Parking charges going up on Irish Rail

SeanW

Just a heads-up - I got an email from Irish Rail's Park-By-Text service today that Irish Rail is hiking its parking charges to €4 nationwide if you pay with cash, to €3 if you use their park-by-text service. Day parking charges at Connolly, Heuston and Cork-Kent are also going up by €1 in both cases.

BTW unless you're a frequent but irregular user, I wouldn't bother with park-by-text because I siged up for the stupid thing thinking it was like I could just pay for parking by texting a premium rate number or something. But no, it's one of those serivces where you have to keep a balance on it and pay-by-text from that. Stupid. And stupid parking charges too :mad:

SeanW

Whoops, forgot to mention, the increase is coming into effect on the 15th.

road_high

Another reason not to travel by rail then...

Grandeeod

road_high wrote: »

Another reason not to travel by rail then...

Probably. But the Irish attitude to recession in general is jack up the price. That said, it appears to be in certain businesses and a lot of them ultimately fail.

shamwari

Another shining example of knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Thank God I moved from the train years ago. It's Irish Rail and their car park bedfellows taking the pish again...:mad:

bk

I don't understand why all these parking services don't have a mobile app where smartphone users can pay directly via a website.

Lets be honest, if you own a car, can afford €3 per day in parking and a train ticket, I'd be shocked if you didn't have a smart phone.

SeanW

What I do not understand is why the "park by text" system is not radically simpler, offering you the option to pay for parking out of your phone credit.

For example they could have had a premium rate number that costs €2, soon to be €3 to send a text to, (or a number of texts as the case may be) with the car park number and your car reg, and boom you've paid for parking that day. The current system is just totally pointless for occasional users.

bk

I've looked into this and the reason such services don't do this is that these premium rate numbers cost a great deal.

Like 60c of a €2 text!

So the system they use instead typically costs far less per text.

BTW it turns out they do have a website and app and that you can pay online directly using your credit or debit card.

shamwari

bk wrote: »

I don't understand why all these parking services don't have a mobile app where smartphone users can pay directly via a website.

Lets be honest, if you own a car, can afford €3 per day in parking and a train ticket, I'd be shocked if you didn't have a smart phone.

Park by text have an app. Irrespective of affordability of a smartphone for someone who drives, parks and rides via the train, the fact is that this increase is excessive, disapprortionate and with no apparent justifcation. If I am right, daily parking via the machine has gone up 100% in two years. Its a joke and totally flys in the face of the "Park and Ride" concept. Worse still, that concept seems to gravitated towards "Park and Rob" with those sized increases :mad:

bk wrote: »

I've looked into this and the reason such services don't do this is that these premium rate numbers cost a great deal.

Like 60c of a €2 text!

So the system they use instead typically costs far less per text.

BTW it turns out they do have a website and app and that you can pay online directly using your credit or debit card.

You have to create an account online with the parkbytext app and top it up by a minimum fixed amount (usually a tenner) and then purhcase your parking with that. There's no use of the SMS text medium with this and therefore no additional charges.

bk

shamwari wrote: »

You have to create an account online with the parkbytext app and top it up by a minimum fixed amount (usually a tenner) and then purhcase your parking with that. There's no use of the SMS text medium with this and therefore no additional charges.

While I haven't gone through an order fully as I've no need of the service, looking online it seems you can pay online without creating an account and for just one €2 period.

https://apps.parkbytext.com/accountie/prepay.htm

Maybe someone who uses this can try it out and report back.

SeanW

Then how about a system where you register, store details of a credit card plus your car reg, then "park by text" by sending the car park code or whatever.

It's this stored balance setup that makes the sysetem IMHO unsuitable for periodic users.

lil5

shamwari wrote: »

... If I am right, daily parking via the machine has gone up 100% in two years. Its a joke and totally flys in the face of the "Park and Ride" concept. ...

This was the old discussion about the increase from 2 to 3 Euro (regular price) - http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=75993819

As the regular price will be 4 Euro you're spot on with the 100%.