Award for best use of technology goes to… Toronto (not)

On the weekend, I parked my car on Danforth Avenue and was ticketed while making change for the meter at a nearby Shoppers Drug Mart.

It didn’t bother me because I figured my story was reasonable and they [City of Toronto Parking Operations] would just cancel the ticket after realizing I had purchased a ticket within 4 minutes of the violation being written.

This is where I believe technology has failed me as a tax paying citizen of Toronto.

With violation in hand, and receipt of my valid parking ticket I called the number of the ticket: (416)397-TAGS (8247).  I called this number three times and each time was greeted with a busy signal.  Finally, on my 4th call, the phone rang.  After navigating the menu, the computerized voice asked me to enter my tag # which is AA586935.  This is where it gets fun.

When I press ’2′ for the letter ‘A’, the system says “for A, press 1, B, press 2, C, press 3″.  After pressing 1 for ‘A’, I entered the second ‘A’ and was given the same options.  Is this the best they could do?  Then, after entering the letters and the corresponding numbers, the system wants be to verify I have entered the correct tag # and asks me to repeat the step all over.

I’m not going to complain about the silly way the IVR data entry has been implemented, but what does irk me is that after verifying the info and then asking for a customer service rep, the system tells me that due to high call volume, no operator is available.

The system then tells me to call back later and HANGS UP ON ME!

In my world computer systems are meant to augment, enhance customer service AND conserve human capital.  The city should saved their money and simply forward customer service calls to dead air.

Just for fun, I called back in and after getting past the busy signals, repeat the process.  Four times, each with the exact same result.  I’m going for a walk around noon to deal with this in person, but in the meantime, I’ve given the City of Toronto Parking Tag Operations Customer Service a FAIL for their improper use of technology.

Now that’s a violation worth writing a ticket for.