How to request a meter refund from Impark?

I was mistakenly charged twice by an Impark meter, thus I contacted the company hoping to get a refund for the invalid charges. After waiting for two months for their response, I concluded Impark didn't give a damn about my issue. They did not even drop me line.

So, I wrote this blog entry, which initially I titled "Robbed by Impark? You are not along…". Two days after publishing the post I was contacted by Impark through Tweeter. It turns out my posts are automatically tweeted and somehow Impark noted my tweet.

After that, I had to get on the phone with them and I also had to send some emails back and forth with Steve Tirbhowan, a Senior Parking Manager at Impark.

Finally, I was refunded on January 9th, 2015 for an issue I had on September 24th, 2014. It took a lot of effort from my part to get the money back. Read the whole story below.

Important: If you need to request a meter refund from Impark, I suggest you contact them through their Tweeter page. They pay very little attention to their Contact Us Form; but I discovered that they are are quite responsive on Twitter.

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###################### Original story below ######################

Toronto, September 24th, 2014. Around 10:00 AM in the morning. This is the day I became a Canadian Citizen. This is also the day I was robbed by Impark.

I was hoping to park my vehicle in the car park in the picture below. The address is 200 Town Centre Court, Scarborough, Ontario. This is the closest parking lot to the CIC office in which I was to have my citizen ceremony.

I was robbed by Impark in this parking lot

There are a couple of Impark parking meters in that place. I inserted my MasterCard in the machine (twice), but it reported some kind of error. At the end the machine didn’t deliver any ticket or receipt; which is why I had to leave the premises and find a different place to park.

I ended up parking in a different place no far away. You can see my parking ticket below.

Parking receipt – Canada Auto Parks (different place in which I ended up parking)

Hurrah! I was ready to become a Canadian citizen.

A few days later when I was browsing my credit card statements, I noticed two payments to Impark. Yes, the defective Impark meter charged me twice and never delivered the ticket/receipt. So, I was charged for nothing.

I understand that technical problems can happen. So, I contacted Impark twice and asked for a refund. I used their own Contact Us form. They never took the time to even write me a line over email. Almost 3 months have passed since then and I have come to the conclusion that I have been robbed and treated disrespectfully by this entity.

Now you know: I was robbed by Impark the same day I became a Canadian Citizen.  I certainly won’t forget this day.

If you have been wronged by Impark as well, please; share you story on the comments section or click the Google Plus (G+) button at the beginning of this post. Let’s call Impark for what it is: a thief company.

Below, I am adding the communications that I sent to Impark. I never got an answer from them.

To prove my story is real, I am also inserting a snapshot of my credit card statement showing the two payments done to Impark.

Robbed by Impark – Credit Card statement

First communication with Impark (October 11th, 2014 )


On September 24th, 2014 (around 10 am if my memory allows) I paid
twice with my MasterCard, but the machine (IMPARK00090417U
877-909-6199 ON) never delivered a receipt. At the end, I had to leave
the premises not being able to park.

Still, for my surprise, I just noticed two payments in my credit card
statement: one for $8.00 and the other for $7.00. I would kindly ask
you to refund the full amount of those payments to me since I was not
able to use the service for lack of the receipts.

For more details, feel free to call me at 647-xxx-xxxx or email me at
xxxx@gmail.com.

Sincerely,

   Yanniel Alvarez Alfonso.

Sep 24, 2014    IMPARK00090417U 877-909-6199 ON         8.00
Sep 24, 2014    IMPARK00090417U 877-909-6199 ON         7.00


Second communication with Impark (November 2nd, 2014)


This is the second time I contact Impark about the same meter issue. I
wrote you the first time on October 11t, 2014 and still I am waiting
for an answer.

For your reference, I am copy-pasting below what I sent you in my
first contact. This explains what my claim is about. Please, take care
of this issue. I have been patient enough for this mistake that
Impark made. It's only fair that you correct the issue ASAP.

Sincerely,

Yanniel Alvarez Alfonso.  
  
Update: Two days after writing this blog entry I was contacted by Impark via Twitter. They asked for my contact information, which I provided to them via Twitter's Direct Message.  

