Frequently asked questions

Yes. Confirming your departure is the step that closes your reservation. Driving away does not end it on its own — Polarity has no way to see that your space is empty, so until you confirm, your reservation is still running.

There are two ways to confirm, and both take one tap:

• Leave now — you are pulling out right now. Your reservation closes immediately.
• Leave at my scheduled end time — you are staying for the full time you booked. Your reservation closes automatically when it ends.

Both buttons are on your reservation page, in your confirmation email, and in every text message we send you. If you know when you are leaving, tap one as soon as you park — you do not have to wait until you are walking back to the car.

This is the most common question we get, and it almost always has the same answer: the reservation was never confirmed as ended, so the system still had the space recorded as occupied.

An overstay fee applies when both of these are true:

1. Your reservation end time passed, and
2. the grace period after it passed too, with no departure confirmation and no extension.

Open your reservation and look for the “Why this fee?” panel. It lays out the exact timeline from your own record — when you paid, when the reservation ended, whether a departure confirmation was received, when the grace period lapsed, and when the fee was charged. If that timeline does not match what happened, use “Dispute this fee” on the same page.

Scan the Polarity code on the signage at the space or entrance. That opens the reservation page for that property in your phone's browser — there is no app to download.

From there you pick how long you are staying, add your vehicle and license plate, confirm your phone number or email, and pay. You get a confirmation by text and email with a link to your reservation.

You can also reach the same flow from an invitation sent to you by a resident or by the property's team.

Each property publishes its own set of durations and prices. You will see the available options — and what each one costs — before you pay.

Some properties only require a reservation outside their business hours. Where that applies, parking during those hours needs no reservation at all, and the reservation page tells you which hours are which.

You get a grace period — a short, final window to either confirm your departure or extend, before any overstay fee applies. We text you the moment it starts.

The length is set by each property. Fifteen minutes is the standard, but check the text message you receive: it always states how long you have and links straight to your reservation.

Act inside that window and there is no overstay fee.

An overstay fee is what a property charges when a space stays occupied past the reservation, with no departure confirmation and no extension. It is charged to the card you used to book.

The amount is set by the property, not by Polarity. Properties choose one of two approaches: a flat amount they set, or an amount matching what your reservation itself cost. Your reservation page and the message you receive both state the exact amount charged.

Open your reservation and tap Extend, then pick how much longer you need and pay for the extension. The link is in your confirmation email and in every text we send.

You can extend at any point before your reservation ends, and during the grace period. Extending during the grace period stops an overstay fee from applying.

Yes. We send a reminder by text and email ahead of your end time with both options — extend, or confirm departure — as one-tap links.

Reminders are the one message type you can turn off, under notification preferences in your account settings. Messages about money, towing and your vehicle always send.

Open the reservation that was charged and use “Dispute this fee”. Pick the reason that fits and add anything else we should know.

Your dispute goes directly to the property's support team, along with a note on your reservation's timeline so their staff sees it in context. They will follow up with you by email. You can submit one dispute per overstay fee.

Refunds are the property's decision. Polarity operates the payment platform on each property's behalf and does not issue refunds on their behalf, so a refund has to be approved by the property's team — they can issue one directly from their dashboard.

The fastest route is “Dispute this fee” on your reservation, which reaches the right people with your reservation record already attached. If a refund is issued you will get a text and an email confirming the amount.

We retry the charge automatically. If it still does not go through, we text and email you a secure link to update your card. Use that link — an unpaid overstay fee can make your vehicle eligible for towing.

Towing is decided and requested by the property, and carried out by an independent towing company. Polarity does not tow vehicles and does not decide when a vehicle gets towed.

Properties configure how it escalates. Most set an overstay fee to apply first, and a vehicle becomes eligible for towing only after that fee period also runs out. Some properties skip the fee step, which makes a vehicle eligible once its reservation and grace period have passed.

If a tow is requested for your vehicle we text you before it happens, so you have a chance to move it.

The text and email we send you when a vehicle is towed name the towing company and how to reach them, and link to your reservation.

At properties where the towing company offers it, you can request a tow-back from your reservation page — the same company returns your vehicle to the property. The price is shown before you confirm and is charged to your card on file. If a tow-back is cancelled after you were charged, we refund it and confirm the amount by text and email.

Where tow-back is not offered, you collect your vehicle from the towing company directly.

Properties that offer free reservations usually set a waiting period between them, so the same vehicle cannot hold a free space back-to-back all day. Twelve hours is the common setting.

If you run into it, the page tells you the exact time your next free reservation becomes available. Paid reservations are never affected — you can always book one of those immediately.

Yes, and someone reads it. A reply gets an automatic response with your property's support contact and a link to your reservation, and your message is forwarded to that same support contact by email.

