
Fix a Parking Ticket? There's an App for That - steven
https://medium.com/backchannel/fix-a-parking-ticket-theres-an-app-for-that-26efeedfd1fc
======
patio11
Wait until this isn't for parking tickets but rather for Social Security
disability determinations or VA mid-term disability determinations or Illinois
DOT public right-of-way ingress/egress waivers or...

Crystallized knowledge of how to play the bureaucracy game, in a box, backed
up by a pool of people you can grant e.g. Power of Attorney to is _freaking
brilliant_. If it helps, think of it as exposing a web/mobile UI to City Hall
without them having to figure out how to do that or upset stakeholders whose
jobs are created by Form 213B. Except it is even bigger than that implies.

~~~
icelancer
Please god, yes. The government will never solve its own bureaucracy. I am so
willing to pay a third party to do it for me.

~~~
scott_karana
So, let me get this straight. A byzantine, monetarily burdensome system is so
overwhelming that we should institute and pay _yet another system_ to "solve"
the problem?

Crazy.

~~~
twoodfin
The point is that it shifts the incentives: Previously, only a few cranks
would contest parking tickets—everyone else would either pay them or ignore
them—so issuing them had essentially no bureaucratic cost. Now, if every
citizen with a smartphone can make work for someone behind a desk at City
Hall, there's a substantially greater impulse to set parking enforcement
policy in a way that's fair and likely to survive scrutiny.

~~~
derobert
That's not the only incentive, unfortunately. The folks fixing tickets would
like there to be more invalid tickets issued; that's how they make money.
Worry about winding up with something line how Intuit (TurboTax) lobbies
against the IRS making tax filing easier.

[http://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-linked-
to-g...](http://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-linked-to-
grassroots-campaign-against-free-simple-tax-filing)

------
dfxm12
I know of cities that seem to be working actively against its residents with
arcane laws about when, where and who is allowed to park in a specific spot at
a specific time, so I'm glad someone is sticking up for the little guy.

However, I wish government was transparent enough that services like this
weren't needed. Why do I have to take a day off from work to fight a ticket
whose fee is (probably) worth less to me than a vacation day (first world
problem, I know)? I think I'm also lucky enough to have lived in a few cities
where I didn't feel that the parking authority is actively working against me.
I've gotten many parking tickets, and I can honestly say all but one were
justified...

That said, I am rather fond of this quote:

 _A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the
system works._ -Bill Vaughan

~~~
icelancer
> However, I wish government was transparent enough that services like this
> weren't needed

I do too, but the sooner we realize this is impossible, the sooner we can all
get over it and turn the responsibilities over to third party private
organizations.

~~~
rtpg
I think telecoms have proven that this hypothesis doesn't hold up very well.
Try unsubscribing from cable.

~~~
recursive
With cable, at least it's possible to never subscribe in the first place. That
doesn't work with governments.

~~~
rtpg
don't own a car/house/etc. and you can greatly reduce your interaction surface
with government.

At least in France the only interaction I have with the gov't is voting,
getting a letter to pay my habitation taxes, and having to renew my passport.

If you think it's unreasonable to not have a car, it might be unreasonable to
not have an internet connection too...

~~~
recursive
I think it's more reasonable to not have a car than it is to not have
internet, but that's probably a minority view. In any case, I have internet
access, but no cable subscription.

------
wdewind
So this whole thing reads as if it was written from the perspective of the
founders of Fixed, and is a story about how great their service is. Lot of
talk about Submarines[1] lately, over under on this being one?

[1]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

~~~
larrys
Regardless of the PR angle I found it valuable and it got me thinking of a few
similar ideas.

Also I don't think this compares to the "suits are making a comeback" at all
in the sense that it's at least a new and unique idea ... it's not a rehash
used strictly to manipulate the public.

------
larrys
As a concept this is a good idea and can be applied to righting other
"wrongs".

For example there have always been companies that will audit utility bills for
companies (and possibly individuals) but they are not widely known to the
general public.

