PAYBYPHONE

SalveForOldSores

Are they still operating ?
I'm having trouble logging into the on-line account I created on my phone. I reset the password and nothing happened. I logged a support request, received a reply with a ticket number, then nothing.
Researching I see that the Trust Pilot Reviews  have been pretty awful (https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.paybyphone.co.uk) and that the Companies House documents filing looks like a laundry list for directors and, that recently they have been taken over by Volkswagen Financial Services (See attached below).

Have they now gone ponto,  or has VW lost interest/pulled-out following BREXIT ?

Only asking because the parent organisation of the  local hospital (Mount Vernon, Rickmansworth) I will be visiting shortly, states on its website that the PAYBYPHONE service has been introduced since my last visit (2018) but , on looking on their website, I find that  none of the location numbers for this hospital's car parks  are  listed on PAYBYPHONE's on-line map, whereas, on enquiry, the hospital support services  tells me that their are location numbers  for each payment machine.

This hospital in the past haven't been backward in coming foward at issuing fines - I don't want to get a repetition of my last visit when, emerging from a 3 hour PET/CT scanner session, I was greeted with a note on the windscreen. 
Being  classified  since March as one of the "Shielded" (Post Chemo Cancer and cardiac), to avoid risk of catching COVID-19, I see no alternative, other than driving myself to hospital - public transport and mini cabs being a definite no-no at the moment in NW London.  I was hoping, in these circumstances, that  the the institutions of the state would be bending over backwards to ensure that the "Load" on the vulnerable, from whatever source,  would be reduced below previous levels. No such luck, it appears
The split-!!!!!! organisation of the last 40 years proceeds apace . . money for old rope.
N.

AdrianC

When you go there, the parking machines and signage will tell you who operates the parking-by-phone, and what the location number is.

I don't quite understand why you would need to know beforehand...

SalveForOldSores

The reason I checked in advance, for the same reason that most people  check aspects of a planned activity - to make sure that execution of that activity, goes as well as possible. Don't you plan journeys in advance of taking them . .especially if they're infrequently taken (As this is ). Don't you check, however casually, on the times of trains, buses, intersections of same, book mini-cabs, holiday flights and ferries in advance, check car routes for delays, traffic congestion, road works and for the best place and manner to park-up at the end of the journey ? Or do you just do a Trump and end up the well known creek ?

In this case, a bit of lightweight journey planning proved beneficial. I found that the parking arrangements have changed slightly from my last visit in 2018. I found that neither the changes or the range of possible options for paying for parking were stated on the Hospital's Parking web-page or that of PAYBYPHONE. Only by speaking to staff in  one of the hospital support services offices and utilising my knowledge gained during previous visits was I  eventually able to put two and two together and ascertain the current system.On my previous visit, each car park (With the exception of the main car park, which operates an ANPR system and payment on exit)  had one or more Pay and Display ticket dispensers (Owned and operated by a company in Uxbridge), which could be paid for using coins or credit/debit cards. This system remains and has added to it the PAYBYPHONE system (Based in Hatfield) So there are now two commercial entities on site competing for parking cash flow and one of these, guess which one, will no doubt be concerned that its in the frame to  be ousted by the more modern system. Hmmm ! That's going to enhance co-operation between commercial entities.  To further complicate things, cancer patients can select  and only on the physical ticket dispensers, a concessionary PAD ticket for £1.00 which has to be validated by phone call with the support services department before it can be displayed . . if you don't you get a ticket. 
Hospital managers should never have allowed patients and their relatives to be put in this position. Just imagine you arrive later than planned, its raining  and windy and, if un-researched beforehand, you've got to figure all this !!!!!! out before you can even report to the reception of the treatment facility. 

Clearly no-one in the hospital management is prepared to grasp the nettle regarding conflicting commercial interests or has walked through or "Secret shoppered" the newly implemented PAYBYPHONE service to make sure it works. Given the existing bad reports on Trust Pilot I would have thought a walk through/close monitoring was essential.

