PayByPhone Reviews 

Parked at South Woodford Underground station. Son loaded the app and paid. As we walked into the station, I asked how much it had cost. He looked and stopped dead in his tracks: £58! Turns out he had accidentally paid for 7 days rather than 7 hours. I thought that it was a lesson in checking things every step on line and just offered to pay him back. Next day, not expecting anything, I rang their helpline. I explained what had happened to a very pleasant, polite lady who listened, put me on hold a couple of times while she checked things out and took advice and then told me that I would have to pay for the whole day (£7) but my son could expect repayment in full of the rest within a couple of days. Can't fault the service and the instant ability to be able to speak to a real person on the phone and not deal with wretched chatbots. Son would have suffered without that refund: very happy.

I had a very frustrating experience using the PayByPhone app at Moxon Street car park in Barnet (EN5).

The first hour of parking is supposed to be free with a code, but the app and website simply did not work. I made multiple attempts to enter my vehicle details and confirm the session, but each time it tried to charge me for VAT and then it reverted back to step one which was the start screen asking for my registration and code again.

I was actively trying to do the right thing and pay, but the system made it impossible.

While I was still attempting to complete the process, a traffic warden was already issuing parking fines to my car and several cars in the same situation. It is incredibly unfair and outrageous especially when people were clearly trying to comply with the rules.

This experience felt like a complete failure of the system. When the payment platform doesn’t work properly, drivers are left exposed to penalties through no fault of their own.

I would strongly urge improvements to the reliability of the app and more reasonable enforcement in situations where technical issues are clearly preventing payment.

Utterly useless. The app didn't work today at Macclesfield station because (having rang my bank) they are not sending the right PSD2 codes which the bank needs to authorise payment (My card is fine). The phone method then fails because it asks for a PIN its not given you in the app, so you have to set up a PIN dialling 0#. But when you type this in, it tells you you've entered the wrong PIN!. Have spent hours chasing to pay this on the phone, to my bank and via webchat (useless) and email - and it seems the service staff are not the slightest bit bothered to fix it or give me a method that works. I asked for the code to try a different card - they don't even know the code of the station so that I can retry with a different card. The possibility that they might find out, or even help me to find out, is a pipe dream. Utterly and competely beyond awful. If they fine me, I am minded to look at a small claim court. The feeling I got was of something so deliberately, maliciously bad it was designed to create the pretext for fines. The worst customer experience for a decade. Shameful.

Payments in app dont work

Parking companies get to send you finest

They all win

Don't use this all

Only giving it a one star as unfortunately Trust Pilot doesn't let you give 0. Paid a ridiculous amount to park this morning only to get to the car park and be told the car park is closed other than for pick up/drop off. And good luck trying to talk to anyone from this BS company. Fobbed off by AI.

Paid by this app had proof of payment but still got a fine as Euro Car Parks only got my account reference not my registration number. I appealed to POPLA but what a surprise I lost my appeal. They are all in it together.Don’t use PayByPhone app and don’t use Euro Car Parks!!!
PayByPhone say there is nothing that can be done and have tried to say that fraudsters put a qr code on the machine. Not true the app account reference is the one on euro car parks records just didn’t convert it to the correct reg number as it should have PayByPhone know that’s the case but do not want to help at all. My original review still stands. Be very careful if you use the PaybyPhone app.

I have read all the negative comments regarding this company and must be honest had given up all hope of getting any satisfactory solution to the mix up when parking outside Northampton General Hospital last Monday .
After emailing them and laying out the situation I am 100% happy with my experience and will be receiving back the duplicate payment I had to make at the time, so at least one happy customer!!!!

Truly disappointed by PayByPhone service. All I need is to link my card so as to pay fairly for parking. But apparently according to them I have created another account with exactly the same details but they can't merge or reset my account, instead they want me to get a new card from the Council, which works everywhere else. How ridiculous is this? Why do we such service providers in UK and dominating car car parks? This is a sad situation.

