Tom Perkins
The new ParkDetroit app has a 2.1 rating on the App Store.
Detroit’s revamped parking app, ParkDetroit, is the epitome of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The upgraded version of the parking app was rolled out just a few weeks ago and is already causing frustration among metro Detroit drivers.
It has just two out of five stars on the App Store, with people calling it a “horrible update” and asking “are you fu@$ing kidding me??” Users are complaining that it's difficult to enter your credit card information and parking zone.
“This updated app is not user friendly,” one reviewer wrote under the name PleaseChangeTheAppBack. “I have to repeatedly save my card and it doesn’t work half the time!”
Despite this new version being touted as “one of the premier and technologically advanced municipal parking apps anywhere in the country” in a press release, the general consensus so far is that the old version was much better.
“With the old app, all you had to do was type in your zone and pay. Now, surprisingly, the app tracks your location, tries to guess where you are, then you have to select on a small tiny map your street intersection in hopes you tap the correct parking meter for what side of the street you are on…” ParkDetroit user Eric Thiede wrote in a review. “By the way, I’m not joking this is literally what you have to do every single time.”
While it is actually possible to enter the zone number you’re parking in, originally you had to select an empty spot on the map and enter your credit card information first, which is extremely counterintuitive.
An update to the app was released over the weekend allowing users to enter their parking zone first, but the negative reviews are still coming in.
In response to the overwhelmingly negative criticism, the city of Detroit is working on more updates to the app that will make it more user-friendly. This leaves us and many others wondering what the point of the new rollout was in the first place.
Keith Hutchingsdirector of municipal parking for the City of Detroit, told WXYZ he hopes users will eventually come to appreciate the app's other perks, including “using the app to pay at parking garages, finding and reserving spots, and help finding your car if you forgot where you parked.”
When we tried to use it, the app stalled for several minutes before displaying an error message that said: “no internet connection detected.” It wouldn’t load until we relaunched the app completely.
We should have known something wasn’t right when the original version wouldn’t automatically update, making users delete and redownload it on their phone.
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