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Beachgoers wrongfully booted at parking lot
A Satellite beachgoer is upset because she was mistakenly booted while having a registered parking pass
SATELLITE BEACH, Fla. - Beachgoers are worried their vehicles could be booted in Satellite Beach, even if they’ve registered to park there.
"It’s sad because you’re nervous to go on the beach, like are they going to boot my car?," said Brett Ross, a Satellite Beach resident who walks near the ocean almost every day.
When Satellite Beach implemented its new parking program a few months ago, she made sure to register her vehicles so she wouldn’t get the boot. To her shock and surprise, she still got booted a few weeks ago.
"It’s frustrating because I didn’t know what was going to take place. How am I going to get this off, and how much time is this going to take out of my day?," she added.
She says she registered her vehicles in the online parking portal back in September and didn’t have any issues until this happened. The process to get the boot off wasn’t easy.
"They gave me a code which was wrong. They gave me another code which was wrong and she’s like – put it in again. Finally, she gave me a code that worked," Ross said when explaining the phone conversation with the parking attendant.
The avid beachgoer says the company didn’t charge her the $80 fee to remove the boot, but it did cost her time.
"It did significantly impact my day. I missed an appointment which cost me money. No one is reimbursing me for that. Nobody is there to help me," Ross said, noting how it took some time to get anyone from the city of Satellite Beach to listen to her issue.
Others who love the beach are feeling her frustrations.
"It’s making the community angry, and it’s very frustrating. This is our home, and now they’re just making our home a prison here," said Raymond Adamcik who is always nervous coming to the beach now.
It’s a hot topic beachgoers can’t seem to stop talking about when running into other neighbors and on social media.
"Our home is full of anxiety, you know," said Adamcik. "Are we going to get some big boot here?"
Ross shared the email she received from the parking company with FOX 35 about what went wrong. The company told her, she had two accounts on file, and the attendant didn’t scroll down enough on their handheld device to find the second account which gave her access to park where she was.
"I don't really understand how the worker made that mistake. It's very elementary. It's right there on the screen," said Ross.
Because of this, beachgoers say the overall registration process is confusing. They want to see a smoother, more reliable system, before more people who are following the rules end up booted at the beach.
FOX 35 did reach out to the private company running the parking system to see if they can break down common registration errors they’re seeing and if they had a comment on these concerns in the community.
At the time this article was published, we have not heard back.