Expletive.
I wouldn’t say that I am waiting for the other shoe to drop, exactly. It is more like I am crouching under my desk, wondering HOW MANY MORE SHOES ARE UP THERE?
Some years ago I had a spat with a police officer who peevishly ticketed my car each morning for two weeks. The tickets were for expired tabs. One day I went out and tried to explain to the officer that I wasn’t driving the car, because of the expired tabs, but that I had no off-street parking for my vehicle. I did not have the money for new tabs. I was an out-of-work writer with a cat to support. If I had a garage, I could have parked the car there until I had the money to renew my registration, but because I lived in an apartment in the city, I was getting a $75 ticket every day, further pushing back the time when I would be able to AFFORD NEW TABS.
She was unsympathetic, and eventually I skulked off to my family for a loan for the @#$!@!%$!@#$! tabs.
Insert scene of rippling calendar pages, indicating the passage of time.
A year or so later, I came out of the new apartment I was sharing with my new boyfriend (the Actually), to discover that my car had been stolen.
Except…it wasn’t stolen, it had been car-napped by the state for unpaid parking tickets.
The impound lot generously slapped on a tow fee and a fee for every day the car remained in the lot. I was no longer an out-of-work writer, but a harried, overscheduled new employee at a legal publishing giant. The hearing offices where I had to go to pay my fines were closed by the time I got off work, and I was too new to take a day off. The car was on its last leg anyway, and I was in no hurry to retrieve it, so it languished for a week. And the fees mounted. By the time I managed to see a hearing officer, I owed over $1000. The hearing officer kindly told me that if I didn’t want the car back, the city would auction it off and the debt would die with the car. Of course, every photograph I owned was in that car, in a box I hadn’t unpacked from my move, but at the time, $1000 might as well have been $1,000,000. And so I let the state have the car, and lived happily ever after.
Until I came home the other day to find THIRTEEN envelopes from a collection agency, each containing an invoice demanding $140 for a single, allegedly unpaid, years-old parking ticket. Let me clarify: each demanding $140 for a different ticket. Because that incident of some years ago spooked me sufficiently that I have not received a ticket since, these must be tickets that were supposedly wiped out by my car sacrifice, which irks me. It also irks me that this is the first I have heard about any of this, having received no notices until these, from a collection agency, demanding payment of almost double the amount of the original ticket.
I apologize for this, the most boring entry ever written, but I had to rant to someone to prevent myself from actually spitting tacks, which tends to give me a sore throat.
Wedding post tomorrow—I am thinking I will start posting a wedding update every Wednesday to keep you abreast of exciting things like my choice of foundation garments. The Wednesday Wedding Waggle. Whimpering Wedding Wednesdays. Weekly Whiny Wedding Whispers. Anyway, it’s a new feature here at Flotsam, at least until I forget all about it. So, for the next week or two, maybe.
12 Comments
I am sorry for the crap storm of late. I’d bet you’re expecting the plague of locusts any day now.
I would guess that you might be able to get a copy of docs from the city/county/etc. about the disposition of the car, which you could hopefully use to show that no, you don’t owe that $. Then turn around & sue them for harassment for siccing the collection agency on you! (Okay, maybe not that last part…)
I dodged a $50 University of TX ticket for almost 10 years–their threats started with “we won’t let you register for classes” (fine by me; not a student); then escalated to “we’ll impound your car” (sold for scrap by then); it was only when they threatened my parents with ruining their credit that I paid the damn thing.
Good luck fighting the power!
Nasty! Is that even legal?
I hear you on the parking tickets!
I moved house. I changed my address with the Roads and Traffic Authority. They had yet to send me my “change of address” stickers for my license, when I got a no-right-turn ticket.
I explained to the officer that the address on my license was incorrect. He said he had to use that one, but so long as my address was correct with RTA, no problem they’d send to the right address.
Of course, they send the ticket to the wrong address. They send the penalty reminder notices to the wrong address. They send the “warning: license may be cancelled” to the wrong address.
