I Have Thwarted the Parking Ticket Demons
Dec. 6th, 2003 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
campylobacterYesterday, while parked downtown, I received a parking ticket for $30.00.
I was 11 minutes late in feeding the meter. One coin separated me from giving up three hours' worth of hard-earned cash. In fact, I was just in time to see the meter dude, tanned, lean, wrinkled, in casual shorts, bouncing merrily away from my car with a palmtop printer device in his hands. He was smiling.
The ticket sat patiently tucked under my windshield wiper, neatly printed in dot-matrix glory on a slip of perforated paper, accompanied by an oh-so-helpful yellow pre-addressed envelope for sending my money to "Parking Management", at a PO Box.
I'm usually civic-mided; I vote, faithfully feed parking meters, avoid parking in Handicap spaces, recycle, give blood, donate to thrift stores and charities.
I wasn't even breaking the law; a parking citation is not a criminal offense in my state. So that $30.00 fine was a real pisser.
However, today, in a calmer mood, I searched the Web for "parking ticket dismissal" information. There's a company called ParkingTicket.com that "fights" your ticket (for a fee that's equivalent to half your fine). One of the news articles they use to blurb their service states:
"Any goof on the ticket... is enough to get it thrown out."
And guess what? I checked my ticket with a fine-toothed comb, and discovered that all the necessary info is correct, EXCEPT MY LICENSE NUMBER!!!!!
Fuckers can't even TRACE me.
I was 11 minutes late in feeding the meter. One coin separated me from giving up three hours' worth of hard-earned cash. In fact, I was just in time to see the meter dude, tanned, lean, wrinkled, in casual shorts, bouncing merrily away from my car with a palmtop printer device in his hands. He was smiling.
The ticket sat patiently tucked under my windshield wiper, neatly printed in dot-matrix glory on a slip of perforated paper, accompanied by an oh-so-helpful yellow pre-addressed envelope for sending my money to "Parking Management", at a PO Box.
I'm usually civic-mided; I vote, faithfully feed parking meters, avoid parking in Handicap spaces, recycle, give blood, donate to thrift stores and charities.
I wasn't even breaking the law; a parking citation is not a criminal offense in my state. So that $30.00 fine was a real pisser.
However, today, in a calmer mood, I searched the Web for "parking ticket dismissal" information. There's a company called ParkingTicket.com that "fights" your ticket (for a fee that's equivalent to half your fine). One of the news articles they use to blurb their service states:
"Any goof on the ticket... is enough to get it thrown out."
And guess what? I checked my ticket with a fine-toothed comb, and discovered that all the necessary info is correct, EXCEPT MY LICENSE NUMBER!!!!!
Fuckers can't even TRACE me.
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-06 03:49 pm (UTC)Fuckers can't even TRACE me.
*high five* That's poetic. Truly.