Ticket Wiper, One Year In – the App for fighting NYC Parking Tickets
Last June, we told you about Ticket Wiper, an app that helps you challenge NYC parking tickets. Since it’s been almost a year, we wanted to follow up and see how things are going.
“It’s going great. We’re getting busier and busier. The word is getting out, “ says founder David Obstfeld.
Since last July, their user count has grown over 350% and they’ve tripled the number of violations they typically handle each month, which required increasing staff to handle the uptick in volume. According to their data, thousands of customers have had their tickets dismissed through the app and, with a 40%-50% success rate, they’ve saved New Yorkers tens of thousands of dollars on parking violations.
As much as Ticket Wiper has grown, there are still a lot of New Yorkers who don’t bother fighting their parking tickets. They point out that over 80% of Brooklynites last year did not challenge their parking tickets, and those unchallenged tickets accrued $17,324,715 in penalties plus the base fines of $91,331,783.
One of the most common violations in New York City is an expired meter. To combat this, they’ve added a parking meter feature to the app that lets users set a timer to remind them when their meter is going to expire. It also uses Google Maps to help them find their way back to their car.
As a reminder, some of the other helpful features of the app are:
- License plate monitoring – you can enter your plate number and they will auto-monitor for tickets issued that you might not be aware of. It checks plates weekly.
- You can choose to auto-submit any new violations they find so you don’t have to stay on top of them manually
To find out a little bit more about their users, Ticket Wiper recently sent out a survey. Here’s some of the information they got back about who is taking advantage of the service:
- About half of users are under 35 years of age
- Most own only one car
- Most receive between 1-5 tickets a year
- Mostly drive to get around
- Before Ticket Wiper, a bit more than a quarter have decided to just pay the parking ticket instead of challenging it
Ticket Wiper is not the only app out there for fighting parking tickets, but Obstfeld is confident it’s the best. He is especially proud of their customer service. “Our competition doesn’t have live customer service. You have to email them and then they get back to you. When they contact us, you talk to a live person.”
He also differentiates their service by pointing out that Ticket Wiper actually fights tickets in-house, unlike other services that outsource to third parties. So when you’re speaking with our customer service team, you’re talking with the team that is actually working on your tickets.
Their friendly staff can always be contacted through live chat in the app or by calling 212.774-WIPE.
Over the next year, Obstfeld is hoping to continue improving the service and save people a lot of money. One of those people could be you! Just check out our previous post for details on how it works and download the iOS or Android app (nearly 5 stars on both!).
Special BKLYNER offer: Use coupon code WIPE5 to receive a $5 discount on your first dismissed ticket.
This post was sponsored by Ticket Wiper. If you would like to reach our readers, please contact us.