I found on my windshield, beside the parking receipt I had received from the meter. 

Two Wrong Tickets, How is that Impossible?

When I appealed the ticket on EasyPark website, I found that I had been issued two tickets from different parking lots at approximately the same time, one at 18: 18 and the other at 18: 25 on January 9, although I had paid for parking with a receipt time-stamped at 18:15. Easypark posted photographs of my car on their website parked in the same location for the two tickets with two fines from different parking lots.  

The photo below shows the two online violation citations they issued at around the same time from two parking lots at Richards Street and Seymour Street, respectively. I never received the first physical ticket because my car had never been in that location.  

Wrongly Ticketing Customers is a Systematic Problem with EasyPark

A search on the internet shows getting a ticket after paying for a permit properly at the meter is not an uncommon experience with EasyPark. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) website shows more than seventy complaints against this outfit over the last 12 months. 

One common complaint is ticketing customers who have paid for parking properly and refusing to rescind the tickets when confronted with evidence. The TripAdvisor website labels Easypark a "scam outfit". 

However, receiving a ticket from a parking lot that I had never visited seems to be unique. Here is a video of the two tickets I got on Jan. 09.

Reaching out to the City of Vancouver

Further internet searches show unconfirmed information that EasyParks seems to be closely associated with the City of Vancouver. At the very least, it seems to be contracted by the city to manage public parking spaces and should receive oversight from the city. If the city of Vancouver associates itself with and benefits from a business entity with questionable business practices, it should be held accountable.  

I sent emails to Vancouver City Council Members on the morning of Jan. 12. In my email, I explained the wrongly issued parking tickets and asked the City Council Members to clarify for me the relationship between the city of Vancouver and EasyPark, and the city's responsibility for oversight over the practice of EasyPark. I also asked whether the City was aware of the numerous complaints and disputes filed against EasyPark for its unscrupulous practices at the Better Business Bureau, TripAdvisor, Google Reviews, and Yelp.  

A few hours after I sent my email, I got response from a "the council representative on the EasyPark board," co-signed with his assistant. He was sympathetic and supportive but seemed to put the situation lightly. 

"....sorry to hear it appears you were mistakenly issued a violation ticket. Occasionally mistakes happen but I understand your frustration and concern. " 

He said he had "asked their senior staff to reach out and respond to you directly." I wrote back to the City Council Member to beg to respectfully disagree with his assessment that what had happened was an occasional mistake. The issue is systematic and known. The DailyHive reported on this issue in June 2023, in which the EasyPark admitted the known problem with their paying system but made no mention of any plan or effort to resolve the issue. The message to the public seems to be clear, “suck it up.” In my opinion, that is unfair and irresponsible. At the very least, customers should have the right to know what kind of a deal they are getting into before making the decision to use one of the EasyPark facilities. Based on my experience and reports in the media, the company has the obligation to inform the public of its policies, which seem to be the following. 

“After you have paid for parking at the meter properly, within a time window of 10 minutes, there is still a possibility for you to receive a violation ticket due to a bug in our paying system. Should this happen, it is your responsibility to appeal online at our website, which will take ten business days to process, or pay the fine, or suffer the consequences of missing payment, including having your vehicle towed and your information sent to debt collectors. EasyPark will not take the initiative to detect or correct such mistakes on its part. By using this parking facility, you agree to take this risk.” 

This policy should be stated in an announcement and displayed in a readily visible location in their parking lots for the public to see. By not disclosing such a systematic risk before a business transaction, EasyPark has failed to respect customers' rights.

I urged the City Council Member to address the public interest and government accountability issues that I raised in my initial email. I urged him/her again to enlighten me about the relationship between EasyPark and the city of Vancouver, as well as the responsibility of the city in regulating and governance of EasyPark. I asked Council Member's opinion about what can be done to allow the public to be informed about the systematic risk of being wrongly issued violation tickets after paying for parking permits correctly, which seems to be a basic and rudimentary right given to customers in a decent country like Canada. 

I have not received any response to my second email from the City Councilor. 

The Mystery of Two Tickets for the Same Car at the Same Time

On Jan. 13th, I received an email from EasyPark Customer Service, acknowledging that the tickets were wrongly issued and telling me that they had canceled those tickets. The reason they gave for issuing the wrong tickets was a "time delay" between the meter and the patroller's scanner, the same reason given to the DailyHive Urbanized reporter last June. Their explanation of the fact that I was wrongly issued two violation tickets, not one, was more unsettling. Based on EsayPark’s descriptions, when the patroller noticed that the first ticket was issued with a wrong location, s/he simply replaced it with another ticket, without canceling the first. The logic behind this procedure seems to be that if you give a customer one wrong ticket, you add another one and keep the first one in the system. This way the customer still has to pay the wrong ticket or suffer the consequences of missing a payment. I wrote back to EasyPark and asked whether that practice was based on company policy/protocol or the spontaneous personal decision of one patroller.  Ten days later on Jan. 22 I received the following response for EasyPark Customer Service. 

"The patrollers are not authorized to cancel any violations once issued. If they issue one in error, they are required removed the incorrect violation and submit a report with all the details for review. Once our team has received this report and confirmed the error, we would void the violation and would not appear as outstanding. In this situation we were not able locate this report and are following up with the security company to ensure that the appropriate protocols are being followed when violations are issued in error. This is our expectation for  all Enforcement officers when conducting their patrols at all our sites."

I will update the situation as it unfolds.