Not so much if you leave a card number for them to run, so it’s paid for, and you have another key to the car. Unless the lot will be locked inside a fence, you can have them lock your key in under the mat or in the ignition, and you can get in with the second key.
I live in Indianapolis, and I once left a car for a couple of days at a place, because they had to order a part for the problem, and I had to go out of town for a day (we have another car), so I said if the car couldn’t be ready today, it was going to sit on their lot for the next three days.
They were fine with it.
The garage was not smack in the center of downtown, but it was about 15 minutes by bus, and near a bus stop. It was also about a $12 Uber ride.
It doesn’t cost that much to park in downtown Indy, though.
Yeah, car guys are usually good people and I’d bet you could even tell them “I won’t be back 'til 6 if that’s okay, we’re catching the Harmonicapalooza concert in the park.”
So I can’t imagine a place where you’d get towed or charged for storage.
I go to all-day urban music fests (oh, why don’t I just say Summerfest, in Milwaukee?). You can get in cheap before 3, even free “with a used children’s book donation”. But downtown parking is expensive. I used to cruise around looking for cheaper street parking, finally started using a parking app. Plenty of industrial-looking lots, though I end up having to walk a mile or so.
Just checked, no oil change places nearby, but I think it’s a valid ‘lifehack’. If you could do it in downtown Chicago, it’d be valuable.
Even in Downtown Chicago, I have no issues finding all-day parking for less than an oil change if I use Park Whiz or Spot Hero. For example, I just plugged in 24 hour parking from 12 noon today to 12 noon tomorrow, and I can find three lots within a block of the Art Institute of Chicago for under $20 (two are $17, one is $13. This is for 24 hours!) I tried the same for Saturday to Sunday, 24 hours, and those three lots are $17, $16, and $14. OK, if you’re going up the Magnificent Mile, I still see a couple lots for under $20 (there’s one near Chicago and Rush for $14), but the average seems to be around $25 - $30, once again, for 24 hours. Still less than an oil change.
Perhaps the demand for parking in downtown Chicago is depressed because of the continued COVID crisis (with many not yet back to work, few tourists in town and the museums closed)? How much would parking have cost on this date last year?
If you’re using Spot Hero or Park Whiz, those prices are not far off. I work downtown on weekends all the time, and I’ve never had to pay more than around $25 for parking through these apps. Typically I can find a lot under $20 that’s close enough to where I want to be.
Let me look through my ParkWhiz history. Sun, August 18, 2019: 12 noon - 12 midnight, 60 E. Lake Street (very near Chicago Theatre.) $10. Closer to today’s date: July 27, 2019; 10:15 a.m. - 5 p.m. $14. 110 W. Lake St. The most expensive Park Whiz parking I have in the last few years is $25, 7:10 a.m. Oct 23 to 7:10 a.m. Oct 24 at 211 W. Adams for $25. The cheapest I see for 12 hour or more parking is Sat Nov 15, 2019 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at $9, 177 N. Wells St.
It seems to me as if this really worked: that you could pay far less for getting an oil change and leaving the car there than it would be park in the same area, that the oil change place is in the wrong business. They should shutter the place and turn it into a paid parking area.
As a former New Yorker, that might work. I dint know that I’d call it a scam, though and I don’t think you’d save money.
In NYC, you’re not going to find service stations that are near Macy’s and Bloomingdales. For the most part, they are going to be in less desirable section of Manhattan (think 11th Ave) or the outer boroughs. And parking in those neighborhoods is probably cheaper than an oil change - . Yes, an oil change is probably going to be cheaper, maybe way cheaper, than a parking lot near Madison Square Garden or the Theatre District. But you’re not going to find a service garage in those neighborhoods ( and if by some chance you do, they’d probably charge for storage.)
And if you can walk or cab or mass transit from a service garage outside of midtown, you can just find a parking lot in that area.
But if your car needs an oil change, it’s a good way to kill two birds with one stone. But I wouldn’t call it a scam.
