ParkWhiz Scam

Introduction

ParkWhiz is an e-parking service that allows users to book parking spaces before reaching their destinations. This sounds like a good application for travelers driving to highly populated cities and it looks like that it can save you money based on the prices it listed. However, it is a scam and it is very possible that you would pay without getting the service.

In this blog post, I would like to discuss my bad experiences with ParkWhiz.

ParkWhiz Scam

Finding parking space in highly populated cities, such as San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, with reasonable price is extremely difficult. ParkWhiz, the parking space reservation application, allows the user to reserve the parking space in advance with a discounted price.

I planned my trip to San Francisco a few weeks ago for the Fleet Weekend activities. Because I knew parking in San Francisco would be extremely difficult, especially during such a popular event, I reserved a parking space from 9AM to 9PM at the Hotel Zephyr Garage through ParkWhiz and prepaid $25 for the service.

On the day of the event, I arrived at the garage at 12:00PM but was told that the garage was full and I had to leave. I was extremely astonished that they sold my prepaid parking space to other people and it was also possible that the garage was full was a lie. It was possible that I could not find a new parking space during such a popular event and my trip plan would be totally ruined. Fortunately, I found another parking lot which was not full after 30 minutes and paid $50 for parking.

Later, I contacted ParkWhiz. I told them the Hotel Zephyr Garage did not honor the prepaid reservation and I wanted my money back. ParkWhiz confirmed a couple of things with me but there was no follow-up anymore, no matter how many times I had contacted them afterwards.

I started to realize that ParkWhiz might just be a scam and ParkWhiz and some of the parking lots can scam together. ParkWhiz charges the customer for reservation. However, it is possible that ParkWhiz would never notify the parking lot that the parking space was reserved or ParkWhiz might not even have collaboration with the parking lot and was selling fake parking spaces. Once you paid for the reservation on ParkWhiz, no matter whether you parked or not, you could not get your money back. The parking lots can dishonor the reservation as well. They could sell the reserved parking space for a higher price and reject the customer that reserved it. By means of this, they earned money by selling one parking space to at least two customers.

Conclusions

Do not use ParkWhiz or any such kind of services anymore! We could also report such kind of scams to Federal Trade Commission.