Parking Ticket Startup Ban

A story about a startup that helped people fight parking tickets in San Francisco until they were banned by the city.

"There was a company that would say 'Hey, did you get a parking ticket in San Francisco? We'll fight it for you. Just send us a picture of the ticket and we'll fight it for you.'

Their pitch was that 4 out of 10 tickets are filled out incorrectly and are therefore invalid - even if you were in the wrong, if the cop filled it out wrong, you don't have to pay a dime. They would find these opportunities and only take 20% of whatever money they saved you.

It got so popular that San Francisco banned them pretty quickly after a few months because it was being used so much."

[Note: This story was told by Shaan Puri and was followed up by Julian Shapiro mentioning that a similar company called Service faced the same fate with airlines, who tightened up their policies in response to their success.]