SJOGuy

I'd think Hertz would come after you. I assume they have your credit card info.

My advice: Pay it and be done with it.

milepig

This.

Forrest Bump

This is not true anymore since years.
There's no way you can avoid to pay a speed ticket. I would not call the cameras 'trap', as by law they have a well clear signposting before you reach them, and your actual speed has an allowance reduction of 5%.

With Hertz involved, you'll be charged of the bill.

lhrsfo

Some years ago I picked up some tickets with a rental car in Italy. It was not Hertz and I can't remember who it was, but they gave my name and address to the Italian authorities, from whom I received demands for payment. The question then became whether I ignored direct demands from the Italian authorities, bearing in mind that I fully intended to return to Italy in the future. From all I understand, if I were Italian, I would likely just ignore the whole thing and trust it goes away. But I'm not Italian and I would spend years worrying about it....

Incidentally, whilst not knowing how fast you were going, the fine doesn't seem too excessive to me. Just consider yourself lucky that it won't be going on your licence.

factory81

This question seems to be endlessly asked elsewhere on the net, but no one will really admit to ignoring the ticket (and never paying it). It seems the Italian authorities will eventually get a ticket to you within 10-11 months of the infraction.

Some possibilities include (from worst to best case);
1) your name is put on a list, once you try and enter anywhere in the EU, at customs, you are stopped and forced to pay a huge fine
2) your name is only put on some list in Italy and you are required to pay this fine before you enter through Italy, if you go through customs or some other "official way"
3) After not paying, and the ticket being reissued to you by the Italian authorities, the polizia go back to the rental car company to collect. Your name is given to some international debt collection agency that finds a way to make life for you in the US worse - maybe they actually find a way to garnish wages or hurt your credit score. The rental car agreement is pretty rock solid if you ask me. I received a copy of it and it pretty explicitly says - and has me sign - that I agree to pay any fines.
4) After not paying, you are on a blacklist for renting a car anywhere in the EU (but you did screw over Hertz...a company with American offices...)
5) After not paying, you are on a blacklist for only the car company you screwed over
6) You have a warrant put out for you in the EU, but since no one really runs your name ever, and its for a speeding ticket - you only ever run into a problem when you say....report your passport stolen, and then it becomes a case of a "criminal" turning himself in. The police laugh at you for this, and make you pay a huge fine.
7) Nothing happens


I had a ticket issued to the car company I rented from a couple months ago. Supposedly you have to have the ticket in your name. So I am waiting for the ticket to be put in to my name - and it has to arrive at my house within 1 year of the infraction for it to be valid. So they only have like...4 and half more months for me. I have e-mailed the rental car company in Italy and no one has bothered to contact me. The letter I got from them was entirely in Italian - so I had to google translate every word. I kind of don't even know what to do at this point. It basically had a copy of the police infraction attached.

I have read that "everyone" eventually gets a certified letter from the city/state you had the infraction in. And thats when you know its finally in your name and on you to pay.

Murphy123

We had a ticket in 2008 and will no longer drive in Italy. We were lucky to get away with one ticket. We were trying to return the car and 5 minutes out we entered a LTZ in error - on June 28. Jump forward to Dec. 20 of 2008 and we received a notice from the car rental company reading that we were being charged an admin fee of 35 euros to cover the cost of providing the police with our information. The car rental agency was of no assistance. I was able to read enough Italian to e-mail the Italian police - we tried 7 times from different computers - the e-mail address did not work. So I phoned and was told to call at 8:00 a.m. Italy time - so at 2:00 a.m. Toronto time I did. Naturally, the only person I could speak with was not in that day. Next up I called another number I saw in the corner of the rental car notice and a nice woman looked up the file thinking that perhaps we had parked in front of our hotel - no we had only rented the car to drive to the inn up the road in Panzano. There was nothing she could do about it but was very apologetic considering the very few kms we had put on the car. The Italian police have a year to send you the final ticket - it arrived 20 days before the year was up and 2 days before my husband was leaving for a business meeting in Europe. We paid the fine immediately - 150 euros - via the on-line banking site - and of course paid for the admin fee for that. We were lucky to just have the one fine. A woman who works with my husband received 5 tickets. If you go to Trip Advisor there is a whole stickee on driving in Italy and this very subject. And, yes, the police will come after you here - either through a charge to your credit card or by way of the police or a collection agency. Since 2008 the Italian police have become more sophisticated at collecting the fines. And to think I was trying to find a policeman to help us find the rental car agency since the agency had left out one street on the return directions - and the Fashion Show was in full swing. Our innkeepers have had no success in having any of the fines cancelled.

gaobest

We just had a similar situation, for a traffic camera ticket from October 2013, which arrived in July 2014. I have paid it online with the policedata.it and received a confirmation from their credit card merchant.

The confirmation doesn't reflect the policedata.it reference numbers. Do I need to be worried about this?

Helios1848

one should pay, because probably you will end up in a database...at least this companie`s database, probably they all exchange data and you might have trouble rent a car in another country even from a different company...

CaptainMiles

Just now (dated Oct 2014) I got my first notice of an infraction (ZTL in Rome) back in June 2013. Folks in this thread are saying the police has one year to notify me, and clearly they exceeded that. Is there a source for that one year statute of limitations that I could use to weasel out of the ticket?

