Phantom Parking tickets?

[dani-namaste.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping that someone can help me - has anyone else been receiving past due notices for parking tickets they never received? And are there any rules against parking in front of the church on College Avenue (about two blocks up from Hall Street) that I'm unaware of?

Here's the deal: I have a doctor's appointment on Hall Ave once a week. At that time, I usually end up finding parking on College Avenue in front of the church, maybe up a little bit. I'm only there for about an hour and a quarter, then when I'm done with the appointment I get in my car and go home. No tickets on my car, no nothing. This week I've gotten TWO notices that I apparently received tickets for "overtime parking" on May 23 and May 17, and now I have to deal with the hell that is the parking clerk's office. I never received anything on my car AT ALL - not even a notice to move my car - and how can parking for an hour and a half at most be considered "overtime?"

Any insight would be appreciated. I have to interrupt my vacation to deal with these jerks Tuesday, and I'd really like to know if there's some unspoken rule that the signs on the street aren't indicating to me. I'm very careful to check for Permit-Only status, and I'm never there during street cleaning times.

EDIT: While I do appreciate the advice that not receiving the physical ticket isn't an excuse not to pay the ticket, the real problem here is that (and I just double-checked this) every single sign on College Avenue from Hall Street to Kidder Avenue (which is where I park for my appointments, and where I got the alleged "overtime" parking tickets) is listed as a 2-hour parking space; I have never, in any circumstance, been parked in said space for longer than an hour and a half. In addition, the city has already given me one $100 snow-emergency parking ticket last year which actually belonged to someone ELSE'S car; and because they let that ticket go (because it wasn't my ticket), they used it as an excuse to not forgive ANOTHER ticket I shouldn't have gotten back in June. This habit the city has of punishing people for needing a car is part of what made me decide to move out of the city in August.

Comments

[ravenword.livejournal.com]

My bf got a phantom parking ticket for parking for like 5 minutes on my old street. He was dropping me off, didn't bother to put out the visitor parking pass, then left. Apparently someone noticed him parked during that time and wrote a ticket for it, but they didn't leave the ticket on his car, so he didn't know about it until he got the past due notices.

He went to contest the ticket and says that they didn't care that he never received a ticket on the date it was issued. They waived it because he got the ticket for parking on Ossipee Rd. and was able to give my name as the resident he was visiting at the time (and I owned a visitor parking pass at the time he got the ticket). Sooo... it sounds like you can't complain based solely on the fact that you never got the ticket, but if you can explain why you shouldn't have gotten one it can be waived.

[glowroper.livejournal.com]

Yeah - not getting the ticket isn't an excuse. it is not uncommon to see tickets on the ground, or blown and muddy. Those folks are going to be surprised later on. I guess a way to fix this problem (if the city wanted to) would be to have some sort of grommet and string, to tie the ticket around the windshield wiper or something.

I am moving to a place where there are two offstreet parking places, for me and my partner. We have gotten so many tickets over the years here that we factored the no-tickets-anymore costs into the deal. It's like a break on the rent!

[dani-namaste.livejournal.com]

see, I can understand if I just didn't find the tickets - whatever. The problem I have is that there are no notations that I can't park on that section of College Ave, and I have only ever been parked there for an hour and a half. Even if they had the standard 2-hour parking limit enforced and I just didn't see the sign, I'm still not "overtime."

[cutieperson]

there are half hour and hour spaces scattered around town too, not just ones with two hours limits.

[dani-namaste.livejournal.com]

yes, but all of the spaces on that stretch of College Ave are 2-hour spaces; I just double-checked.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

Not getting a ticket certainly is an excuse for anything that's a consequence of not getting a ticket. Like overdue charges. Or having trouble proving that your car wasn't there in the first place, if the meter maid made a mistake with the license plate number. This happens fairly often, especially since some states are stupid enough to reuse the same numbers on different specialty plates, or issue the same numbers twice except with letter Os in place of number Zeros.

We really need an international North American plate numbering scheme, so there wouldn't be duplicate plate numbers in different states and provinces.

[dani-namaste.livejournal.com]

this is actually one of the things that's happened to me - I got a surprise snow emergency ticket for being parked near Home Depot when my car was in front of my house the entire night. When I contested it, they realized that it was the wrong make and model to be my car and released the ticket. This is the one that the other lady used as an excuse not to forgive another ticket I shouldn't have gotten.

[spatch]

When I moved to Somerville from Cambridge in 2003, I received a Love Note from the city stating that I had seven unpaid parking tickets and owed them somewhere around $250. Considering the car was used almost every day and not once did I notice a giant orange flyer stuck in my windshield wiper (I know they're so hard to notice sometimes) I was highly skeptical, so I went to the office on Holland between Teele and Davis to contest them.

Turns out the tickets were "given" because I'd inadequately put the Somerville parking permit above my old Cambridge permit, and you can't have two valid parking passes for two cities when your car can only be garaged in one. Fair enough. No mention or apology was made for the phantom tickets, however, and once I told the arbiter that I would have fully removed the Cambridge parking permit the moment I'd seen the first ticket (hell, the moment I'd seen ANY ticket) he waived them all.

But it was a very weird occurrence and it worries me that other people have received phantom tickets in this town. Won't that be a surprise if you tried to renew your license!

[koloratur.livejournal.com]

I got a phantom ticket in April for an overlimit - how that can be, I don't know, since I have a record of credit card charges made all over the place that weekend, and I bloody well know that I was in Millis for 8 hours smack dab in the middle of the 48 hour period. I'm still trying to contest it, since I KNOW that I didn't commit the violation. We'll see if I get lucky.

[pushupstairs.livejournal.com]

I got a phantom ticket for parking too close to the intersection near my apartment - you can't park within 20 feet of an intersection (state law, actually). Funny thing is, I know that the closest I've ever parked to that intersection is 26 feet, because I went out and measured.

Soooooo... some cop made up a phantom violation and didn't put the ticket on my car? Maybe someone had to fill their quota or something. But that whole situation didn't compute. It took me about 45 seconds at the parking office to get that one tossed.

+ "I've never parked closer than 26 feet. Here's a picture of the closest I have ever parked to that intersection with the measuring tape clearly visible."
- "you know it's a state law that you can't park within 20 feet of an intersection?"
+ "yes."
- type type type gone.
+ "kthxbye"

[tt02144.livejournal.com]

While I do realize that tickets can blow off a car, or even be swiped by somone trying to be funny, it seems odd that this happened to you twice in virtually the same place. Of course, as you say, you didn't actually commit a violation in the first place! Anyway, since everyone who's posting here is theoretically in or around Davis Square, and many seem to have had similar problems, perhaps the city should be looking at the Parking Enforcement Officers working the Davis Square area. Perhaps one of them is lazy, absent-minded, stupid, etc. I think the more people who contest these tickets, the more record there will be that there is a problem in the area, with tickets given out without a valid reason, and also with tickets being recorded, but not placed on the car! Perhaps you could forward some of your documents to the Somerville Journal for an expose!