Yesterday day I got 2 traffic tickets from Florence for driving in their gay little “forbidden zone”. This has me perplexed as I followed the rental companies highlighted map out of the city to Tavarnuzze to the letter.
Each ticket is 133 Euros or about $173 U.S. according to the converter I used this morning.
Of all the countries I’ve been to, this is the first time this has happened to me.:smack:
So what happens when I don’t pay it? Will they just automatically charge my credit card again? Will there be an additional fee attached? These things are not explained in the vague letter they sent.
Last fall I got a parking ticket in Toronto at a pay and display lot. I payed, yet forgot to display. I tried to settle this three times over the internet and telephone by sending copies of the pay and display receipt, etc. but couldn’t seem to get an answer from anyone. After a couple of months the ticket and a service fee from Avis showed up on my credit card.
So, by not paying (although I tried to get it settled) I ended paying more.
Chances are it will eventually find its way to your credit card. Although Florence is a bit further away.
They already have access to it from the rental company. It would be a lot simpler for me to ignore this and let them automatically bill it. But not if there is another fee attached to doing that.
Well, it looks like Cooking with Gas nailed it in the other thread. As far as your other questions, I don’t know. When the car company charged you $45 to give your information to the city, did they also pass along the credit card info? What happened when you contested these charges?
Just report the credit card lost and they’ll issue you a new one with a different card number, expiration date, security code, etc. Then no one will be able to charge the old card.
There was a *reason *you were supposed to stay out of that zone. Italian gay is contagious. Soon you will be all about the cock, surprised that you never fully appreciated musical theatre before, and wondering why your copy “Details” magazine is late this month.
The rental company basically said Bacio il culo, Yankee idiota! The credit card company originally said they’d clear the charge, but then in turn told me I was SOL.
People have tried that as my research shows is doesn’t work. Plus it would make all my other business a huge pain in the ass because I have a lot of things tied to that card.
All I really want to know here, is if ignoring it and waiting for an auto bill on the card will be the most convenient for me, or will I be assessed an extra charge?
Or will ignoring it screw me up at all when we go to Paris this Spring?
It’s been just shy of a year from when those mystery charges appeared on my credit card, and almost 9 months since I got those Italian traffic tickets in the mail.
And so far…! Nothing!
No other charges on my card, no other tickets received, no letters, nothing.
And no, I did not cancel my CC and I did not pay those tickets.
So what does “nothing” mean? Did they just say “oh well” and forget about it?
Will I get it charged on my CC 5 years from now? Will I be arrested the next time I go to Europe/Italy? Will Interpol and U.N. soldiers raid my home, try me in an international court, and hang me by my neck in a lethal injected electric chair until I’m melancholy?
Have you applied for any new forms of credit in the mean time? I haven’t had this happen with a ticket outside my home country, but we once went in to finalize a new mortgage, days from closing, to discover that there was an unknown parking ticket on my SO’s credit history. The ticket had been written for our license plate, but we never saw a ticket or a follow up letter. Apparently the city sold the debt to a collection agency, which ignored it, we assume because of the size, until all of a sudden we HAD to have it cleared. There was no time to research or dispute it, just pay the fine, and the even larger added fees, so we could get on with the house purchase.
I suggest getting a copy of your credit report, and make sure nothing has shown up there.
My understanding, mainly from other forums, is that enforcement of these tickets is patchy to say the least. I was in Portugal last year and they just introduced automatic tolls. Many hire car users were getting ‘fines’ for failing to pay, but they frequently said that if they didn’t pay then no action followed.
To my mind, the biggest risk is that you are now on a database of defaulters. Maybe when you next hire a car in Europe, or if you get stopped by the Gendarmerie, polizei, or Polizia, your name will pop up and you will have to pay the fine, plus some penalty. In general law enforcement is more interested in revenue than incarceration.
I imagine that’s pretty unlikely. The offending car itself might be in such a database, but probably not the driver - I mean, it’s technically all possible, but it seems more likely that the ticket would either be written off as unrecoverable, or possibly, paid by the hire company as an operational hazard (depending on the volume of such incidents, it might be cheaper for them to just pay the tickets instead of having the administrative burden of passing them on).
You may be right but I would not be so sure. All this stuff has become highly computerised in recent years and the hire company would have passed on the details - thus avoiding liability. On the other hand on-the-spot fines have become much more commonplace these days simply because of the problems of chasing foreign drivers. East European drivers in the UK may be taken to a cash point if they do not have sufficient.
On balance, I think that if it were me, I would do nothing and take my chances.
Read the previous threads. They did ask for the money by first getting my name from the car rental company and then by sending me the tickets 9 months ago.
But then it just all went away. No more tickets, letters, charges on my card. Nothing.
My personal ethics says to pay fines received. But I wasn’t going to send money just to have them send me more tickets thinking I’m stupid. So I decided to ignore them and if they charged my card I’d pay that way.
That’s what I meant to say; they didn’t ask again, chase you, harangue you, threaten you, etc. I wonder how much they lose every year because they won’t chase fines? It can’t be that hard to set up a system whereby they’ll send more letters that get more and more threatening until you pay up.
Um, no. That was the entire point of me bumping this thread.
And it’s not like I moved, cancelled my card, changed my name, or anything like that.
It’s weird. They went through the trouble to find out who I am, they mailed me the tickets and then they say “Aw screw it!”. WTF?
'Course, now I’ve jinxed myself and tomorrow I’ll wake up with my dogs head cut off in my bed!!! (I don’t own any horses).
(I don’t own any horses).