After this, a support person named Zach called me. I explained the issue to him and he advised me to email my explanation directly to customersupport@impark.com. He said I should provide the first 4 and last 4 digits of my credit card so that they could look-up (verify) the erroneous transactions of September 24th, and then issue a refund.

I emailed the info to customersupport@impark.com as Zach told me to. Guess what? Another month has passed and nobody from Impark has contacted me. 

Rogue companies like this one should not be allowed to operate. There's no protection for the consumer that deal with Impark.

This has never been about the money. It's about principles. I don't appreciate being robbed, even if it is just a dollar. 

This is about calling Impark for what it is: a thief company.

The source code history of Free Pascal and Lazarus visualized with Gource

Gource is a software version control visualization tool. I thought it would be fun to visualize Delphi’s source code with Gource, but that is not possible for obvious reasons. So, I decided to try-out Delphi’s cousins: Free Pascal and Lazarus.

I checked-out the respective code bases and ran them through Gource.

Below are the Gource commands I used:

gource -1280x720 -o C:\\gource\\fpc.ppm -s 0.01 --hide dirnames,filenames,progress,mouse C:\\gource\\fpc

gource -1280x720 -o  C:\\gource\\lazarus.ppm -s 0.01 --hide dirnames,filenames,progress,mouse C:\\gource\\lazarus


Gource shows the filenames and directories of the source code by default; still, I decided to hide them in these videos, because they were overlapping. You can play more with Gource, FPC and Lazarus on your own :-) For a comprehensive list of the command line options and arguments of Gource click HERE.

The above gource calls create two files: fpc.ppm and lazarus.ppm. I guess these are some kind of uncompressed video format. The files were huge: ~60GB and ~100GB respectively.

Then, I used FFmpeg to encode the above .ppm files into .avi files. The FFmpeg commands are below:

ffmpeg -y -r 60 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i C:\\gource\\fpc.ppm -vcodec libx264 -preset ultrafast -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 1 -threads 0 -bf 0 C:\\gource\\fpc.x264.avi

ffmpeg -y -r 60 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i C:\\gource\\lazarus.ppm -vcodec libx264 -preset ultrafast -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 1 -threads 0 -bf 0 C:\\gource\\lazarus.x264.avi


Finally, I uploaded fpc.x264.avi and lazarus.x264.avi to YouTube. You can see them below:

Free Pascal source code history visualized with Gource 

Lazarus source code history visualized with Gource 

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How much do you know about your Government? – Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

These are the answers to the questions found in Discover Canada (Citizenship Study Guide) from page 34-35.

The Federal Government part is applicable to all Canada. The Provincial Government part is applicable to Ontario and the Municipal Government part is applicable to Toronto.

Also, I have put together a comprehensive list of questions and answers that will help you in studying for the Canadian Citizenship Test. Just follow the link in the line above.  

Federal Government

Head of State: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

The name of the representative of the Queen of Canada, the Governor General, is Julie Payette

The Head of Government, the Prime Minister, is Justin Pierre James Trudeau

The name of the political party in power is Liberal Party

The name of the Leader of the Opposition is Andrew Scheer

The name of the party representing Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition is Conservative Party of Canada

The names of the opposition parties and leaders are:

• New Democratic Party of Canada: Jagmeet Singh
• Bloc Québécois: Mario Beaulieu
• Green Party of Canada: Elizabeth May

My member of Parliament(MP) in Ottawa is [See below next to the *]

My federal electoral district is called [See below next to the *]

* Click this link and enter your postal code. This will allow you to find out who your MP is and to which federal electoral district you belong to.

Provincial Government

The representative of the Queen in my province, the Lieutenant Governor, is Elizabeth Dowdeswell

The Head of Government (the Premier) is Doug Ford

The name of the provincial party in power is Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario

The names of the provincial opposition parties and leaders are

• Ontario Liberal Party: John Fraser (interim)
• New Democratic Party: Andrea Horwath

My provincial representative is [See below next to the **]

** Click this link and look for your provincial representative (also known as MPP - Member of Provincial Parliament-). You can do this by looking up the MPP for your federal electoral district (riding). You should already know you federal electoral district (riding); for details refer to the note above marked with one asterisk *.