And in the case of the event I'm attending, I would say its essential to be assurred that everything will go like clockwork on the day. . . .  its a 2.5-3 hour session involving the use of time-deprecated radio-active intravenous dye, administered to your truly, if you don 't attend dead (Excuse) on the appointment time, the whole time-critical procedure has the possibility of  going Pete Tong  and you may well end up an accessory to  wasting £3,000 of NHS money  - and we know that's a sin as they constantly remind patients of this fact in the appointment literature.

Consequently, my experience has been in practice that, on the day of the appointment,  you  haven't got time to devote to anything other than the essentials i.e. getting to the hospital (7 miles away from my home address), parking the car and reporting to the department. for the procedure.  Any other activity that intrudes into this time window is niff naff and trivia and liable to jeopardise the whole procedure. Patients for this procedure are told not to exercise for 24 hours before it takes place, as physical activity raises pulse rate and metabolic activity and is likely to degrade the results obtained.  Similarly, I would imagine, being stressed before and during the procedure, thinking about  say parking arrangements,  would similarly raise pulse and metabolic  rates and undermine the results . . with the potential to  waste £3,000 of taxpayers money.

That's why I checked in advance. I would have liked to have been able to pay for a car parking in advance, as the advertisements for the PAYBYPHONE system claims  it is able to do, but unfortunately it appears that system has not been fully implemented yet despite  the statements in all the  "Good News" press releases issued in March 2019 - an experience confirmed during my telephone conversation with the support services staff.

Frankly, the hospital management must be fully-conflicted, brain dead, incompetent and/or just grossly underfunded to even contemplate implementating such a complicated system for the management of car parking, especially as it impacts on unwell patients the most.

I see that PAYBYPHONE are omnipresent in London, providing the facility to TFL carparks and my local borough council, ... but those joys await me.
As their Companies House document filing  lookings like a carpetbaggers laundry list, with directors joining and leaving with regular monotony, that may have some impact on why the levels of complaints is so high. 
But that's the last 40 years for you, outrageous marketing claims and, when it comes down to it, poor delivery.

N.

SalveForOldSores

Most importantly, there's poor communication occurring here.
The hospital's parent organisation's web-site made reference to the PAYBYPHONE system being available, but no where was it indicated whether it had supplanted the existing ticket dispensing machines and whether the latter had been removed (Not even the pretty pictures from Google Earth  could resolve that question!|).
In actuality, it hasn't, the  systems are running side-by-side, but that wasn't clear from the website and when you're doing your journey planning remotely for this sort of event, its essential to know all the information in advance to avoid !!!!!!-ups. But, operating remotely, one fact  was clearly evident to me . . , that the PAYBYPHONE system, at Mount Vernon,  as demonstrated on their own website map, wasn't operating as other of their sites were i.e. The TFL locations that PAYBYPHONE services were clearly shown on their map of installations as having a  PAYBYPHONE allocated location identity, Mount Vernon didn't. Hence my initial doubts and the further investigations. 
The hospital management have got to realise that patients (And/or their relatives) who are attending this facility are likely to be from the older population and/or are likely to have been severely ill and that as a consequence take 3-10 times the amount of time to do things as fully healthy and fit people. In these circumstances, this group of people are less able to respond efficiently to systems changes  without time penalties applying - Said again,  they are constitutionally less well endowed to deal with changed circumstances "On-the-Fly". Hence the planning.
Even the boys going to Magalouff for their annual commercially sponsored drinking, whoring, defecation and vomiting sojurns, do a bit of journey planning. They'd be devastated if they just hopped on the first flight they came across at Gatwick only to find that they were delivered, in their baggies and flip-flops, to Siberia.

