More than 4,000 Red Deer residents have, so far, provided feedback on the city's new downtown pay parking system.
The survey has been available on the City of Red Deer's website since April 15 is getting a much bigger community response than most surveys, said Amy Fengstad, the city's parking and licensing supervisor.
This is likely because many residents have had issues with the new HotSpot app or pay stations.
Although Fengstad hasn't yet read all of the public comments — the survey closes on Wednesday, May 8 — she said the city is already taking action on some complaints about the new system.
Modems on pay stations were upgraded to improve connectivity, she added. New antennas were installed inside these units, which means that pay stations should be reading credit or debit card information better, Fengstad added.
Many public complaints had centred on people's payment cards being rejected by pay stations that couldn't read them, or that connections with Wi-Fi or the internet were taking a very long time.
The City of Red Deer also added an alert to their website (reddeer.ca/parking) warning residents with ShawOpen as their internet provider, to turn their Wi-Fi off in their phone's Settings while setting up a parking session with the HotSpot app.
For some unknown reason, ShawOpen is not interacting well with the app, said Fengstad. Shaw customers trying to set up a parking session on HotSpot will see their phone's modem circling and not connecting unless they turn off the Wi-Fi. They can turn it back on when their transaction is complete.
Some Red Deerians are complaining of being scammed when using a QR code to pay for parking.
If using a "fast-tap" sign, the City of Red Deer advises using the camera on your mobile device to scan the QR codes — not a third-party app. And after scanning the code, ensure that the website you see is the official HotSpot site (hotspotparking.com) before providing any payment information.
Fengstad said the city is not providing any windows of free parking in the downtown. But anyone who experiences a glitch is encouraged to come to City Hall's kiosk No. 2 to discuss it with staff. "We will be trying to investigate what happened and will be helping people learn about the system," she added.
Fengstad believes parking complaints have fallen off in recent days. She said city staff will be going over feedback from the parking survey and releasing the results before June 1.