I was recently up in NYC visiting some friends and having a fantastic time at a close friends wedding. This wedding was way out on Long Island and as such I needed to drive my car up to the city. A few years back, I also made this treacherous journey up to NYC from DC and parked my car on the street only to find a $185 parking ticket on my windshield the next morning. I had parked 8 feet from a fire hydrant and was in clear violation of the law that dictates that all vehicles must clear at least 15 feet of space.
Since then, I have always parked my car in a garage whenever I drive up. I rarely do make the journey up by car because the costs do not justify themselves, however, when I do drive up, it makes more sense to park in a garage for $44 a night then risk getting a ticket for $185. I picked up a close friend living in Philly and mentioned that I was going to park in a garage for the night. What he showed me next, made me so happy.
Conversation with Friend
- Friend: David you’re really going to park the car in a garage, why not just park on the street?
- Me: I don’t want to risk getting another ticket. Last time was ruthless.
- Friend: Hold up, let’s google and see if we can find a coupon.
- Me: A coupon, common bud, there’s no chance any of these garages offer coupons to consumers. Why would they? They gave a commodity I need and just need to compete with other garages such that I choose them over anyone else.
- Friend: Exactly that’s why if one garage used a coupon to steal everyone’s business, everyone would start using coupons.
What we Found
Not only did we find a coupon for a parking garage very close to where we were staying, we also found coupons for virtually every other garage in NYC. We were elated that we were going to take advantage of avoiding a ticket AND only going to pay half price. I think we started blasting some loud obnoxious music and then we read the fine print on the coupon: “Coupon needs to be printed and given to cashier at time of check-in. We were mid-driving to NYC, where were we going to get a printer? It also happened to be 12AM when we discovered this coupon and it was pretty late to be making any late house visits for prints.
Interesting Idea
My friend called up the garage to check and see if they would accept the coupon this late and the attendee said, “no problem”. My friend then asked if they had a printer and if he could use their printer to print up the coupon. The very idea of asking the place we are benefiting a service from to let us benefit for a cheaper price at their own expense was not only humorous but the place would have to be downright silly to even let us take advantage of their service. Essentially, they would be letting us use their service for half price when they could simply deny our request and ensure that we pay full price.
I guess their logic was we just want happy customers because they told us that they we could use their printer and take advantage of the deal. As you can imagine, the obnoxious music only got louder in the car and we were pretty ecstatic. When we got there, they had an entire operation set up with a printer, a WIFI password, and some AC all ready for us to save money.
The best part was all of this took place in the car on the way up to NYC which means we were spending our time driving to NY saving money.
🙂
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