From InnerLooped
Well it has only been a couple of days, but InnerLooped’s recent dinner Downtown (and subsequent post about the Terms and Conditions of ParkMobile’s ability to send you advertisements for using a city service) turned out to be one of those ground-breaking “oops” moments for the City that helped them avoid a bigger “oops” down the road.
After our post last week about section 5.3 of the ParkMobile Terms and Conditions… our post was picked up on Swamplot.com. Eventually, the CEO of ParkMobile posted in their comments section about the mix up, that ParkMobile does not send advertisements to users, and that they are changing their Terms and Conditions. Then yesterday, Swamplot got in touch with the City:
“The City’s agreement with ParkMobile does not allow for promotional emails
or texts to be sent to registered users,” Admin & Regulatory Affairs
spokesperson Christopher Newport tells Swamplot”.…
“Good catch,” Newport says: “This is something that should have been
excluded from ParkMobile’s Houston users terms and conditions. ParkMobile is
updating their terms/conditions today to remove any reference to promotion or
marketing materials that pay by cell customers may receive either by text or
email. Pay by phone users will not be spammed, and neither ParkMobile nor the
City will sell information to marketers.”
While we are glad to see this issue being cleared up… the more troubling thing is that it took me only five minutes to determine the contract could have left a loophole for taxpayers to be spammed (it might never have happened… but the loophole was there)… but the City overlooked it. While this seems like an honest misunderstanding and small oversight, you would think that the City would be a little more careful when approving contracts that could later upset taxpayers ([cough cough] the red-light camera fiasco).
InnerLooped will eventually be reviewing the ParkMobile service. It seems like a great idea, but we need to try it out first to see if it really is more convenient than slipping a couple bills into the machine. The Mayor will be announcing the new program Thursday at Discovery Green.
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