Who hasn't lost change in a busted parking meter? It's a universal experience in public parking. You stop at a meter, stick a coin in the slot and discover the meter is not working.
Out of an abundance of caution (because in L.A. you can legally park at a broken coin-only meter), you move your car to another spot and forfeit your coin. End of story - for most people.
But I have a colleague who decided to try to get her 25 cents back. Her decision to pursue the lost quarter was part curiosity - she wanted to see how the process worked - and part peevishness - "I'm not going to subsidize the city of L.A.!"
Her experience offers some insight into the ways of government and the inevitable expense of customer service.
The story began on Dec. 8, when my colleague parked on Ventura Boulevard in Tarzana. She popped a quarter in the meter, realized it was broken and moved to the next open spot.
She decided to report the problem, dialing the phone number on the meter.
An operator picked up the phone and my colleague explained that she had just inserted a quarter into a broken meter. She read off the meter number.
The operator thanked her for the report and was about to hang up, when my colleague chirped, "Wait, what about my 25 cents?"
The operator, surprised,
asked "Do you want that?""Oh yeah."
The operator took my colleague's information and said some paperwork would be in the mail. Now, my co-worker wondered, would she get a check for 25 cents in the mail? Would they stick a quarter in an envelope?
After three and a half months, she received a very polite letter from the Department of Transportation.
The DOT "wishes to apologize for any inconvenience that you experienced with our parking meters," the letter began. On the backside of the letter was a claim form for a refund. The DOT helpfully filled out the amount claimed - 69 cents.
That's the original quarter lost, plus 44 cents to cover the cost of the stamp she'll use to mail back the form. How thoughtful!
By the time my co-worker's experiment in customer service is over, L.A. will have spent 44 cents to mail the form, 25 cents to refund the lost quarter and another 44 cents in return postage. That's $1.13 - plus the cost of paper, envelopes and manpower to process the refund request and cut a check.
L.A. gets about 50 lost coin claims a month, ranging from a quarter to $4, and the city pays about about $100 a month or $1,200 a year - plus the postage and manpower, which could double the cost.
Yes, customer service is expensive. But the cost of making one person happy with the city is priceless.
Kerry Cavanaugh is an editorial writer and columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News. She can be reached at kerry.cavanaugh@dailynews.com.
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