Brussels start-up will fight your parking ticket for you

Want to contest a parking fine you got in Brussels? A new start-up, Spixx, will do it for you – and free at that. With the motto “Don’t waste time, don’t waste money”, Spixx will also help you file for compensation with rail service SNCB.

The new company launched last summer and have handled about 100 requests a month. It has successfully gotten about half of all parking fines cancelled.

“Often an incorrect fine is down to human error,” co-founder Denis Mercier told Bruzz. “Like a license plate is input incorrectly or there is a problem with the info processed from the scancar.”

Parking metres that are defective, technical problems with the scancars or bugs in the system that remind people to renew their parking passes – all of these lead to fines being incorrectly mailed to Brussels residents.

Getting compensation for late trains, meanwhile, can be so confusing that passengers just don’t bother. “SNCB has very clear regulations regarding who has the right to compensation,” said Mercier. “We have an 80% success rate with the cases we have handled.”

Spixx is free and currently is not making a profit. But the idea, explained Mercier, is to get up and running and then work with car leasing and sharing companies, which spend a lot of time contesting fines. “Then we’ll operate according to ‘no cure, no pay’,” he said. “Only if we get a fine cancelled will we receive a commission.”

Photo: Nicolas Maeterlinck/BELGA