Start to finish
Scan, shoot, send.
The whole resident path is a photograph and one confirmation. Everything after that happens between Misparked and the towing operator already under contract at the property.
What a resident does
Four steps, and the second only happens once.
Scan the code on the plate
It opens a web page. Nothing to install, no account, no password.
Confirm your number, the first time
Type in a mobile number and we text it a link. Tap the link and that phone is remembered; it is never asked again. It exists so a number typed into a box means something, and so nobody can hang a fabricated report on a neighbor.
Photograph the vehicle and pick what is wrong
Take the photo there, or pick one already in your library. More than one reason is fine, because one car is often two problems at once. The phone offers its location if it is allowed to; refusing does not block anything.
Check what we read off the photo
The plate, state, color, make and model come back already filled in, in fields that can be corrected. Anything left blank is something that could not be made out, and a blank is deliberate: a plate guessed wrong sends a truck to the wrong car. The photo and the phone say which property, and you confirm that with one tap on the same screen, or drop a pin on the exact spot when a space number is not enough.
Nothing is sent to the operator until the number is confirmed
What the operator receives
One message with one link.
Everything known, on one page
The photo, the plate, the decoded vehicle, where in the lot and how far from it the report was made, the time it was seen, and the reporter's track record: how their past reports turned out, never who they are.
One question at a time
Are you taking it. Is a driver on the way. What happened when you got there. Nothing asks for a storage lot until a vehicle is actually being stored. Gone-on-arrival and could-not-find-it are separate answers on purpose: one is about the car, the other is about how well we described where it was.
The follow-up is already written out
Where a removal has to be phoned in, every field the dispatcher will ask for is on one screen with the number and the deadline, so nothing is retyped from memory at the end of a tow. Misparked prepares that call. It does not place it.
What Misparked will not do
The limits are the product.
| Look up who owns a plate | Plate to vehicle description only. Plate to registered owner is restricted under the federal Driver's Privacy Protection Act. |
|---|---|
| Share who reported a vehicle | The reporter's number never reaches the operator or the vehicle owner. The operator sees a track record with no identity in it. |
| Pay anyone per report | Residents are never paid for reporting, and Misparked is never paid per tow. |
| Decide whether to tow | Reports go to the operator carrying everything known. They verify on arrival and they decide. |
| Take reports it cannot support | Only things true of the vehicle as it sits, which the driver can confirm by looking. Not something a person did and then stopped doing. |