Free Parking in Vancouver? Not only on a Monopoly board!

*Please note this does not apply anymore. See comments*

If your like me, you like to push the envelope as much as possible. Live on the edge – at least when paying taxes, tickets and parking meters. When we received a parking ticket last week by overstaying for a whopping 5 minutes, I tossed it in the trash and didn’t think twice of it. (You should note the car, it’s on Dee’s car.. and her parking job:)

Today in the mail comes the threatening letter hinting at jail time if we don’t pay our $35 ticket. My first thought was why bother, that’s an entire day for us in Thailand! We’re out of here for a year… but then I envisioned our return to Canada and being redirected to jail, do not pass Go and do not collect $200.

While cursing the City, I remembered about a Free Parking Pass someone told me about and decided to investigate a bit further. A quick call on the back of the letter to the Payment or initiate a Dispute line, and like any good government agency, I was told this was the wrong department and to call Ticket Information.

I called the Ticket Information line at 604-257-8732 and asked about a courtesy cancellation on this ticket, expecting to turn my “salesman” on and negotiate. To my disbelief the person on the phone said no problem, we get one free ticket per license plate, and cancelled the ticket. I’ve never done anything involving the Government so easily before!

The moral of the story, if you get a ticket from City of Vancouver and have a valid license plate, don’t pay the $80 ticket and give the City a call. Then donate 25% of what you saved to us for our trip!