Originally Posted by
jackal
The key point.
However, I'm a bit curious how a location is responsible for so many unpaid parking tickets so as to have to charge a fee to recover those costs. Whoever was renting the vehicle at the time the ticket is issued should be responsible, so that person should be charged, and it's pretty clear-cut (match the timestamp on the ticket with the vehicle's records). The rental agency shouldn't have to eat parking ticket costs (unless it's uncollectable bad debt--a card that won't go through and a customer that can't be tracked, which for a small parking ticket, shouldn't be too often).
Not sure how things work in other cities, but I know that here in Chicago the city doesn't send the registered owner of vehicles any notice of unpaid parking tickets, they just wait until enough tickets have accrued and boot the vehicle (more revenue into their pocket since the owner is required to pay the tickets in full plus a boot fine). Made for a tough morning for a friend of mine whose (now ex-) boyfriend racked up 6 parking tickets over the course of a couple of years in her car and never paid them nor told her. She didn't find out the tickets had accumulated until her car was booted.
Given the large number of rental vehicles with their telltale barcode stickers I've seen booted since the city lowered its boot requirements from 3 unpaid tickets to 2, I would guess that rental car companies often do not find out about the tickets until the car is booted and it's difficult to pair a renter to a specific ticket after that much time has gone.