Review Insights · App Store
PayByPhone Parking
PayByPhone Technologies Inc. · 738,503 ratings · ★ 4.8
4.8
★★★★★
738,503 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 49 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"parking"
19 negative reviews mention this · 39% of all complaints
★★★★★ "No Customer Service Support. Terrible app, no customer service, not clear instructions, confusing parking services." - DA12005
2
"work"
12 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Garbage App. This app never works!!! Takes forEVER to process and you have to enter information over and over. When you phone falls asleep because the stupid app is still processing… it harasses you that you still haven’t finished your payment. SFA!!!" - shilo_case
3
"doesn"
9 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Locations are shown as non existent. Several times recently in San Francisco, I've repeatedly entered the location numbers and the app tells me it doesn't exist.. This happened to my coworkers as well. They ended up using another app which renewed their parking fee flawless…" - I'mHereForTheFood
4
"phone"
8 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Garbage App. This app never works!!! Takes forEVER to process and you have to enter information over and over. When you phone falls asleep because the stupid app is still processing… it harasses you that you still haven’t finished your payment. SFA!!!" - shilo_case
5
"terrible"
7 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "No Customer Service Support. Terrible app, no customer service, not clear instructions, confusing parking services." - DA12005
6
"working"
7 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Not working anymore. It doesn’t have any SF locations for some reason" - Jon121314
7
"location"
6 negative reviews mention this · 12% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Parking app. App no longer works at all? I’ve used it for years and now it’s useless, not sure why it is listed on App. Location in SF" - EMCSF
8
"meter"
6 negative reviews mention this · 12% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Doesn’t work anymore. 9 times out of 10 in now says that the meter location can’t be found, rendering it frustrating and useless. Please fix" - suga10
9
"frustrating"
6 negative reviews mention this · 12% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Doesn’t work anymore. 9 times out of 10 in now says that the meter location can’t be found, rendering it frustrating and useless. Please fix" - suga10
10
"doesn work"
6 negative reviews mention this · 12% of all complaints
11
"ticket"
6 negative reviews mention this · 12% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unable to update. Trying to update app so that I can pay to park but app will not update. This so frustrating!!! It is late at night and I can’t get to pay your app. Last night it t was a problem trying to add my credit card. Could not see the boxes on t…" - RITMO 95
12
"works"
5 negative reviews mention this · 10% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Garbage App. This app never works!!! Takes forEVER to process and you have to enter information over and over. When you phone falls asleep because the stupid app is still processing… it harasses you that you still haven’t finished your payment. SFA!!!" - shilo_case
📋 All 49 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Garbage App
This app never works!!! Takes forEVER to process and you have to enter information over and over. When you phone falls asleep because the stupid app is still processing… it harasses you that you still haven’t finished your payment. SFA!!!
No Customer Service Support
Terrible app, no customer service, not clear instructions, confusing parking services.
More reasons this app sucks!
It’s apparently, nearly impossible to get actual customer service. You can communicate with their horrible waste of time AI, and if you search for how to speak with someone, it tells you to use the AI, and also brings up 47 additional, irrelevant “help” articles. They want you to go through the AI in order to possibly get actual help, but that trash AI just sends you in circles. It can’t answer your question and then just keeps asking what you need help with, and wants you to start over as if you never asked your question. Then there is such a long, circular description of how to contact customer service, it just sends you in a circle of nothingness back to the procedure of getting help - rather than just providing help or a usable link. I’m to the point where I’m going to file a complaint with my city’s parking department to work on getting them to find a different service provider. This is ridiculous.
Parking app
App no longer works at all? I’ve used it for years and now it’s useless, not sure why it is listed on App. Location in SF
Bad timing
I only want to pay for parking, bad time to be soliciting 🤷🏽♀️
Doesn’t work anymore
9 times out of 10 in now says that the meter location can’t be found, rendering it frustrating and useless. Please fix
Not working anymore
It doesn’t have any SF locations for some reason
I’m not able to add phone
When a type my phone, the numbers don’t disappear in order to verify it. Also I reported by email, nobody has been replied it.
Stopped working
Hasn’t worked for me since the last two updates-just get a message that something went wrong when I type in a parking spot number. Very disappointing!
super annoying
i’m paying for parking stop giving me ads
Not working in San Francisco anymore
All locations show as not found
Not working in SF
They make it very hard to figure out that their app isn't accepted by SFMTA anymore. Making things difficult - I don't recommend it.
This app sucks
This app blows
Unable to update
Trying to update app so that I can pay to park but app will not update. This so frustrating!!! It is late at night and I can’t get to pay your app. Last night it t was a problem trying to add my credit card. Could not see the boxes on the screen to enter the info. It took so minutes to finally enter the info. You need to fix your site. What do I do now. Get a ticket because on non payment when it’s not my fault??!
35 minutes later I was finally was able to enter payment. Your site sucks
35 minutes later I was finally was able to enter payment. Your site sucks
Incredibly difficult
I have never had such hassle parking, the errors made no sense, the phone number wouldn’t go in correctly, such a massive hassle
App sucks and doesn’t work. Will steal From you.
Don’t use
Very poor reliability
It’s sad that San Francisco uses this app. Reliability is terrible and UI is bad
Unnecessary
This is the stupidest thing ever invented, extremely unhelpful and unintuitive, apple pay not accepted, it asks for a description of the car and the plate (? Why), it also wants you to log in.. why do i need to log in to pay for parking… i stood there for legitimately 10 minutes inputting my information, i could have paid and gone in less than 30 sec if there was just a regular meter.
Terrible app
You charged me 10$ but the meter still didn’t work even thought I put all the information correctly
Location not found
Does not work
App UX is not great
Lots of ui errors, frustrating.
