Bill for 16 Y.O. traffic ticket I already paid -out of state

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Dochartaigh
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Joined: Thu Mar 02, 2017 6:53 pm

Bill for 16 Y.O. traffic ticket I already paid -out of state

Post by Dochartaigh »

This is WAY off topic, but wanted to ask a larger audience if something like this has ever happened to you before, and what you did:

I've lived in Pennsylvania for the last 10 years or so. I used to live in NJ. I have NEVER had a NY drivers license fyi.

So 16 years ago, in 2005, I got a speeding ticket in New York City. Back then I checked the "guilty" box on the ticket, mailed it in with a check, and thought nothing of it until now when my parents (at my old NJ address) got a letter in the mail for me from NY DMV (Dept. of Motor Vehicles).

NY wants $220 for the ticket + $300 for a "Driver Responsibility Assessment". If I don't pay, and I'm ever pulled over in New York (which I drive through on occasion) they can charge me with a misdemeanor believe it or not, which I'll then have to answer "yes" to that question on any job applications I fill out for the rest of my life... yes, over a fucking speeding ticket.

It also seems like most states belong to this pact where if your license is suspended in another state, it can be suspended in your home state as well (this is different than the points NOT transferring over fyi), since it will be for "failure to answer a traffic ticket" (fyi: I only got this letter because last month NY passed a law saying that licenses can't be suspended anymore for failure to pay fines... so my license to drive in NY was actually restored... but because according to them I never answered that traffic ticket it will be suspended again if I don't pay them, for the second time).

They do not report this to credit agencies so that isn't a factor fyi.

I've talked to two supervisors in NY so far (after 1hr 58 minutes on hold, then 1hr10 minutes the second time...), and they say I can fill out an "application to re-open default conviction" on my ticket... but the kicker is I have NO WAY to 'prove' that I ever sent them a check. Even Federal law says I only have to keep banking records for 7 years... and the small local bank I used to belong to isn't even in business anymore... so I have NO way to show I sent them a check (if they ever even received it and/or cashed it...if they never even cashed it there would be NO record no matter what).

Any advice? Has this ever happened to anybody before? Hiring a lawyer is out because that will cost more than $520 so I might as well pay the ticket. I'm just SO pissed that this is yet another Catch 22 of the legal system I'm caught in where I'm totally fucked and out $520 no matter what, and the only possible way to prove it is impossible since it's 16 years later and I can't prove I sent them a check (and no sane person, besides a friggin hoarder who keeps cashed checks going back 16+ years, would have any proof of that either...).
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Mischief Maker
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Re: Bill for 16 Y.O. traffic ticket I already paid -out of s

Post by Mischief Maker »

Whenever you're doing ANY business with the government, especially involving money, certified mail is your friend.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
Randorama
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Re: Bill for 16 Y.O. traffic ticket I already paid -out of s

Post by Randorama »

Sorry for the TL; DR-like post.

I anticipate my suggestion: you can pay up if you want to avoid trouble in NYC, even if it sounds like you are 100% right and the relevant office is just covering their fuck-ups.

Anyway:

I had quite a few cases of this Kafka-esque bureaucratic nightmares, so I hope that this mini-novelette can help.

First, I had to deal with national tax agencies from two different countries in which I lived and worked (Sweden, Australia), and in both cases I had to endure cases of "you may have paid, but we don't have a record of it, so you pay again".

In one case (Sweden) I had all the records with me and I sent to the relevant officers. With of the officers somehow did not trust the validity of my documents, and I invited the officer to contact her head of department and check if it was the case to go to court over such claims. The relevant head of department closed the case and amply apologised to me (they risked getting fired, if I sued).

In the other case (Australia), I had a kind soul to retrieve the relevant records and set everything straight for me, including the payment of a small fine (I sent money back to the kind soul, later on). The relevant officers acted all the time like they were simply following instructions from above, and were midly nauseated by this task (no risks for them, but they sounded really young, over the phone).