Interesting, I luckily got away without paying the Hertz fee. Back in October 2013 I went to Alaska, and accidentally left my credit card in my Hertz rental car. It was the same credit card I have on file with Hertz, and which I had used back in June to rent in Italy. When I noticed my card missing, I called my bank to put a temporary stop on it while I located the card. A couple of days later Hertz in Anchorage found my card and mailed it back to me, and when I got it I called my bank to reactivate it. At that time, I asked the bank if there had been any attempted charges in the meantime (to figure out if I had missed any auto-payment, or whether there was any fraud) and sure enough there was the infamous attempted charge by Hertz Italia. I knew what it would be for, and I was glad it did not go through. It is funny how Hertz missed out on charging my card because the card was in Hertz's possession. LOL. Anyway, Hertz Italia never attempted to put that charge through again, even though the card is still on my Hertz profile and has been used many times for other Hertz rentals, so I think I luckily got away with this one.

paulrobertspadoni

At least what is happening to this one person:
http://livingwithabroadintuscany.blo...-pay-your.html

Alsacienne

(Wo)man up and pay the fine.

lhrsfo

Little sympathy here. Pay up and move on.

Perche

Italy and other countries in Europe now share a database. If you don't pay your ticket you will not be be able to rent a car in Italy, or in any other country that participates. People sometimes get somebody else who is traveling with them and has a different name rent the car.

Your options are, when you get the notice by registered mail, to pay it, or to send back a letter of appeal to the agency that sent it. The notice is not actually the fine. It's a courtesy advising you that you can voluntarily pay it, at which time they will usually waive certain fees. If you ignore it, the fine will come. In all cases, you have to receive the fine within 360 days of the date of the offense.

Keep in mind that there are notorious scams about this, especially regarding Hertz. People proving they were in Rome at a time they were fined for being in Florence, etc. So make sure the information is correct. They use an international debt collection agency called European Municipal Outsourcing. EMO often links to debt collection agencies in the US, which have the ability to ding your credit score.

Once you get the fine I believe you have 60 days to pay it or to appeal it, otherwise, it goes up. A lot.

There are a few circumstances where an appeal can be worth it. First, ZTL laws don't apply to people with a registered disability or if you are traveling with someone with a registered disability. If you can take a picture of that blue thing that hangs from the rear view mirror and copy the paperwork, you can send in an appeal on that basis. Do it as close to the 60 days, by registered mail or fax, because Italian bureaucracy being what it is, sometimes the clock of statute of limitations runs out on them.

You can also appeal if you can prove with your hotel documents that you were going to your hotel in a ZTL for the first time and weren't able to get the permit slip from the hotel that enables you to go to their parking lot within the ZTL. You should also appeal if there was a factual error, like you weren't driving, you were in another city, they are confusing your license plate with another, or the date is wrong. There have been so many scams and errors that EMO has been made to have a website where you can look at the photo online to verify if it's accurate. If it shows a photo dated on a date when you have a hotel or restaurant receipt, or a passport stamp showing you were somewhere else, then you should appeal. You should also appeal if you received the notice more than 60 days after the infraction. If you received multiple ZTL's in close proximity on the same day, you can appeal that you went into the ZTL by mistake and got lost going around in circles, thus the multiple offenses. Sometimes they will drop the fine. The website is http://www.emo.nivi.it. You can also pay online if you were guilty.

If your appeal is denied you have few options you can do a formal appeal to a Prefect or a Justice of the Peace. Prefects have the option to double your fine. An Appeal to a Justice of the Peace costs as much to register as the fine, plus you will need a lawyer. So, these are not worth it. The statue of limitations for getting you to pay is five years. If you are an italian citizen then the times are different. They have less time to notify you, about 210 days.

Now that EMO is an international agency linked up with debt collectors in other countries, even though the italian government can't do anything to you after five years, you may start getting calls from debt collection agencies, and start suffering all of the pain that goes with that. And that might not happen until the statute of limitations is almost up, so you will have to have that weighing on your peace of mind for years, and when they do catch up with you the 38Euro fine may be over 600E with late fees additional fines, and interest. So, appeal if you have good grounds to do so, if not, it's a good idea to pay up.

IvanCU

I had four credit card charges of 36.30 Euro each from Hertz after our trip to Italy that were supposed to be for a release of information to the authorities for tickets. We had visited Italy for two weeks in September of 2012.

To this date I have not received anything from the Italian authorities regarding the tickets. The charges from Hertz came in December of 2012.

We're thinking of going back to Italy and I'm wondering if I'm going to have any problems when I land, or renting a car. Very odd for the Italian government not to follow up issuing a ticket, much less four of them.

factory81

You guys are all gutsy as heck I think. Got a ticket in May 2013, and like clockwork - as others describe it. I got a ticket in the mail.

I paid it, but my CC auto-declined the Auto Europa charge from Palermo, Italy for their 85 euro processing fee (to provide my info the authorities). I attempted to reached out to Auto Europa via e-mail, I believe. Never heard anything of it again.

I do plan to visit Europe and rent some vehicles again. So let's hope Auto Europa is still an option