If you make it easy for people they would almost certainly take a snap of
their utility bill and let someone else do the work in exchange for a cut of
the refund.

For one thing the company doing the work knows the lay of the land. They know
exactly what to look for and aren't going to spin their wheels. They don't
have to spend time learning.

But there is another dynamic going on here as well. Similar in a way to why
people do garage sales when the net revenue in many cases doesn't exceed the
effort. The reason is they'd rather get $2.00 or even .50c for something
rather than throwing it out. It's not about the money in other words.
(Likewise you'd rather give away for free to someone rather than throwing out
because to your brain that feels like karma..)

With this type of service better that someone takes up your cause and allows
you to feel that you did something rather than feel like a, for lack of a
better way to put it, a schmuck who did nothing.

I can see a wide range of possibilities for these "justice" or even "advocate"
as a service ideas.

~~~
icelancer
Definitely, you hit the nail on the head. These services are usually
spearheaded by people who can make a fair bit of money, but probably not as
much if they turned their efforts towards other things. But they get great
satisfaction by solving a real problem - government stupidity - and that's
worth a lot.

Actually that explains why I am no longer a data scientist and why I work in
sports science now, making 40% of my previous salary.

------
tzs
I don't get the tie to libertarianism the article tries to make. The service
seems no more libertarian to me than any other service that provides
assistance in dealing with a government agency.

I wouldn't call H&R Block "libertarian", for example, for helping people
minimize what they pay in taxes. Fixed is not doing anything fundamentally
different from what H&R Block does--they are just dealing with a different
government and different agency.

I am curious about how they actually represent their clients at a traffic
ticket hearing. Does traffic ticket court allow people to be represented by
non-lawyers, or does Fixed send a lawyer to actual appear to contest the
ticket?

~~~
Guvante
Given their webpage says explicitly that it is not an attorney client
relationship I doubt they will represent you in court.

What could happen is they give you all the information you need to show up to
your court date and listen to their channels for how it went.

~~~
tzs
I did some searching, and apparently there are three levels of contesting an
SFMTA ticket.

1\. You submit your objection to the ticket and supply supporting evidence,
and they accept or reject it.

2\. If rejected, you can try again at an administrative hearing.

3\. If that fails, you can go to Superior Court.

Only #2 and #3 require the presence of you or a representative. Presumably,
Fixed works at the #1 level only.

------
dmritard96
“The incentives are all messed up,” says Hegarty. Cities have come to rely on
parking tickets as a source of sorely needed revenue, he explains. The more
parking tickets, the better the budget numbers."

This also applies to them given their business model.

~~~
mikeash
It does, but at least they don't have a conflict of interest from making,
enforcing, and profiting from the rules all at once.

------
jrochkind1
You always could hire a lawyer to help you contest parking tickets, and the
lawyer always (or at least for decades now) could choose to charge you on
contingency only if you won.

I guess what Fixed has done is figure out a way to use technology to make this
business model financially feasible for the legal firm. Or at least they think
they have. We'll see.

Oh, except someone else in the thread says Fixed tries to tell you it's not an
attorney-client relationship, so perhaps they don't have lawyers involved. I'd
expect if they become succesful enough that the city doesn't like them, then,
the city will try to argue that what they are doing is practicing law without
a license. It's odd to me that they don't get some lawyers on staff and say,
sure, it's a legal service; have to think through what the problems for their
business would be there, not sure, but maybe the challenges of complying with
legal standards for legal services are riskier than then the threat of someone
succesfully arguing you practicing law without a license.