Texting HELP returns your property's support contact. Texting STOP ends all text messages from us; START turns them back on. Opting out does not cancel your reservation — and you can still reach support, because a HELP reply always goes through.

Contact your property first. They set the prices, the grace period, the overstay fee and the towing policy at their location, and they are the only ones who can approve a refund or resolve a dispute.

Their support contact is in every message we send you, in the automatic reply to any text you send us, and on your reservation page. If you cannot find a reservation at all, write to support@polarityparking.com and we will point you to the right property.

Your property's team invites you by email or text. Accepting the invitation creates your account and connects it to the property. You cannot self-register — if you did not get an invitation, ask your property manager to send one.

Go to Settings → Vehicles and add your vehicle's license plate, state, make, model and color.

Registering matters: the license plate is how a property tells a vehicle that belongs there from one that does not. An unregistered vehicle in a resident space can be treated as non-compliant.

From your dashboard, create a guest reservation with your visitor's name and their email address, phone number, or both. We send them the invitation and walk them through the rest — picking a duration, adding their vehicle, and paying if your property charges visitors.

There is no cap on how many invitations you send over time. Some properties do cap how many of your guest reservations can be active at once — if yours does and you are at that number, you will be told when you try to create another, and you can create it once one of the current reservations ends.

Separately, each property decides how many spaces are available to visitors overall. If the property is full, your guest is told that when they try to book.

Your property sets the number. Two is the standard allowance. If you need more than your property allows, ask your property manager — it is a setting on their side.

Yes. Everyone parking on a reservation confirms departure the same way, whether they were invited by you or booked from the signage. It is worth telling your visitors up front — not confirming is the single most common reason a guest ends up with an overstay fee.

Yes. Your dashboard lists the guest reservations tied to your unit, including which are active, and links through to each one.

Go to Settings → Reservation & pricing. You define pricing tiers — one per duration you want to offer — and set a price for each. You can price resident-invited guests differently from visitors who arrive off the street.

A tier priced at zero is offered as a free reservation, which is how properties keep registration in place without charging for it. Optional surge pricing raises prices automatically when bookings spike within a window you define, up to a cap you set.

Go to Settings → Enforcement. Four settings drive the whole escalation:

• Grace period — how long after a reservation ends someone can still confirm departure or extend before a fee applies. Defaults to 15 minutes. Set it to 0 for immediate enforcement with no grace at all.
• Fee before tow — whether an overstay fee applies before a vehicle becomes eligible for towing, or whether it becomes eligible straight away.
• Fee amount strategy — a flat amount you set, or an amount matching the reservation that was booked.
• Fee amount — the flat amount, when you use that strategy.

Changes take effect for reservations from that point forward and are recorded in the property's activity log.

1. The reservation reaches its end time with no departure confirmation and no extension.
2. The grace period starts. The guest is texted immediately with links to confirm departure or extend.
3. The grace period lapses. If Fee before tow is on, an overstay fee is charged to the card on file and the guest is notified with the amount and the reason.
4. That fee period lapses in turn, and the vehicle becomes eligible for a tow request.
5. Your team requests the tow. It goes to your towing partners, and the guest is texted that a tow has been dispatched.

With Fee before tow off, step 3 is skipped and a vehicle becomes eligible for a tow request once the grace period lapses.

Reporting covers occupancy over time, enforcement activity, and non-compliant reservations. Portfolio-level accounts also get revenue and revenue split reporting across all their properties.

For a single reservation, open it directly — its timeline shows every event and every message sent, plus staff comments.

Residents and tenants are invited from Tenants. For a new building, use the CSV import to invite everyone at once — download the sample file to get the column layout right. Unaccepted invitations are reminded automatically.

Your own staff are invited from Settings → Members.

Invite towing companies from Settings → Towing partners. Once a partner accepts, they get their own dashboard and receive your tow requests there.

You choose how requests are distributed: to your primary partner first, or to all of your partners at once for whoever responds first. You can reassign or cancel a request at any point before it is completed.

Open the reservation, find the overstay fee, and issue the refund from there. The guest is texted and emailed automatically with the refunded amount, so you do not need to follow up separately to confirm it.

To you. A guest disputing an overstay fee picks a reason and adds an optional note; that emails your property's support contact and posts a comment on the reservation's timeline so whoever picks it up has the full history.

Set your support contact under your property's settings. It is the address shown to guests in messages and in the automatic reply when they text us — if you leave it blank, guests are sent to Polarity's general support instead, which slows everything down.

Payments run through Stripe. Connect your Stripe account from your dashboard — Stripe handles the identity and bank verification directly. Payouts are made once per calendar month.

Polarity supports you — the platform, your dashboard and your integrations. Guests and residents are supported by your team, because you set the rules at your property and you are the only one who can approve a refund or waive a fee.

That is why the support contact on your property record matters so much: it is the address every guest is pointed to. For platform issues, reach us at support@polarityparking.com.