The next time you park at a meter or in a metered lot in Chula Vista — Lot 3b on Landis Avenue between Davidson and F streets for example — consider bringing a copy of the city’s municipal codes with you. That’s one of the lessons I came away with after spending a little more than a month trying to collect a whopping $4.05 from Ace Parking.
The parking lot behind The Star-News office on Third Avenue is a pay lot that at one time was monitored by individual parking meters but is now reigned over by a machine that dispenses parking permits the same cold, aloof way a soulless bureaucrat dispenses administrative decisions. It also is on city property and is administered by parking monolith Ace Parking Management Inc., which shares revenue with the city of Chula Vista.
I learned three things when my chubby finger zealously pushed buttons on the permit dispenser: 1) Unlike machines in San Diego, the machine in this lot allows customers only the option of adding time. So if, for example, you want to park for a mere 15 minutes but accidentally indicate 45 minutes, there is no way of subtracting time. If you are paying with a credit card, as I did, your card is charged for the time you did not want, need or use after you press the Print Receipt button. 2) Despite what the instructions explicitly tell you (Press print to complete transaction), a parking permit will be dispensed even if you do not press the Print Receipt button but you do reach a metered time threshold. 3) The red cancel button does not cancel the transaction no matter how many times you frantically press it, despite not pressing the Print Receipt button as a receipt you did not want prints even though you did not want to authorize the transaction.
A phone call and email to Ace that day should have cleared up the matter. It did not. Nor did another ignored email about 15 days later. Finally, after a query on social media this week to the city and Ace, someone did get in touch.
Essentially I was told that, as per the municipal code, there are no refunds for unused time and the machines do not offer a cancel feature once a transaction has been completed. But as a courtesy they’d refund my money. Oh, and, next time make sure of my parking needs before I pay for parking.
No refunds for unused time seems unfair but uanderstandable given the machine’s archaic limits. But if there is no cancel feature then why install a big red cancel button? And why does the machine process the exchange without my final authorization while not allowing me to cancel it?
There is no indication of no refunds on the machines and I have yet to find the no refund policy in the municipal code. But if I ever park in that lot or in a metered space in Chula Vista again I’ll have a copy of the muni code with me. Seems that will be the only way to know what the rules are to pay-to-park.
