Philadelphia Parking Authority Fixes Its Kiosks' Credit Card Glitch
By Jim Melwert and Steve Patterson
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The Philadelphia Parking Authority today fixed the ongoing technical issue that prevented its payment kiosks from taking credit or debit cards for a couple of days.
"I would like to apologize for this and ask the general public to be patient," said PPA Executive Director Vince Fenerty on Sunday after officials learned that a technical problem was preventing kiosks from accepting credit cards.
The problem started Friday and caused several drivers to get parking tickets.
On Sunday, parking officials called a holiday and stopped enforcement at the kiosks.
By Monday morning, the problem was fixed and drivers everywhere let out a sigh.
"It was terrible," one person said.
"I'm glad they got it fixed - that's great," agree another.
But what about the fallout?
For drivers parking on the street in Philadelphia today, they needed cash.
There was a free parking "holiday" in the city yesterday because of this glitch, but today the PPA had its street agents resuming normal ticketing.
PPA officials declined to speak to us on Monday, but they did say the glitch was a "transmission issue" and they're not sure how many people received tickets.
During the outage, the Parking Authority said they still needed to enforce the time limits because otherwise people would leave their cars in the spots all day with no turnover.
The PPA noted that its "smart cards" were also working, even though they stopped selling those earlier this year and they expire at the end of the month.
They also announced that anyone who got a parking ticket on Friday or Saturday because of the glitch can e-mail PPA customer service at sruiz@philapark.org.
The agency added this wasn't a security breach and all credit card information is safe.
But some Philadelphians expressed skepticism about the purported refund.
"When they say they're going to do one thing, it's usually the complete opposite," one person said.
"I'm skeptical," laughed another. "Show me first."