SalveForOldSores

Before leaving for the hospital on Thursday I'd decided to pay for parking this way as my query with PAYBYPHONE hadn't been fully resolved at this stage.
Arriving at the Hospital and parked-up at 13:10 - there were plenty of spaces available. Plenty of time, you would have thought, to buy a pay-and-display ticket from the on-site ticket dispensers,  install it in the car and saunter the couple of hundred yards to the Cancer Centre in time for the appointment at 13:35.
Well, no. The hand of God, or is that Mount Vernon hospital management , worked to thwart that intention again.
Since my last visit, some bright spark had decided to disable the pay-by-credit card facility on the ticket dispensers (Which I always previously used), leaving only coin payment. I hadn't got enough coins to pay, but did have a £10 note, which from previous experience, I knew could be exchanged for coin  using a nearby change machine. I wandered over to the location of the change machine, only to be told that it had been moved to a location 300 yards away.
None these changes were either shown on the hospital website or advised by the support services staff to whom I'd spoken the previous day on the telephone.
However, I had been told, by the support staff, that a concessionary  parking rate for Cancer patients was available as Pay-and-Display ticket for £1. It was now 13:25, so, I had no choice to go with that option. I had been previously aware that this concession was available to cancer patients but hadn't taken it up because I thought the hospital could do with an extra  contribution  to funds (Every little helps)  and, further, my attendances are now is infrequent, and long interval that the extra financial burden on me would be minimal and lastly because, I knew that the concessionary ticket had to be validated with the portering department over the phone (To stop abuse of the system), else you would be liable for a parking ticket.
I didn't have time to phone the Portering Department, so I rushed to the Cancer centre reception, arriving hot and bothered, with raised blood-pressure and heart-rate - the exact opposite of what is needed for this examination to be undertaken to best effect.
In between, having weight and height taken for IV infusion does determination, I hardly had time to sit down and fill-out the pre-session documentation before  I was wisked off to the pre-infusion preparation area. So, I was unable to call the Portering department, but luckily my nurse got one of here colleagues to do it for me - hardly the job that they're there to do, but a consequence of a poorly designed and operated system.

I understand that I am not alone amongst patients finding the requirements of this Parking administration system utterly unbelievable - attached below photos of the multiple and potentially confusing advice on the Pay-And-Display ticket machines. Complete pig's breakfast.

After the procedure, I came out to find I was parking-ticket free . . . so far.

Subsequently, the following day I  was able to re-register an account with PAYBYPHONE and downloaded the app to my Android phone  from the Google Play store (Only after PAYBYPHONE customer service had deleted my earlier attempt at making an account ) and found that my Android phone worked with app (As does Bluestacks Android emulator on Windows). However, trying to do the same, using the  PAYBYPHONE app in the Microsoft Store, didn't work on my back-up Windows phone. - although, again, oddly, it does work on Windows laptops and desktops - something that PAYBYPHONE Customer Service have now bee advised of.
PAYBYPHONE have assured me that they will be adding the details of the Mount Vernon car parks they serve, together with the ID numbers,  to their on-line web map. 
It appears, at the moment, that the PAYBYPHONE app doesn't offer the concessionary rate for cancer patients in its parking pricing menu.
Cheekily, in response to their post-event "How-did-we-do ?" enquiry I asked when we can expect the Linux or Raspbian variants of the app to appear ?
Total ph*cking chaos - and there's only 4 entities involved. the lodger units on the Mount Verno site (Presumably including, the Cancer Unit) Hillingdon Hospital Trust (Who own the site) and the owners of the ticket dispensing machines and PAYBYPHONE.
If I have to make another attendance here and this happens, COVID or No COVID, Matt Hancock's going to get a steamer.
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ssparks2003

If you are expecting people to read that lot of waffle and then help you, good luck. But personally I would suggest that you compress the question in to a couple of paragraphs

AdrianC

I don't think there was a question.

Neil49

I suggest that in future, and for the sake of your blood pressure, you keep an adequate selection of coins in your car to pay the charge using cash. Many people used this option pre Covid and it worked well.