I recently had a HORRIBLE experience at this garage. I have been here many times as I often take the kids I nanny for to the aquarium across the street. In all of my previous experiences, there was always a person at a booth to take your payment and lift the gate. This last time I went, however, the booths had been torn down and replaced with machines that only took debit/credit.
I'm well aware that other parking establishments do this as well, but other parking establishments also have the common decency to post signs instructing you to keep your ticket with you, so you can pay cash at a machine if you don't have a credit/debit card with you. They also have signs designating the areas where you can find these machines. Public Market Parking apparently sees no need to pay their costumers either of these courtesies.
So I found myself at the exit with my 2 two-year-olds in the back seat with out a credit/debit card and unable to exit the garage. I called for assistance, and the surly man who came was distinctly unhelpful. He said that I would need to pay cash at a pay machine, that the pay machine on the level I was on was down, and vaguely informed me there was another one 'A few floors down'. I asked if there was an easier way to take care of this with 2 two-year-olds in car seats and he responded with 'Nope' and shuffled away.
This is what passes for assistance at the Public Market Parking? Disinterested automatons with no compassion? Why does Public Market employ such rude unsympathetic individuals to work directly with their customers? Perhaps because it is a reflection of how the management themselves regard their patrons.
At any rate I drove around and around the parking garage, unable to find the elusive unmarked pay machines. I called assistance again and this time a man came who treated me like a human, lead me directly to a pay machine, and apologized profusely for what I had been put through.
How hard would it be to at least put some signs up informing people to keep their tickets with them, that they can not pay at the exits, and to clearly delineate where the pay machines are? And would it kill them to put more than 2 machines in their entire complex of parking? Sadly, Public Market Parking is too cheap, disinterested, and poorly managed to get some paint and actually communicate with their paying customers. They are as soulless and corporate as the new machines they put in lieu of human beings at the exits. I will NEVER park here again.
Pros: Close to Market
Cons: Rude and Unhelpful Staff, Terrible Management
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