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Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Maribor, Slovenia.
Portoroz, Slovenia.
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Clever girl…
The city of Maribor recently installed new parking meters in its perpetually overcrowded city center. From the outside these things seem perfectly normal. It’s only when you come closer that you realize that they:
1) Do not give back change. (Unlike, say, the coffee machine at work, which is about ten years older but somehow still technologically superior.)
2) Do not accept anything less than 10 cents. (i.e. any of the brown coins)
3) Charge 80 cents/hour (minimum) or €1.60 (maximum)
The third part is the key to their fiendish beauty, because how often do you have exactly 80 cents in change? I’ll tell you often: never. Well, almost never. To insert 80 cents you need at least three coins. (50 + 20 + 10) However, since most people probably lack that combination, they’re forced to dump in one euro and overpay by 25%.
It’s brilliant. Really. Like all great cons, it took me a few seconds to realize what the machine was doing to me. But when I did figure out, I was filled with a certain reverence. Do you remember that one scene from the movie Jurassic Park, when that one idiot is out hunting raptors but suddenly realizes that they’ve outwitted him?
“Clever girl”: A perfect metaphor for me and Maribor’s parking meters.
That’s exactly how I felt. Except that instead of getting shredded, I just put a euro in the machine.
However: when I went to the city yesterday the sums had been changed. (It demanded 40 cents for an hour) I’m not sure why this was so but I’m still impressed. I had to put in 50 cents, which is still a 25% overcharge.
Clever girl.
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Don’t bother with parking meters. Carefully read this article till the end:
www.vest.si/2007/01/zastonj-parkiranje/
Matej: I used to do the trick of leaving a paper out on the windshield. But from what I’ve heard, it no longer works.
@MM: “But from what I’ve heard, it no longer works.”
I’ve never heard it has been revoked. But I am not really acquainted with all that. I’ll try it next time. But I usually use bicycle. To park it is (still) free.
I once got a ticket for wrong parking in Portorož. Two people adviced me, what to do:
1) “Leave the ticket, where it is. They won’t add another one then.” (Would have failed, because in the evenings the cars there had such things attatched to the wheel that prevent you from driving away)
2) “Throw it away. It would be too much work for them to make you pay. At least my dad did so when we were still Yugoslavia.” Hmm, interesting.
Ha, apparently Maribor bought the same parking meters as Ljubljana did… that means no change back… Though the price in LJ for one hour is 60 cents…
However, don’t know whether this works also in Maribor… But if you still have some 1 tolar coins, you could be lucky… (they were recognized as 20 cents coins). I guess, more difficult than finding a working parking meter, would be finding our old 1 tolar coins..
Yes, you could outwit this clever girl…
Though in the long run she will beat you…
The 2 SIT trick doesn’t work anymore, sadly…
However, if you feel like taking on the entire Mestna obÄ?ina Maribor you might point out that there is no price list on the machine although there must be one whenever you are being charged for a service. Otherwise charging for a service is illegal.
They could implement a smartcard for pocket money… Recharge from your account in bankomat, up to a normal maximum ammount (50-100 €), and pay with it. Should be easier than adapting coins every now and then, and no need to give change.
In Spain it was recently deemed illegal (which sadly doesn’t mean they will all stop doing it) to charge by big periods instead of exact time, both in closed parkings and mobile phones. Open parkimeters are borderline impossible to control the exact time, though.
Hey, this is Slovenia, remember? It is sacrelige to even think about connecting two systems that basically do the same thing! No, nyet, non and nein!
I heard that if you park on the sidewalk, it’s free. Plus you get a free kitten.
Which would explain a lot.
But how can they take money that does not have its cover on the bill? Shouldn’t this money be listed somewhere in order for them to get correctly taxed? This is a beginning of a new tax fraud affair!
Maybe Siemens produced some of these machines before they found out it is forbidden to automatically keep the change in Germany, so they quickly sold them to other countries…
alcessa… good point!!!
It happened similar with Telekom and its ISDN. Telekom payed a lot for a technology that was outdated, and that “obstructed” a development of ADSL for a few years… But OK, some companies profited… and as Telekom is governemental, lets say that we all profited… ha, interesting assumption…
@A. Medved: Not a kitten… A fox!
As far as I know, we have the same thing in Germany - I think I had to overpay my parking time in Stuttgart-Stammheim recently, because I didn’t have smaller coins. And the machine was different from the one in picture.
here’s the ultimate solution for such problems with parking fees: link
Since it is mostly gentlemen that worry about parking here, I would suggest a appropriate gender-relevant ultimate solution.
I was recently in Bratislava/Slovenia uf Slovakia. There was a similar machine at the hotel parking. When you overpayed (e.g. 200SKK instead of 120) it felt like you won a Jackpot … those coins were falling out like crazy
However, it felt fair play.
I’m wondering who was the seller of those machines in MB?
ok, someone who took “fuck parking fees” too literally. The only thing you might solve that way is wether you want children or not…
2 years of French lessons with a real Française as teacher makes me rather think about something like this
… you pay 40 cents to park in town? in the small swedish town (60,000 ppl) in which I live it’s €1.60 MINIMUM… and we should not even mention Stockholm…
still, all parking meters are evil, and I really hope you’ll all profit from them not giving back change…
Parking meters at Maribor Hospital give out change… Too bad they didn’t use the same for the rest of the city…
I remember these parking meters from the Netherlands. But I don’t see your problem, unless these work differently. If you put in one euro, you just get more parking time, so how often do you really want to park exactly one hour? To paraphrase you: never. But if it is only possible to park either one hour or two hours, and nothing in between, then consider this comment as not written.