Posted on 06/07/2011 4:13:01 AM PDT by beachn4fun
I'm posting my situation on a thread in order to alert others to be on the look out of ways the government, especially the local government, may be ripping us off.
I believe we are being targeted as fools to pay for our politicians shortfalls. I live in Maryland, a very liberal state which taxes everything, and am seeing signs they are desperate to raise money instead of ways to cut spending.
Here is a situation I found myself in recently:
I received a "final notice" for speed monitoring violation from the town of Forest Heights PD (Maryland). However, I NEVER received prior notices. And, this incident apparently happened a year ago. On top of that the letter says Maryland MVA will impose a $40 "flagging fee." I received the notice from MVA yesterday.
So, not only did I have to pay the $40 ticket, I had to pay a $25 late fee and now $30 to MVA to unflag my vehicle.
This rings, loud and clear to me, as a SCAM!
How am I to prove that I never received the prior notices they claimed they sent? I mean anyone can put any date in the computer saying a ticket was mailed. I know I was in that area in May this year but a year ago? I'm lucky I remembered I was around that spot this May since I seldom go in that area.
Another thing, they give me 7 calendar days to pay this ticket/fine. The letter was dated May 18 (Wed). I received it on the 20th (Fri). The payment had to be sent to Philadelphia, PA. WTF??? 7 days to get the notice, write the check (they wanted to add another $3.50 to pay by credit card online - another part of the scam) and get it to PA?
Additionally, on the 23rd I called the number on the citation notice and told them that 7 calendar days was not enough time to get the payment in and credited to avoid the flag. The gal told me she was putting a temp hold on the record to allow time for the payment to get to PA. (I also complained that their system had major flaws, which she did not deny).
I put the check in the PO on the 21st. It got posted in my account on the 27th. Ok, that was one day after the MVA flag date. Why did it take this long to make it to PA and get posted? What happened to the "hold" the gal in the Town of Forest Heights claimed she put in my record?
This is a glaring example of the flaw in, not only the whole system, but especially in the speed cameras. It is becoming apparent that the MVA is becoming a monster similar to IRS.
I am now looking into what avenue I need to take to file a complaint about this situation. I will also be posting on facebook and hope that some news source picks up the mantle and does some research into how prevalent this has become.
So, my fellow Americans, be vigilant. Let our politicians know that we are not fools and we will not "go quietly into the night."
Yup. That’s the way they operate. Down here in Tidewater VA we are fighting our cities tooth and nail over speed and red light cameras. Just can’t believe people aren’t screaming about the ‘presumption of guilt’ thing. There are cameras EVERYWHERE - gawd only knows who is monitoring what.
” you’ll see at least 5 cop cars, no they don’t make me feel any safer. “
If ‘The Policeman is My Friend’, why does daddy get that funny look when there’s one driving behind him??
What you’re observing is local government morphing into the local “mob”....Louis with the baseball bat has become Chiquita behind the computer screen at the DMV.
Without intimidation and extortion, all government would cease to exist.
Watch next time you shop.
We have a location that is on a land line still for a credit card terminal. We’ve had the phone company out many, many times to check the line.
The scenario that happens is the first time the card is swiped the terminal occasionally reports the communication failed. So the card needs to be submitted again and most times it goes through the second time fine. The problem though, is the request to debit the account was picked up twice at the other end. And there is no way to correct the “holds.” The first swipe never generated a receipt, number, or authorization on the store end.
The excess holds get dropped when the terminal is batched out at the close of business. And it is literally ‘dropped.’ Nothing we do at the store level causes it to fall off, other than batching out the terminal for end of day. Anything that our terminal is holding that doesn’t have an authorization for gets dumped out of the batch.
I had a similar instance at of all places a car dealership in the same city. Talk about a pain as the ‘large’ hold on the account carried over the weekend! By Monday when the system finally rolled over to the next business day the unverified hold was dropped.
The MVA is really bad. Recently a friend of mine received a speeding ticket from an officer who said he caught her on radar in NC while he was traveling opposite direction. How can the state prove the accuracy of this process?
Good point.
Exactly. One must keep the eye on those statements as well as the credit card ones.
This is what I believe too.
Maybe. I'm not sure how, at the time, someone else's name became associated with my vehicle (maybe a couple of digits on the license plate were transposed?). It's not even possible that the person named was a former owner, since I had bought the vehicle in another state. But, even if the ticket is issued on the basis of a red light camera, there should be a photographic record that can be pulled to verify whether the vehicle in question is yours or not. If the picture shows a blue Ford pickup with license #TH29229 but you drive a white Toyota pickup with license #TH29929, I think you can get out of the ticket.
How in the blip? How can this happen?
” I think you can get out of the ticket. “
Maybe..
As for me, I ‘stop on yellow’, these days.... ;)
See, my point is the opposite - how can the driver prove their innocence? The state is going to believe the officer or other govt agency over the citizen unless we can prove the error or have a witness.
Guess what....You’re supposed to stop on yellow!!
I thought it was
Red.........STOP
Green.......GO
Yellow......GO FASTER
};^)
This is nothing new. It may get to be more pervasive but governments have been doing this for ages. In 1995 I went to renew my driver’s license in New Hampshire when they told me that I couldn’t because my license was suspended in the state of Virginia. The last time I was in Virginia was December of 1984 when I left the Navy. NH said too bad, we have a reciprocity agreement so you have to straighten this out with the state of Virginia.
So I called the Virginia Dept. of Motor Vehicles. They looked up my name and said I owed them $100. I asked them what for and they said they had no record of that, only that I owed them $100. So they couldn’t tell me why they just wanted the money or else. Since it would have cost me more money to fight it I sent them $100.
So, fine paid I go back to renew my driver’s license. I was told I couldn’t because my license was suspended in the state of Virginia. I explained that I paid up and, naturally, they didn’t care. So I called the Virginia Dept. of Motor Vehicles again and they said I owed them $100. I told them I had paid the $100 already. They said that true, I had paid them $100 but now I had to pay them another $100 TO GET MY VIRGINIA DRIVER’S LICENSE REINSTATED. I told them that I hadn’t set foot in Virginia since 1984 and if I never set foot in it again I’d be a happy man. They didn’t care, just send $100 or else.
So I paid $100 for a ticket I never got and they never told me what it was for then paid another $100 for a license I would never use, just because they could do it. Extortion by government is as old as government itself.
JESUS! And, I thought mine was bad. This is another reason we need to network about this extortion, once and for all. They think we are fools who are just going to sit and take it.
I’m going to find out how to fix this problem. Just wish I had a calmer head when I get steamed.
I suspect that the person being ticketed had a vehicle license plate number very similar to mine, and someone made a typo.
Those things happen. I once found a deposit of $67,000 in my savings account. I was rich for about 3 months until I finally called the bank to ask about it. Someone had transposed digits in an account number... (It would have been nice if the bank had at least allowed me to keep the interest. But they even took that away.)
The pigs! LOL
Did youy receive a paper ticket last year? If so did you have a chance to confront your accuser?
If you didn’t receive a paper ticket than how do they prove you were actually there? I’m sure you may have loaned your car to any one of thousands of friends you have.
If it’s not written down, it never happened.
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