Yes, they were.
>Using its app, Fixed customers could snap a photo of their parking ticket using their phone’s camera, and then Fixed would check against a variety of common errors before writing a customized letter to the city on the user’s behalf. The app also cleverly tapped into Google Street View to check to see if the city had the proper signage in place in the area a ticket was received.
>Founder David Hegarty once noted that over half of tickets have an issue that would make them invalid, but the city didn’t tend to play by its own rules when arbitrating disputes. That made Fixed’s “win” rate only 20%-30% on tickets, as of earlier this year.
>It's something you would definitely need to be very sensitive to how much useless work your triggering at City Hall.
The city could simply not issue invalid tickets, the issue would then resolve itself.
They should open source that so it can just be a web app, entirely possible it could still be really useful.
Fixed is clearly not a sustainable business anyway - really, what percentage of tickets are not valid? A very small percentage I'm sure. And if their revenue is seriously modeled around winning contested invalid tickets then there is very little money to be made.
Edit - I missed the Founder David Hegarty reference. Maybe someone can fact check me but I think this is fairly inflated to spin his case for his business.
Was Fixed evaluating the inquiries before forwarding them on? If so, I'd expect a higher win rate. If not, I'd expect a much lower win rate as customers just mail in every ticket.
It's something you would definitely need to be very sensitive to how much useless work your triggering at City Hall.