My wife recently received a request of "late taxes payment" even if she hasn't lived in her country since 2008, and her mother lost a whole day to print the relevant documents and bring them to the relevant office (...in a country, South Korea, that prides itself in having a very high level of digitalisation, when it comes to red tape).

On top of all of this, I currently live in a different country (China), and I had to pay extra taxes because...my current employer forgot to pay them for me for three months in a row.
But it's all good, because I knew of their fuck-up, I now have leverage against them if they fuck up again, the tax agency officers solved the problem for me, and I paid on-line via the relevant app (in China you can do just about everything with apps, and they actually work fine).

As far as I understand, any government follows a principle whereby their loss of records (e.g., payments of fine are lost because officer personnel is dumb) must be fixed by charging the citizens again.
If you can produce the record, they will behave; if you cannot, they will cover up their mistake with your new payment.

My two cents is that you may have found yourself in a similar case, so I would suggest to pay up if you do not want to risk anything as soon as you drive through New York. You may want to keep records of just about everything in case some officer wants to keep wasting everyone's time.

My grandpa worked in the national bank agency in my country (Italy, which is like "bureaucracy hell"), and I kid you not when I write that he kept all of his fiscal records until his death, and even prepared some records as "potentially necessary references for you guys, just in case", in his final days.

The icing of the cake is that I work in academia, so technically I am a (travelling?) civil servant.

I saw similar situations with grades and grade records ("we lost records of your grades, so for us you don't have a degree"), publications and publication records ("you have published a paper on a top-level journal, but your e-mail address in the paper is not the university's, so the paper does not count towards promotion").

My own two cents is that you can keep records of just about everything in some "records" drawer (as in: print everything, and store it somewhere), and think of them as potential occasions to bully some imbecile who thinks that "public service" is a way to shift their misery upon random citizens, and never be held accountable for mistakes at work.

Pathetic? I agree, and hopefully you will never need to do this.

There's more I could write down, but I know that I am just being depressing and overly verbose; sorry about that, and I will pay the drinks if I have the chance.

Happy summer holidays, everyone!
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
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ED-057
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Re: Bill for 16 Y.O. traffic ticket I already paid -out of s

Post by ED-057 »

Look up your driving record online to see if there is any information that corraborates or contradicts their claim. In any case, don't go to NY as there could be a warrant for your arrest.

similar case from CA https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/ ... st-theirs/
Dochartaigh
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Re: Bill for 16 Y.O. traffic ticket I already paid -out of s

Post by Dochartaigh »

ED-057 wrote:Look up your driving record online to see if there is any information that corraborates or contradicts their claim. In any case, don't go to NY as there could be a warrant for your arrest.

similar case from CA https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/ ... st-theirs/
Unfortunately you can't lookup your record unless you have a NY drivers license which I don't, and have never, had. The solution listed on their website for out of state people is to schedule an appointment beforehand, where you literally have to show-up in person in order to get a copy of your NY state driving record. I would also never do this (besides the ~4 hour round trip and the time) just in case there IS something out for my name...



So besides that, to update, I decided that since paying the ticket is about 5-10 times cheaper than hiring a lawyer I paid the $220 ticket online.... which of course their payment system error'd out and said it didn't process the payment... then the next day I saw it charged my bank card.... nobody answered the website error email address so I had to call and waste another hour+ on the phone and I finally got a receipt emailed to me saying I paid the ticket (which I printed out a copy of that and am keeping in my car just in case I have to show it to a cop in NY if I'm ever pulled over there).

I can't even make this stuff up...

I did NOT pay that stupid $300 "Driver Responsibility Assessment". Mostly because F them, but also because the letter and the website (while I was paying the ticket online) didn't mention anything about this... we'll see if they send another letter to my parents house in another 16 years about that one... (which by that point my parents will most definitely be living in a retirement community by then and will have sold the house lol...)
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