Funnily enough, the letter from the STATE DEBT RECOVERY, complete with double the original fine and license cancellation made it to the correct address.
I disputed paying the double fee, they said I had to pay it ALL off, then lodge a debt dispute in order to get half my money back. To prove I had changed my address with RTA before the ticket was issued, I had to get a record from the RTA - which of course, couldn’t get without paying a fee!
ARGH!!! Only took 9 months, but eventually got the money back. Beureaucracy (however you spell it!) can BITE ME!
But hang in there and fight. Tell the debt collection agency you want the matter heard in court, where you will seek to have them pay your legal costs. They usually back down and say “ok, just give us a little bit of the money and we’ll call it even”
Wow– I can actually help you, I think. And here I had been kicking myself for going to law school instead of med school since my boys keep getting broken and cut but never get sued.
I have a letter that asks the collection agency in firm, authoritative language to provide x,y and z, those things being all the stuff it must do to be in compliance with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act or something close.
I’ve had to use it a couple of times (would you believe Scholastic Book Club came after me when I refused to pay for the Puppy Patrol books we’d been hoodwinked into buying?) but once I sent the letter I got a response saying the file was closed.
If you want me to check around for it, let me know. You may even be able to google the Act and find a sample letter yourself.
Good luck sticking it to the man, and not in a Valentiny way–
Anne Glamore
I hope Anne can rescue you. Your experience, sadly, reminds me of every interaction with my insurance company. Ah, good times. Like the others, I say fight the man. Power to the people!
Gosh, when it rains it pours. Sorry about that. But I hope you do take some of the other commenters suggestions and go after them - it’s not fair. And it definitely was not a boring post.
Yay for wedding wednesdays! I will look forward to it. I love hearing about wedding planning!
Oh, Alexa, the sympathy you will get from your readers on this one. I, along with just about everyone else, I’d guess, have a horrible bureaucratic nightmare of a story myself.
It all started with one apartment, four roommates (one of which was me) and an iron that fell on the carpet. The roommate with the questionable ironing practices fessed up to her mistake, and SAID she paid the fine for replacing that section of carpet.
Fast forward 5 years, I am trying to get approved for a home loan, and find out that my credit is totally f-ed because of an UNPAID DAMAGED APARTMENT FEE. Of course I had never heard one word of this before, not even when I moved OUT of said apartment and made sure to ask the management if there was anything on my lease, anything at all, that I needed to take care of before moving to another state.
AARRGGGHHHH!!!!!!
Wait, this is three things, right? I think you’re in the clear.
How utterly, stupidly infuriating. I hope that you are able to make them see reason. What a lousy stunt to pull on someone, and that original cop who ticketed you? It may not do much for you now, but I’m pretty sure she has accrued some very bad karma. Or is that Car-ma? Ouch.
All of my shoes are present and accounted for, so there aren’t any dropping from Atlanta. I hope Anne’s letter helps, because this is utterly ridiculous. There’s got to be some sort of written thing that says that the debt died when they sold the car–maybe you can get that and send it to the collection agency with a big, huge “BITE ME!” on each of the thirteen letters.
Lovely! I hope that mess gets straightened out soon! Can’t wait for the wedding updates!
Ugh, Alexa. I feel your pain on this one. Something similar happened to me a few years ago when I went to register my car in Atlanta. As I was waiting for the paperwork at the DMV, they called me up and said that because of unpaid tickets in Pennsylvania from 13 years ago, they not only couldn’t register my car, they had to suspend my driver’s license and they took it from me right then and there.
In reality, the tickets had been paid and I had to jump through major hoops to prove it. After 3 months of beurocratic bullshit and me squawking to about 30 different people in DMVs in Georgia and Pennsylvania, I FINALLY got it resolved and got my license back and my car legally registered. It sucked big fat sweaty donkey balls.
My advice to you: Whomever you talk to, get it in writing, document everything and save all correspondence. You’ll get it worked out, it just may take awhile.
Good luck!
holy shit - now I’m going to have nightmares of motorcycle parking tickets from 17 - YES! 17 years ago. Away to auction it went.