Frequently Asked Questions
What kind of questions can I ask Porter?
You can ask questions about the City of Porterville and its city departments, public health information like Covid-19 vaccine availability, directory information, and report issues. For example, you can ask "When is City Hall open", "Where can I get vaccinated?", "How can I get a fire report?". Where does Porter get the information from? We pull the data from government-hosted data sources. Although we are not yet able to directly sync information with the official websites, we maintain and update our databases regularly. Are you going to spam me? Porter is not a subscription-based service and we only send information back if you request first. We are a group of grad students and don’t have ads or solicit business of any kind. Every text costs us money, and your time, so we want to get you the right answer as quickly as possibly. How much does Porter cost? Porter is free to use. If you text the bot at the number (SMS), you’ll need to pay whatever your mobile carrier charges you for text messages. We’d prefer you don’t send unnecessary SMS as texts cost us a lot of money even if they’re free for you. Does Porter save my number in the system? Don't worry. Porter is an information dissemination system that uses SMS as a medium to communicate. We do not track your requests, save your cellphone number, or profit off of your personal information. Do you get paid for this? Nope! We are only a group of grad students trying to create an impact for our capstone project. |