Accidentally started my parking session too late - it looks like there is no way to start a session once you have left the car park. So paid in full when I returned to the car park. Explained this to the bot chat - it didn’t understand but raised a ticket. Just had a standard response so have now paid twice for the same day. Deleting the app now - use another way to pay if you can.

Poor communication have set up business account but is so difficult to reach any one of the team really disappointed not recommended at all!!!!

If I could give this zero I would. I live in ealing council and have been using this app for years to get visitors parking permits. there is always something wrong with it. The residents permits are always expiring and then you get no email or text to say that they are so next time you have visitor you have to renew and the renewal process doesn't work . Today I tried to renew on app and it flashed a message so fast I couldn't see it, i then di it again and had to take a photo of the message quickly. it told me to email my council with prof of residence , did that council emailed back and said it had done it but app still would not let me park for my visitor. I dont know why Ealing council continue with them, i can only assume someone at top is getting a bribe to continue as its such a bad service for so many years. I mean a parking app should be simple and user friendly especially since a lot of older people need to use it., its not that complicated to do, but somehow they have made it awful.

Signage at hospital states pay on exit however when you go to pay it only gives option to pay from the time you go onto app. This has caused a lot of hassle for something as simple as paying a parking ticket..

Took 20 hours instead of 2 hours. Overpaid by £112. No phone lines are manned. Nobody to talk to. Webpages out of date stating manned phone lines. No phone lines are manned. No details or customer promises on when they will contact you such as 24/48 hours and very very very poor experience . They need a customer service dedicated team. Not happy and disputing charges through the bank. Crap from start to finish. Micky mouse company.

They make it impossible to contact them, you start with the bot, the bot can’t help, the bot gives you a phone number which is a different bot, this bot can’t help nor will it let you speak to a real person, so you go back to the first bot, this time it gives you a number that it says will provide human help. The number it gives is an incorrect number and you get a message saying “this number is not recognised “

It appears that the company actively blocs anyone from contacting it. The bots are not fit for purpose and the telephone numbers are incorrect

£75 fine because auto pay didn't pay. Pay By Phone want nothing to do with it and advise to take it up with Saba, who are equally as useless. I can't seem to find anywhere to contest the fine. Going to have to suck it up and pay.
Update
I have been looking out for Pay By Phone e mail since their last comment. No sign of it. Is this a tactic to look reasonable when in fact they have no intention of dealing with the issue?

Was stung by parking charges on 24th February. Parked at a site at 4am to go to work paid for all day parking £10.40 to be told it expired in 30mins so had to pay another £7.40 to extend for the actual full day. Used chat bot which passed me to email and still had no response on getting a refund for the first charge.

Ealing council have recently introduced "You must now register even if parking free for 30 mins" outside our local shops.

But PayByPhone App only allows you to select 1 hour and charges ~£2 ......... There is no minutes option!

Went through chat bot and emailed them (ref: 1307445) - nearly a week now - no response.

Sounds like PayByPhone have found a loophole to charge ~£2 for something that should be free!

I know people who have paid in fear of getting a ticket even though they're popping into the shop for a couple of minutes.

May be an honest mistake by PayByPhone, but not having an online resolution for this - and the bot not being aware of this scenario - I'm not convinced it's not intentional!

Not responding to emails about it ...... I'll let you make your own mind up!

I use this app regularly. I've learnt that the app often needs clearing of cache on Android phones to work properly. Otherwise you get stuck on the start up screen and doesn't progress. I assume many people fail to know this and to not pay on time because of this poor app. Has been like this on multiple phones over the years and there is very little incentive to fix something that earns the council more money in fines.

Terrible terrible crappy app. Tried to use it in London. What a farce. It took me about 15mins to get it to work. Absolute nightmare. They deserve to lose the business of London boroughs where one is forced to attempt to use it or risk a ticket/clamp. Shockingly bad.

Extremely poor service. Tried to use the mobile app to park in an area with good network coverage and the app couldn't connect to the payment service, presumably because the payment service was down.

Recently, PaybyPhone has changed the mobile app and now it doesn't remember the payment page when the bank asks for verification and starts the pay for parking process all over again.

Extremely frustrating!