Well I too have become a defendant in the German court system. I received my notification from the rental car company yesterday. I was so good following the traffic regulations through out my whole trip logging over 750 kms in 5 days driving around Germany and to/from Belgium. However, on my last afternoon, while returning the car to the rental return at Frankfurt airport, I was nabbed by a speed camera on the airport spur road at 124 in a 100km. 24km over. I have already paid the rental car fee of 25 euros.

Any opinions on how much the fine will be?

70 Euro + fees (about 30 Euro)

http://www.howtogermany.com/pages/tr...iolations.html

Probably 70/80 EUR.

Thank you all for the replies at the web site link.

we're in a similar situation to the OP, again with Stuttgart city authorities regarding payment of a speeding fine. We have taken the advice of other posts on this thread & went to try & pay via our local Halifax branch, When the teller tried to process the transaction Stuttgart City had failed to provide any bank details except the IBAN number and so were unable to pay the fine. Halifax are going to charge us £19.50 for doing this at the local branch!
I have sent 2 emails to Stuttgart council in both English with a German translation underneath and am currently waiting to see if they will accept a credit card payment via email.
In addition, from what I could translate, they want payment within a week of the date of the letter, yet it wasn't posted until 4 days after the letter was dated!
Any suggestions?

That is enough to wire the money.

Ignore it and move on.

They wouldn't be allowed to, even if they are set up to accept credit cards. Email is not secure, and card details may not be transmitted by, or accepted from, insecure means.

(Would you write your credit card details on the back of a postcard? Unencrypted emails are about as safe as postcards... )

Not the best idea as we plan on renting another car in Germany next year and are concerned we might get collared at the airport. :eek:

From what you have just said, it sound like Halifax don't know what they are doing when trying to process an International money transfer. Hopefully i might have more luck with Natwest. Can you do it via a bank that you don't have an account with?

Collared by who?

Car rental company doesn't care. Their responsibility ended when what provided renter details to authorities.

How much is the fine? Border police is not going find anything in SIS II unless it is a serious crime and you have an outstanding arrest warrant.

Not for a normal speeding fine.....

That won't happen for several reasons, chief of which are (i) the computer that deals with speeding/parking fines is a 'municipal' one that does not talk to the 'federal' computer at the passport desk, and (ii) it's too small for anyone to care. Not to sound like a complete tool, but I have dozens of speeding and parking violations in Germany and I'm in and out of the country several times a week (a pattern of about 15 years).

Halifax sounds a bit think. You can do it via a different bank, but I'm sure they'll charge you an admin and various FX fees.

Officially they also need a BIC besides the IBAN.

We've got the BIC so hopefully Natwest will be able to sort it out. Stuttgart have, so far failed to respond to my emails I sent in English with a German translation attached to it :mad:
Thanks for the advice, i know it's only a small sum but when we used another rental agencies in Germany and incurred a speeding fine they took it from our credit card together with an admin fee which was a lot easier all round.

I am still waiting for the ticket to come from Germany. Any idea on how long?

To pay it I was going to pay pal the money to a friend in Germany to pay it in person for me. Wiring 70-80 euros would cost me another $35 USD.

Unless you have a huge moral hangup about this, I would just forget about it and move on. No 'federal agency' is going to come after you, and no one is going to bother chasing a fine all the way to TX.