It’s been just shy of 4 years since I first received these. After that nothing. Until today! They are claiming I still owe a total of 537.60 Euros for 3 counts of driving in “Limited traffic area without authorization”.
These charges are from 2012. I haven’t been to Italy since then. I have, however, been to Europe and driven there including France in 2014, and we just got back from 2 weeks in Ireland. Didn’t have any problem renting a car in either.
What stinks is that I followed the map/gps the car rental company gave me to get out of the area. That’s where all the infractions allegedly occurred.
I find it strange that they were silent for almost 4 years and then threaten to send Vito after me. (Calm down, my wife is Italian and even she thinks that’s funny)
So what happens if I continue to ignore this shake down?
Wish I could tell you. I have a 10 year old parking ticket from France hanging over my head. Damn thing is I tried to pay it, but it turned out to be very hard to pay once you left town (I didn’t feel like driving 60 miles back to Uzes to pay a $12 ticket).
One problem is, I can’t go to work and ask if anyone knows what happens if I refuse to pay a fine from Europe. My Chief will want to know why I’m on vacation getting traffic tickets. (“I didn’t have the chance to badge my way out of it” won’t fly).
I honestly think this is a set up. We followed the map/GPS to the tee to leave/return the rental car. And that route is where they are saying I violate, first going to and then coming back. And if you read my cites the rental company actually charged me a fee to tell the local cops who I was. Why would they have to do that when looking at their computer takes 2 seconds? “We charged you a fee so we could tell the police who to send more fees to” is basically what they told me in 2012.
Wisconsin is not a member of the national drivers compact here, so I doubt there is any agreement with Italy either. I just wonder if this could affect my credit rating.
And why on earth would it take almost 4 more years for them to come after me again?
I did get a new number when I got a chip card. And the phone number I provided was to a Magic Jack that isn’t even set up to a phone, so they can call away.
It may not be them (the Italian government). Sometimes old debts are sold off to collection agencies for pennies on the dollar, and that agency then tries to collect those old debts.
I got a camera ticket in Italy and the rental company charged me a fee to provide my information to the municipality but I don’t think the municipality ever tried to collect from the car rental company. This is the same thing the OP mentioned. I ended paying around $225 for doing 45kpm in a 35kpm zone or something like that.
If the rental car company gave you that specific route then I would provide that explanation to the entity that issued the ticket (do they offer an option of pleading not guilty with explanation or something like that?). But if you just determined your own route based on a map, or worse yet let a GPS tell you what route to take, then you don’t have much of a defense.
These limited traffic areas are getting more common. I think downtown Florence has this. IIRC London does it too.
I see that I also responded to your original backstory thread.
I do not know what happens if you ignore it. I believe the worst-case scenario would be you are blacklisted by Italian car rental agencies, but I don’t know if the administrative infrastructure exists to do that. I guess another worst-case would be to rent a car again there, and then you get pulled over for something and there is a warrant on your head. Again, this is speculative (although the latter scenario happened to me in Ann Arbor, Mich.).
The rental company gave us a small highlighted map of which streets to take, and they programmed the route into the GPS. Both were on par with each other as we drove and was supposed to get us out of the area and to Tavarnuzze where we were staying without driving in the forbidden areas.
My wifes aunt still lives in Italy so there is a good chance we’ll go back sometime in the next few years for a funeral (she’s a zillion years old!).
4 years ? one more year and they are forgotten.
How did you go with contesting the two $45 charges from Sixt ? (I keep typing it as Styx. ) . I guess that didn’t work out did it, because you didn’t contest the car rental, and that means you authorisied Sixt to take their charges from your card ?
The credit card people don’t get into discussing the correct amount to charge when its clearly an update… although I guess the second one may have been cancelled since they billed twice for the same service.
They are very corrupt and beauracratic - inanly inefficient/ineffective over there,
Which says there appears to be numerous ways to get the fine cancelled or reduced,
and that it seems the hire car people may have been literally creating fake data… having someone insert data into the fines system … hackers, or insiders… perverting the course of justice and risking 2 to 5… it seems that way.
The credit card company said GFYS and claimed it was in the agreement I signed with the rental company. The rental company said it was indeed and that the $90 was for providing my info to the local cops. What a scam, huh? How hard is it to look up who had your car for a week?
Whatever. My credit rating as of this afternoon is 824 (no lie!). How bad can not paying one vig to cousin Vinny affect that?