Doing your bit for the environment while cutting your bills? Sharing a car is not the cheaper option that Greg Shapiro thought it would be.

Good news, Planet! I’m sharing a car. Bad news: we’re now playing a game called ‘How many times can you pay to park your car?’ So far, the answer is: 4.

Living in Amsterdam, car-sharing seems the only appropriate thing to do. Since my father-in-law lives in our building, we told him, ‘We’re sharing your car.’ Simple! With my wife and kids, we find ourselves using the car once every 2 weeks. My father-in-law uses it even less. When the time came to buy a new car, we thought ‘Why not do it together?’

Since I use the car for work, we decided to put the car in my name. It seemed like the right thing to do. We got the car home and felt like celebrating… until we realised the parking permit is still registered with the old car.

In America, I think I’d keep the same licence plates and put them on the new car. Here, that’s not the case. We’d have to switch the permit at the service center for the Cition Parking Company. Until then, we’d have to pay an hourly rate to park, just like everyone else. In our neighborhood, it’s about 3 euros / hour.

Luckily, my parking app has no problem accepting a new license number. (I use Parkline.) My father-in-law uses ParkMobiel, and he also had no problem, until…

Problem 1: Cition Service Center says you can’t switch the parking permit to another licence number. There is apparently some logic to this plan. But all I understand is that I’m now paying an hourly rate to park 1 car. And we’re still paying a monthly rate to park a car that’s now connected to an auto dealer somewhere in North Holland.

We talked to the supervisor. Surely, this kind of thing has happened before? Surely, they’re not discouraging us from removing a car from the overcrowded neighborhood? Surely they’re not punishing us for doing the right thing ?

Oh, but the punishment had only begun.

Problem 2: It turns out my father-in-law had also turned on his parking app.

Number of times we were paying for the car: 3.

You may know Cition Parking Services from their recent ad campaign, ‘If you park, you pay.’ Their job is to raise revenue for the city. But apparently business is so good they actually have enough money left over for an outdoor advertising campaign. Just to restate the obvious. (I’m also in the business of buying ‘ad routes,’ and I happen to know the ones they chose cost thousands of euros a week.)

Cition has been hired by the city to enforce the parking rules. But – as they love to point out – they don’t make the rules. That would be the stadsdeel and the City Council. I have a friend on the Amsterdam City Council, and I asked for his advice. His advice was this: ‘Good luck. I’ve tried to tell them I moved, but they keep sending fines to my old address.’

It turns out the easiest solution was to change the ownership back to my father-in-law, negating half the reason for a new car in the first place. And while we’re waiting for the paperwork to go through, we noticed a little jolly conference of Cition agents partying around our car.

They were abuzz with chatter about how many parking tickets they could put on the windshield before some schlemiel noticed. With my father-in-law, I ran over to the parking party to protest: we’re already paying 3 times over! But no…

Problem 3: Parking apps only work if you’ve typed in the correct licence number. It seems your smart phone is only as smart as you were frustrated when you typed in the details.

Number of times we’re paying for the car: 4.

– Monthly for a car we no longer own.

– Hourly from the wrong phone.

– 3x parking fines.

– Hourly for a car with one-letter difference from ours. Wherever you are, KLV 92 X, you’re welcome.

And congratulations to Cition for all your extra revenue. Hopefully you can afford a nice new redundant ad campaign soon.

Greg Shapiro Presents UK comedian Pete Johansson, April NL Tour. 
http://gregshapiro.nl/node/625