Vinci Park

$ 5 parking turns into $ 75 for under 4 hrs of parking. What a scam!!!
It was supposed to be an evening of fun and laughs in downtown Calgary. We arrived downtown at 6:30pm and could not find parking anywhere, so we asked an attendant at the hyatt where he may know of some parking. He recommended that we park under the Bow building because its a «Flat rate of $ 5 from 6pm to 4am»… Wow, awesome…(so I thought)
By 7pm, we enter the parking garage and approach two ticket booths? not sure which one to pull up to and another car is behind us… so we pull up to the «Short Term» booth and receive a ticket… Assuming we would be gone before midnight.
When our evening was done (11:53pm) we came back to the same entrance doors and tried to pay our parking ticket…$ 75! WHAT! So we called the parking attendant /​security and they say they can’t help us. We need to pay the $ 75 to get our car and then we can call tomorrow to sort things out.
So fine, I painfully paid the ticket and called first thing to speak with the Vinci parking staff.
I tell the situation to the man on the phone, and he says that he can’t refund us even though we should be because their ticketing system goes through the city of Calgary and they have to submit transactions or something along those lines. So even if he wanted to, he could not. He also said we should have studied the signs and figured out which booth to get the ticket out of and long term parking may have been the better choice even though it was 4 hrs. SERIOUSLY! I should have said I lost my ticket… I would have only paid $ 50 if I said I lost my ticket… but because I was an honest customer, not looking to get scammed… I get ripped off!
How does a $ 5 Flat evening rate turn into $ 75 in 4 hours???
Horrible system, and horrible customer service.

No wonder Calgary has the distinction of having the most expensive parking rates in Canada, even the Americans had to point that out:
$ 13 for one hour?! Sure, I get it’s DT prime area but it’s not even covered parking, which is even more concerning… guess I won’t park here to find out. Hope that’s heated and free coffee lol.
At least their machines are a lot easier to press than the city’s booths.

Calgary is a mess of horrible parking practices and policies, which has ultimately given us the great distinction of being the second costliest place to park in North America, and also the side effect of a stagnant downtown nightlife.

Historically, I’ve primarily dealt with the Calgary Parking Authority, as well as Impark. Both being equal opportunity gougers and ticket writers.

The Vinci brand was a relative unknown to me, until recently

My first experience with them came in the form of a random letter in the mail stating I «owed» them for past unpaid parking tickets. Having never actually parked in one of their lots, to the best of my knowledge, the near $ 1000 debt I «owed» was quite a surprise!
It turned out, Vinci had bought out the parking rights to a previous employer’s lot. The «infractions» were multiple mistakes by the old employer’s lot operator, not knowing I was an employee with a pass.
They were never collected on, back then, for good reason. I HAD A PASS. But when Vinci had the opportunity to pour over the inherited books and the entries that were never updated, they made a new overly ambitious try to back collect… from years earlier, with interest!
Needles to say, I made them go away. But still, it wasn’t a good first impression.
Moving to the present, here’s a rundown on my experiences with this Vinci lot:
* Walking through the lot later in the day, when it’s emptied out, you will see numerous mounds of safety glass from all the smash and grabs.
* There isn’t enough room in the back row of the lot to angle park. Everyone realizes this, except Vinci. However, when people try to parallel park, Vinci leaves threatening notes on your windshields saying your vehicle has been photographed, and parking this way again means a ticket.
So people angle park, and larger vehicles can barely pass through the aisle, OR, back out of the parking stalls.

* The self service exit stations often don’t read your credit card. Now trapped in your care, this of course means you need ask the people lined up behind you to move THEIR cars, so you can visit the lone manned pay booth. For some reason, THAT machine always reads your card.
* The manned pay booth isn’t always occupied, depending on whether or not the cashier has gone across the street to take a leak, or is busy putting threatening notes on windsheilds.
* If your exit ticket flies out of your pocket during the day, the booth-​guy will say «there’s nothing I can do,» and charge you $ 40. If you get the booth-​girl, she will charge you the correct daily rate… because that’s what customer service is about.
* the heated walk up pay station is a plus, so an extra star for momentary warmth.
Unilocal’s 30 Day Challenge 2012 — ¹⁵⁄₃₀