Originally Posted by
freeagent
There’s a grace period built in for online bookings. You can enter the garage 4 hours prior to your selected entry time and leave 2 hours after your exit time without penalty.
That's right. One can get up to a 6 hour grace period if they align their booking time and their anticipated parking garage arrival/departure times well enough.
Originally Posted by
emcampbe
Last few times at long term, they coned off the entrance to the new garage, and forced us to the old (though didn't seem too full as you need to walk through the new lot to get to the air train.
Have also been there multiple times in past year when both old and new garages were coned off (ostensibly full), and having to park in the surface lot south of the new garage.
Originally Posted by
Zorak
I haven't parked at SFO in a while so dunno if this is still the case, but for a while at both long term and short term (which also accepts prepaid via QR code) there was someone stationed at the entrances to help people hold their phones at just the right distance/angle to be read... IIRC there is sort of a plate/icon indicating where to hold your phone, and I found that actually holding it just beneath that was what usually worked for me.
I've noticed someone usually roaming around the long-term gates to assist. I don't recall seeing anyone at short-term parking. Also, I found out the hard way a few months ago that only one of the entry gates at short-term is set up with a QR code reader. Had to take a ticket to enter the garage and immediately exit (no charge), then take the U-turn exit between the Intl Terminal and Hwy 101 to return to the proper entry gate. Relatively painless, although it set me back a few minutes.