Parking tickets are one of the biggest pains in the butt in life.  You head to an area with absolutely no place to park, you’re already running late, you circle the block over and over again and finally see a space and frantically pull in.  You are so happy that you found a place to stash your car that you don’t stop to read the tiny and super confusing sign designating a street sweeping zone, half a block away.  It doesn’t matter if you just got back from a great date, a stellar business meeting, or a relaxing day at the spa; when you walk back to your car and are greeted with that pesky white envelope so lovingly shoved underneath your wiper blades, your brain instantly turns to storm clouds.  If you are a resident of Santa Monica and cursed with having to resort to daily street parking, you might want to consider calling upon the Ticket Angels.

The Ticket Angels are Chris Harati and Matthew Parker and their entire lives center upon preventing you from getting a parking ticket.  The Santa Monica based duo has developed a business that nobody else in the world has attempted.  “Basically, it all started because Matt knocked on my door because my girlfriend was going to get a parking ticket and he said, ‘You better run out.’  She moved the car and so I sat there thinking – wow he saved us money that we couldn’t afford.  I went online and realized that no one was doing it and I came over and asked him: Do you want to start this?” explains Chris.  Their business offers a yearly subscription that “saves” you with a notification that you are about to get a parking ticket.  “We kind of invented parking ticket insurance, in a sense,” explains Matt.  “Parking tickets are a big source of revenue for cities.  But we have the philosophy that that money could do a lot more good in the hands of the people that need it.  So that’s what our service is based on.”

How it works:

Their current special is that $45 will cover you for a year and when you sign up, you are given a Ticket Angels sticker to put in the window of your vehicle. You are then asked to select the method that you’d like to be notified by: a phone call, text, email, or even a knock on your front door.  Chris sits in the office on dispatch while Matt rides around on the official Ticket Angels vespa covering all the street sweeping routes in the area.  When Matt sees that your car is in danger of getting a ticket in a street sweeping zone, he immediately calls Chris in the office who will notify you that you have x amount of time to move your vehicle.

Right now their service focuses specifically on street sweeping violations, the most expensive of all parking tickets, and is concentrated in Santa Monica covering the following zip codes: 90401,90402, and 90403.  “The big thing that we’re really looking for is financiers.  We need a capital investment so we can expand,” says Matt, who explains that their have developed a full business model that will allow for expansion into additional areas and future coverage of parking meters as well.

Here’s the best part:

If they forget to notify you, they will pay the price of your parking ticket out of their own pocket.

Think you don’t need the service?
If you go an entire year without being notified, they will refund your money.  Chris explains, “If they’re really good about moving their car, they get their money back.  So they lose nothing and we will have still busted our ass all year to make sure that they didn’t get a ticket.”

Need a bit more convincing?

•    According to the Ticket Angels, Santa Monica made between $14million and $16 million in parking tickets last year, with at least 40% of the revenue from street sweeping violations.

•    Last year street sweeping tickets were $51, then the city raised them to $61, and now they are talking about raising them to $71

•    If you get a ticket, you have to pay it in full.  After 21 days the price doubles and after that it goes on your DMV record so that you can’t register your car until you pay your parking ticket

•    In the 4 months that the Ticket Angels have been up and running, they have already saved their customers an estimated $20,000 in parking tickets

•    The cost of an annual subscription is less than the cost of 1 parking ticket

•    They’ve notified 78% of their customers in the past 4 months and one family was notified 15 times already

•    They are notorious for “saving” people that aren’t even on their service out of good will and have so far saved 172 non-subscribers who clearly need the service.

The Ticket Angels have a growing list of clientele.  They were initially surprised to find that even actors and high profile business execs are among their list of subscribers, but have come to realize that rich or poor, famous or average Joe, nobody likes to worry street sweeping tickets.  The guys have a very strict client confidentially agreement, but we were able to leak that Jerome Dahan, founder of 7 for All Mankind Jeans, is a subscriber and one of their biggest supporters.  “These guys allow me to have peace of mind while at rest in my own neighborhood,” exclaims Jerome.

And of course, there are perks to the job:

“There is a supermodel that is on our service.  We know her pretty well and we knocked on her door yesterday to tell her to move her car and she was kind of getting dressed and I’m thinking I can’t believe this is happening.  She was super sweet and said, Thanks Matt!  I thought wow, this really isn’t a bad job,” jokes Matt.

Words by Nicole Pajer.  Photos by Dustin Downing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzJwEjipewE