Originally Posted by
CouponSurfer
What's interesting is that rentalcarticket.com is part of American Traffic Solutions (ATS). ATS outsources photo speed and red light tickets and toll collection for many cities and highways. ATS also runs platepass.com. They provide the system AND collect the fines.
Not to resurrect a dead horse, but my wife just got their $30 admin fee letter for allegedly running a red light in CA. I went on a personal quest to get to the bottom of this and here's what I found. ATS bills the $30 bucks, and processes/releases rental information for the driver to the issuing agency for the violation (which is --surprise the vendor that owns the cameras). Interestingly, the $30 fee is billed by ATS Processing Services, but the Hertz #1 Gold contract authorizes release of info by Hertz to "American Traffic Solutions". Not ATS Processing Services. Doesn't authorize re-release of the info either. So here's Hertz releasing our private info (credit card, license, etc) to god knows who.
Since ATS Processing Services is trying to collect a bill supposedly owed to Hertz, I've been told ATS is acting as a "debt collector" under the Federal Debt Collection Practices Act. FDCPA is a federal law to protect consumers against sledgehammer collection practices by third party collectors. Basically, every violation (and there are hundreds of them) carry a $1,000 ding and atty fees. So a collector can't send you a $30 fee for releasing info about you when you never authorized that collector to release the info to begin with. $1000 ding right there.
What makes this story so absurd is when I logged in to view the citation, it actually shows a video of the car and photos!! Wow, talk about big brotha. Well the driver is a clearly a guy and my wife is a... woman. Hmm, given the gender difference, how can she be responsible for another driver running a light?? And the fine is over $450... And it's issued to a PO box in Arizona and requires an appearance in Court in CA (we live in PA). So, lots of issues. But the bottom line is that ATS and the various municipalities have a nice racket where they bill $500 for an infraction to out of state customers and it's easier to pay than to battle for your rights.
But w/the FDCPA, you can fight them and most lawyers will actually take these cases b/c they get their fees right from the collector that was trying to screw you. Hope this helps someone else!!