Not working in SF
The app is not able to find parking locations and pay for parking in app. Useless!
Can’t find any location numbers!
Twice today in two different neighborhoods, the app failed to find any results for the location numbers I typed in, and the “nearest location” function didn’t work either!I ended up having to use the machine on the sidewalk, and couldn’t add more time remotely 😭
The worse parking app I’ve ever used
Imposible to enter and confirm phone # and email. Had to try 3 diff emails b4 could get verified. Am in USA, auto read me as Canada the had to scroll all nations to U’s for United States then could not ‘submit’ phone #, no submit button. I HAVE 5 OTHER PARK APPS ON MY PHONE FOR ALL OVER USA AND THEY WORK SEAMLESSLY THIS - FLOP
No Apple Pay?
No Apple Pay, come on now, you guys ask too many questions. I’m trying to park and gtf on with it
Not working at Sanfrancisco!
Get my Car towed because stupidity app not working
Unable to use
I downloaded the app, entered my information to park, but then when I tried to enter my phone number to get SMS messages on iOS the keypad would pop up to enter the number but I could never close the keypad to get back to the button to confirm the number and be able to successfully utilize the app. Definitely a terrible user experience and very frustrating.
Entering phone number didn’t allow save
Terrible experience
No longer works in San Francisco
It used to. Not anymore. Gave up. Googled it. SFMTA dropped support for PayByPhone. Use ParkMobile instead. This app refuses to acknowledge the issue. They just replied to say they fixed the issue. It’s not a software issue. It’s a policy and contract issue. You can’t fix what isn’t allowed. Such lying scums.
Made by incels
Hate this app, makes it so easy for cities to slap the code on every inch of parking that should be for the public.
Not working
I’ve been trying to use the app and doesn’t recognize the locations I’ve entered or show any location nearby.
Can’t pay via app-5/27/2026
Can’t use the app to pay the meter and I’m far away from my parking spot. Very frustrating, I’ll most certainly get a parking ticket today.
Can’t add card
App will not allow any credit card to be added to my account despite cards being active and functioning. Please fix ASAP
Doesn’t work-still got ticket
We used this app to park in downtown Cincinnati. It is advertised on all the parking signs and we did everything correctly but still got a ticket! We ask the officer and she said they don’t have access to the app or the data. It’s probably the city’s issue and not the app but you’ll still get a ticket and have to deal with the hassle.
App caused a $108 ticket
The app deleted my vehicle license plate info without cause but still allowed me to proceed with paying for a meter. The app told me the time that my meter would expire and provided a payment receipt. But without the license info, the payment didn’t go through (even though the app did everything to show me the payment was valid). I got a $108 ticket because of this glitch. Thanks PaybyPhone.
Such a downgrade
These apps are inconvenient and so much more effort to use when putting quarters or a card in a machine is much easier. I am cursed every time I see this logo in a parking lot 😛
Phone number change
Absolutely ridiculous that I can’t change the phone number easily in this app without having to delete the app and re-add the app with the new phone number. Now I have to resubmit to the City all my documentation for the proof of Resident. Just absolutely crazy that these people don’t have a better. They get away with it because they sold the city on this nonsense.
Terrible app, and terrible support
The app is buggy, and it frequently locks me out of my account. Support is terrible: pretty much every debug step given to you by the built in chat agent or email trouble ticket support just tells you to log in. This isn’t useful if the problem is the app not allowing you to log in.
Getting worse
This app used to be efficient, effective and friction free … now it forces a sign in every time it is used …. Wasting time and losing its value …. the service charge is a waste! Resist the allure of friction free … ITS NOT!
Worst parking app
Worst parking app of all time, most difficult to login in, loses all your information, have to register every time, absolutely terrible
The most pathetic frustrating experience of them all
The old accounts were deleted so now I need to create a new one. Check out doesn’t work. Payment methods are not accepted.
Doesn’t work
Majorly flowed app. Can’t log in using password app/KeyChain. Can’t add credit card. Can’t use ApplePay.
Nothing works
This app doesn’t work at all. Can’t verify anything and I’m currently in a PaybyPhone area. I’ll just take a parking ticket and call it a day rather than deal with this app.
Worst parking app in Miami
Consistently slow and cumbersome. If you don’t have 4 bars of service and a clear view of the sky, it’s going to take a good 10 minutes to pay for parking.
Bring back the Apple Watch “Complication”!
Being able to glance down at my Apple Watch while shopping and seeing how many minutes remained on my parking meter made PayByPhone the BEST “complication” on my Apple Watch. What lunatic decided to REMOVE this feature?! PLEASE BRING IT BACK!
Locations are shown as non existent
Several times recently in San Francisco, I've repeatedly entered the location numbers and the app tells me it doesn't exist.. This happened to my coworkers as well.
They ended up using another app which renewed their parking fee flawlessly.
This is a relatively new problem. It could prove costly as a parking fine in SF is well over $150.00.
They ended up using another app which renewed their parking fee flawlessly.
This is a relatively new problem. It could prove costly as a parking fine in SF is well over $150.00.
Forced update
Normally great, but 26.6.1 does not work on my iOS 26.5. Frozen on the green screen. If you're going to FORCE an update, please be sure that it's actually stable! Particularly with a payments app that people depend on.
Your your phone timer
Use you phone timer to keep track of time. App does not notify of time being up.
Signed up for SMS notifications, and never received notifications of time being done.
Signed up for SMS notifications, and never received notifications of time being done.
Works ok
Beware, it does not take Amex
Sentiment summary
97%
Positive (4-5★)
1%
Neutral (3★)
2%
Negative (1-2★)