Rydin PermitExpress

"A clear choice"

Overall: Rydin has made me look like a hero. Because of Rydin, I have successfully been able to make every required large and small change to our parking management process and policies over the years. Rydin provides me with all the tools to manage parking quickly and intuitively. Some of the tools may not do the work for me, but most do. Of those tools that I have to manually manipulate to complete a job or process, Rydin still makes them easy to access and manipulate to accomplish my task.

Pros: Rydin provided us with a solution that in itself was clean and intuitive enough that all our staff over the years have been able to quickly master their role within the system. I love the fact that data is so quickly attainable without going through several menu options. It is so helpful to have the ability to modify the web pages ourselves, rather than wait on the service provider or another department within our institution. Access to the text on the Rydin web pages and the notifications allows us to serve and adjust to our customer's needs immediately. It has been very helpful for me be able to access both the pc management portal and mobile versions from my device. Although our appeals decision process requires a lot of manual compiling of data from Rydin to present to an appeals committee, it is still awesome that we could do it all digitally through Rydin if we wanted.

Cons: One feature that could be improved upon is the import/export feature. Due to institutional and department policy changes over the years, I'm running into more complications because we can't run the manual imports and exports often enough. It would be helpful to have a timed export feature. This would allow our IT to receive an export file and complete their integration with our institutional software. Another option was to have the ability to create a secure file/folder link where files can be uploaded or downloaded for our internal integration process. I would also like more control over the web page design in the areas of the agreement box to parking regulations and the citation management page.

"Rydin PermitExpress"

Overall: Overall, the experience has been very good. I was singing the praises of Rydin PermitExpress to everyone who would listen, until we started getting our statements this past school year. Upon implementation, I made sure to ask if we were charged per citation, and the answer was "no", it was only on the back end when fines are paid. We received a renewal last summer and it was signed and sent back. We started having more money taken from our monthly statements. No one had drawn attention to the fact that the terms of the contract were changing. We thought we were renewing on the original terms. Now we are subject to additional charges, including a charge per citations (even warnings), which is ridiculous. I am happy to pay fees on the back end, when fines are collected, but not on the front end, which is one of the reasons I selected this product originally. Although we should have scrutinized the terms to compare with the first contract, the change should have been brought to our attention for full disclosure. I was only told we were renewing our existing contract. This feels very ethically questionable and left a bad taste in my mouth.

Pros: I like the affordability of the product. The layout seems dated, but is relatively easy to use once you get the hang of it. It has some good reporting capabilities and and meets most of our needs from providing citation printers, paper, citation management, and permit fulfillment.

Cons: From the console, I do not have the ability to sort data every way I'd like (e.g. citations by payment date). I can from the excel export, but I'd like to be able to from the console. Rydin changed the terms of the contract on the renewal without calling it to our attention, increasing our fees. This should have been communicated and I am worried it will happen again.

"everything you need"

Overall: From ordering decals to lot reservations and permit distribution management to utilizing the program- we have been extremely satisfied. The customer care is very good too.

Pros: Real-time reporting and immediate communication to offenders. Easy to use software and field devices. great customer service.

Cons: Excel download of reports are difficult to use in digital format (sorting issues). We have a tier-based fee structure and "wipe the slate clean annually" however the program does not exclude tier counts from previous years so our officers have to take more time in figuring out the appropriate fee.