Completely agree. Hats off to the city as SFPark is absolutely brilliant.

Are people actually using these "jerkTech" services though? If you've got the SFPark app, why would you bother with Monkey Parking? I get the feeling that they're all enjoying the free hype/hate which is being doled out right now as it's probably steering more users their way.

Ultimately though there is no way any of these services will be viable. If you face a $300 fine for renting out your parking space (as is the case in SF) and Monkey Parking makes it easy for law enforcement to track you down with their app, not a lot of people are going to want to bother.

It's a similar thing for making restaurant reservations. If restaurants start getting hit with a ton of no shows to the point where they're losing money, it doesn't take long to figure out that it's listed and file a cease-and-desist order.

SFPark's most useful feature - the per-spot sensors - was disabled last year ... Kind of a shame, that would have eaten Monkey Parking's lunch, I think. Not sure if people really used it or if people use Monkey Parking at all, but the hate doesn't really help the image problem that tech already has in SF.

> It's a similar thing for making restaurant reservations. If restaurants start getting hit with a ton of no shows to the point where they're losing money, it doesn't take long to figure out that it's listed and file a cease-and-desist order.

Trying so hard not to rage here. I own a restaurant. Reservationhop guy could have spent literally a few more seconds taking his idea to the logical conclusion that he should work with restaurants - just like EVERY OTHER service involved including the ones in his defensive blog post. Nope. It's like all he saw was "oh, something like ticket scalpers for concerts!" and ended there.

Not sure why they jumped to the stupidest option possible instead of taking a look at seriously starting something in the big, generic, terribly done to date foodservice needs area (everything from reservations to POS systems) or becoming the Airbnb of privately owned parking spaces. You'd think they'd see the nonviability of their ideas sooner.

I'm not a restaurant owner, but very much feel your rage (you don't have to be in a business to violently detest parasitic douche bags).

Here's an idea, slightly based on Alinea's ticket system:

Charge a relatively low deposit. Say if I make a reservation you charge my credit card with 20$ (or whatever). If I cancel (it does happen) up to three hours (or 6, or 24, or whatever) in advance the charge is reversed and the transaction is at no cost to me.

If I show up the 20$ are fully credited and deducted from the bill.

This would certainly only work for restaurants that can generate the necessary demand. Then again those are also the victims of those DoucheScalpers.

As a patron I really wouldn't mind guaranteeing my reservation with a small, up front payment. Especially when I can cancel within a reasonable time frame, no hassle and get fully refunded.

On a off topic side note: I actually cancel reservations if I don't need them. It seems to me just common courtesy and the right thing to do. It may enable somebody else to use the table and I strongly suspect that it doesn't hurt my karma with the restaurant for next time I want to book a table.

I'll admit it's been a few years since I parked in SF. But I guess I don't understand how that program could be working but still give these guys a market. If the meters are setting the prices at market-clearing levels, then it would be prohibitively expensive to hold onto a spot you didn't need, and there'd be an equally priced spot available nearby anyway. I don't know if it's that the pricing doesn't work that well or the program isn't in enough areas yet or what, but it definitely sounds like the kind of solution that should squash these guys' business. I hope it does.

Honestly, I don't think there is any street parking price that would scare them away, especially since the only limitation is the space constraint and not the contents of car driver wallets. There will always be someone that's willing to pay for a slightly better spot, and even if SF sets meters to $15-20/hr some areas are still going to stay congested. All I can really hope is that the program can expand and adjust prices so it's just a little bit less congested while not being outrageously priced, so people are a little bit less tempted to break the law. [1]

The gross thing about some of these startups was that they were looking for people to hire to squat on parking spaces. Not just the one-off space, but literally, your job was squatting until someone paid for the space. It's unbelievable. I hate parking here but not enough to screw around with other people looking for a parking space or to pay for a service like that. I would not shed a single tear if cops started using the apps in question to write the people selling spaces $300 tickets for breaking local laws.

Really not sure why all these "disruptors" can't just channel their energy into improving public transit and working on better (but slower and still imperfect) approaches to the parking problem just like sfpark. "Let's find you an available space and let's make it frictionless for you to pay for parking" if not just "let's fix the problems you have with taking Muni" is better in the long term than "let's create an app to auction off _public_ parking spaces".

I'm not even going to approach reservationhop because I also own a restaurant. I could write a wall of text about that....

edited in: [1] So I addressed this in other comments, but the sfpark program also involved installing per-spot sensors in over 8k meters in the city (along with credit card-supporting meters and remote pay). There was an official app (and third party dev access!) that showed you which _exact spaces_ were available near you. Imagine the ability to just discover that there's a space open 2 blocks away at half the price of the area you were searching in. Now that's the kind of technology I could get behind that would have a chance of destroying Monkey Parking and the likes on its own. I'm hoping SFMTA brings that back soon.