Municipal Government

The name of the Municipality where I live is Toronto

The name of the head of the Municipal government (mayor or reeve) is John Tory.

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Canadian Credit Cards with No Foreign Transaction Fee

The Foreign Transaction Fee is the charge applied to your credit card when paying for a service or product in a foreign (non-local) currency. 

The currency in Canada is the Canadian Dollar. If you pay for something in a different currency; let’s say US Dollars, Euros, Pound Sterling, etc., then you might get charged with a Foreign Transaction Fee.

The Foreign Transaction Fee is apparently a big business for banks and other credit cards issuers in Canada. They charge a 2.5% of the amount spent that is NOT in Canadian Dollars. So, be advised that if you pay in US Dollars, Euros, or any other currency that’s not the Canadian currency, then you‘ll get busted with the 2.5% Foreign Transaction Fee.

As far as I know, to this date, the only issuer of credits cards in Canada that do NOT charge a Foreign Transaction Fee is Chase. Chase is an American bank authorized to conduct businesses in Canada.

Chase offers various credit cards with No Foreign Currency Transaction Fee. These are some examples:

• Amazon.ca Rewards Visa Card
• Sears Financial™ MasterCard®
• Marriott Rewards® Premier Visa® Card
• Sears Financial™ Voyage™ MasterCard®

For the more information about the cards provided by Chase visit: Chase for Canadian customers.

I got myself an Amazon.ca Rewards Visa Card. In the details of the card you can read:

Foreign Currency Conversion: We will bill you in Canadian Currency if you use your account to make a transaction in foreign currency. We will convert it into Canadian currency at the exchange rate set by Visa International in effect at the time we post the transaction to your account. This exchange rate may be different from the rate in effect on the transaction date. We will not charge you any additional foreign currency conversion charge.

This is the card I use whenever I pay for something in non-Canadian dollars; thus avoiding the sneaky Foreign Transaction Fee. You can do the same and save yourself a few bucks ;-)

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How to open a checking account at Tangerine?

Everything at Tangerine is done online… opening a checking account is no different: you can do it in 10 minutes (at the most) from the comfort of your home computer while you are in your pajamas. What I have found so far about Tangerine (formerly ING DIRECT) is that all procedures can be done with an extreme simplicity and from the comfort of your home.

Tangerine calls its checking account: Tangerine Checking Account. It was called THRiVE Chequing Account in the times when the bank was called  ING DIRECT.

Most checking accounts in Canadian banking institutions charge you a monthly fee. This is ridiculous if you ask me: banks are profiting from our own money, but that’s not enough for them: they still charge us a monthly fee for having our own money within their grasp, money from which they are profiting already.

This is what a Tangerine Checking Account has to offer:

• NO MONTHLY FEES. Ask yourself if your current bank charges you a monthly fee and ask yourself if you should be paying for it?
• Unlimited transitions: once again, you can perform unlimited transitions at Tangerine for free.
• Earn interest on the money you put on your Tangerine Checking Account (yes, you heard well: this is a checking account that pays interest, just as saving accounts do).

I am not going to load you with more details…if you want to know more about the benefits of opening a Tangerine Checking Account come here: http://www.tangerine.ca/en/chequing/chequing-account/index.html.

Now, in order to open a Tangerine Checking Account you have to do only TWO things:

1. Complete an online form that won’t take you more than 10 minutes. I am not exaggerating: this form won’t take you more than 10 minutes to fill. In order to fill the form click here: Open a new Tangerine Checking Account.
2. Write your initial deposit cheque (payable to yourself) for at least $100, and mail it to Tangerine Bank, 3389 Steeles Avenue East, Toronto, Ontario, M2H 3S8. Note: all new clients of Tangerine opening accounts for at least $100 bucks get a $50 bonus. What does this means? It means that you open your account with $100, but you are credited with $150; so Tangerine welcomes you with $50 bucks.

That’s all: by completing the two steps above you will open a Tangerine Checking Account, that will treat you with unlimited transactions, no monthly fees, saving interests and a $50 bucks welcome gift.

If you have any questions, drop a line in the comments section below. I’ll do my best to answer.

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