Parking appeal- WIN

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

For those of you who got parking tickets during The Great Parking Permit Wait Clusterfuck at the Parking/Traffic office this past month, good news.

I had gotten a ticket for an expired meter because, well, I was in line over 3 hours waiting to get my shiny new parking sticker and there are no 3 hour meters nearby, feeding meters is illegal, and I didn't care to risk my place in line. At the time, the woman who processed my permit gave me a time-stamped note telling me it shouldn't be a problem appealing the ticket.

So I sent in my appeal online with the note, explained the circumstances, but received a letter back telling me the appeal was denied. WTF? I was all ready to pay the fine online and whip off an angry email to The Mayor cursing the idiocy of the situation when I decided, screw it, and went down to the parking office to deal with this face-to-face. The woman behind the counter was sympathetic to my plight and directed me, without appointment, to the office of the hearing officer. I sat down, started to explain the situation, and he muttered "Oh yes, we had many many problems that day" and dismissed my ticket on the spot, saving me $30.

So for my fellow Somervillians, take the time to personally appeal your ticket from that day and you should have yourselves a bit of WIN as well.

Comments

[nonnihil.livejournal.com]

Although it does lend credence to the theory that all online appeals are just auto-rejected. I mean, if they could deny this one, what on earth would they accept?

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

Yes. The woman (Not Ms. O'Connor, but the other one) looked at me like I had 3 heads when I said I did the online appeal. I explained to her that I travel a lot for work and didn't have time to show up to appeal this in person.

So yeah, basically, the online appeal route is pretty much a sure-fire way to having it denied.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

My last parking ticket, I couldn't ever get the online appeal to find the ticket in the system. :-\

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

Initially, I had the same problem, but then found out that what I thought was a 0 was really an O and I was doing it wrong. Pain in the ass.

[serious-noir.livejournal.com]

Congrats.

I am of the camp that thinks that all ticket appeals by mail are automatically neglected... I mean rejected... lol.

Reminds me of that shot in Lost showing where all the reports sent by the pneumatic tube end up...

[alphacygni]

What a fabulous tax on people who have the least amount of time!

(Grr)

[kalimba21.livejournal.com]

That is annoying, who has the time to go in?

That said, I appealed by mail a ticket where I was _definitely_ in the right, and they waived the fine. They didn't admit that I was right, they called it a "courtesy waiver." That in itself was pretty annoying, but shows that they don't automatically reject every single one.