Presumably they their own legal advice on their business model, for the
business where they say they aren't giving their customers legal advice. Or is
it just another Uber approach "If we get succesful enough, we can convince
people that existing laws don't apply if you make an app... cause...
internet?"

~~~
zyxley
I'm guessing their power of attorney is (despite the name) specifically
constructed so that they're acting directly as a proxy for you rather than in
the capacity of of a lawyer. It's organized by a company, but the intent seems
to be for it be legally identical to you paying a friend who knows city hall
_really well_ to go go send in some forms for you.

There's no legal advice involved, too, as far as I can tell. They give you a
percentage chance of successfully fighting the ticket (I wonder how they
determine that?), but after that it's basically a black box process: they
handle everything for you, and you find out at the end if they were successful
or not.

There's also "this service is not available in the State of Georgia" in the
footer, which is both interesting and suggests they've done their homework on
this, since you wouldn't see a disclaimer for a market they're not even in yet
if they hadn't. I'm curious why Georgia is unavailable - maybe something to do
with power of attorney law there?

~~~
jrochkind1
I'm not entirely sure it would be legal for a friend who is not a licensed
lawyer to take your money to (choose, fill out, and) send in forms for you.

------
dsugarman
huge fan, can't wait for traffic camera support across the US which is one of
the biggest impediments on our 4th Amendment rights in our country's young
history.

------
petercooper
So I'm assuming Fixed made $76 in this case (4 x $76 tickets were dismissed,
so 25% = $76) but the article says only 20-30% are actually dismissed (so only
20-30% of tickets result in income for Fixed?) and, well, it could have been a
single $76 ticket with a mere $19 potential payday..

How does it financially make sense to run a company like Fixed? I'm intrigued,
and probably making false assumptions, so correct me ;-)

~~~
ianferrel
There are probably very high fixed costs in successfully contesting tickets.
You have to fill out a form. You have to understand how it works. You have to
know what the laws are, and what a likely avenue to contest is. You probably
have to mail or physically hand the form in.

For many people, it's not worth the effort. It might be hours of work for a
relatively small gain.

For the company, they can catalog the institutional knowledge required, then
very quickly assess whether a given ticket falls into one of the categories
they know how to contest, print out the form automatically, then mail or
submit them in bulk.

700 tickets a week * 0.70 contested * 0.20-.30 won * $76/ticket * .25 fee * 52
weeks = $97-145k/year revenue.

Looks like they're just two founders right now, so that's not unreasonable.

------
boxcardavin
I've been on the numbered waitlist for Seattle for 6 months or so, it hasn't
budged. Meh.

------
chipgap98
Something like this for speeding tickets would be fantastic. The assumption is
that most people don't have the time to deal with appealing a lot of these
violations. It would give the average person another good option if they
decide to fight a speeding ticket.

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analog31
>>> Wait until this isn't for parking tickets but rather for Social Security
disability determinations or VA mid-term disability determinations or Illinois
DOT public right-of-way ingress/egress waivers or...

... or criminal indictments.

~~~
zyxley
At that point you're moving from bureaucratic processes to legal ones, though,
and the expense skyrockets because of requirements for things like bar
certifications.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
Still waiting for the app that enables the comeback of the meter maids.

------
thrownaway2424
Great, so now you can outsource being an asshole? This guy needs to suck it
up, pay his tickets, read the signs, and stop driving and parking like a
moron. Best approach for people who absolutely cannot be bothered to read and
follow the rules would probably be to sell the car and join a car sharing
service where the parking spaces are dedicated.

~~~
Karunamon
That cuts both ways, you realize? The guy in the article got his tickets
killed because the _moronic_ city _broke the law_ by not having the signage
posted correctly:

> _Fixed came through. The startup couldn’t do anything about the street
> cleaning ticket, but after reviewing some Google Street View pictures of the
> scene of the parking ticket crime, one of Fixed’s full-time “advocates”
> determined that the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA) had not
> complied with California state law specifying where parking signage must be
> placed._

The city needs to _suck it up_ and follow their own laws if they're going to
levy stealth taxes on people.

Live by the law, die by the law.

~~~
zippergz
It doesn't say he parked there because he thought it was legal due to the
signs. It says he parked there because he "forgot his car." The incorrect
signage was a technicality that allowed him to get out of paying the ticket.

~~~
Karunamon
And? The tickets were therefore unjustified.

Live by the law, die by the law.