You must not live in an urban area. In Washington DC there is no place I have seen where you can park for free all day. There is lots of street parking for free but only after 10 PM. Hotels charge you to park there if you are a guest. There is a Target that may let you park for free for two hours if you are a customer (i.e., you get a ticket from the cashier when you leave). Malls and theaters have paid parking, if at all. Even in dense suburbs, like where I live, if you park all day in a Walmart, movie theater, or mall, you could get ticketed or even towed. There are people who park there and then walk over to the subway station, and these people are not there to offer free commuter parking.
That said, I don’t know of any place in DC that is more than $25-30 a day. If Manhattan is hundreds a day, then it is the exception, even to urban areas.
In my youth I worked at a real service station. It was less than three blocks from the beach. During festivals, the chance of finding a parking place within three miles of the beach was exactly zero. On “normal” weekends it was a bit better, but not much.
Many folks figured out this “life hack” and had us do an oil change or tire rotation on their rigs. They would pickup their car when they were ready to leave for the day.
We also had a towing service. If you parked your rig in our lot without requesting service, it would cost you dearly to recover it from our enclosed impound lot in the rear of the service station’s yard.
We had many regular customers from the big city. They could come play on the beach & get their car serviced at the same time. Plus they also liked the quality of work we did. Everyone won.
Heck, we could hold the regular customers cars in our impound yard for a week or two if they wanted us to. No extra cost.
Get a parking ticket. Many times they are bright orange, yellow, or red and stand out. Pay the fine online or over the phone and take pristine care of the ticket. Then park where ever you want on public streets, meter parking and such. Put the ticket under your windshield. If a parking checker or cop comes along they’ll assume another officer already cited the violation and be on their way.
This no longer works in places with plate readers as cites are logged and they’ll know the vehicle wasn’t recently tagged. But it still works in smaller municipalities and has worked for decades. It’s a pretty old trick.
And don’t actually do this, it may be illegal, definitely unethical. This post was for entertainment purposes only.
I don’t know if this is apocryphal or not, but I’ve heard of people doing something like this, except that they will grab a ticket off another car and place it under their own windshield wipers. This is a double dick move, because it not only allows them to park without risk of a ticket, but the car that they stole the ticket from will probably now get another one.
That trick only works if there is a car in the vicinity that has a ticket on it. Which is why you want to have one of your own.
When we went to Ground Zero in 2004 there was meter parking and it was only a quarter. Don’t recall the time limit. What was the deal with that? NYC parking is usually insane.
In DC there are parking lots at some of the outer metro stops. You can park for free at those lots on weekends and holidays. Otherwise it’s around $5 per day to park. I think you park for free at night too unless it has changed.
I haven’t used metered parking in NYC in a long time, but there was a time in the late ‘80’s where there was a lot of metered parking close to my office.
The meters took quarters but a quarter didn’t buy you much time. Ten minutes, maybe -I don’t really recall. But we were generally feeding handfuls of quarters into those meters.
I don’t think that style meter exists anymore, now you have to pay at a central station located somewhere on the block. Then you get a pay receipt to display inside your front windshield.
It’s not a scam - I leave my car at the mechanic in the morning and pick it up after work all the time and I’m not looking for free parking. Some mechanics don’t have much space and when they were done working on my car, they would park it on the street. But this life hack really wouldn’t work in NY. Even if you actually needed the oil change, there’s still the issue of getting from where the garage is to getting where you want to go - and the garage may not be anywhere near a subway station.
And the large parking lot won’t work in NYC and probably a fair amount of other cities either. Sure , we have some Targets, etc in Queens and Brooklyn with large, free parking lots. But they tow at some point and I’ve seen towings happen almost immediately when people don’t go into the establishment that operates the lot. * And other places, including malls , charge for parking
I used to work in a fast-food restaurant next to a hospital and a subway station and across the street from the above mentioned mall. If the towing company saw someone park and immediately go to one of these places rather than into the restaurant , they towed it right away. More expensive than paying for parking would have been.