Europcar and Italian fines

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imaginativename

Original Poster:

61 posts

92 months

Tuesday 9th January 2018
quotequote all
So I've been a bit of a muppet.

I was in Italy and had to make Florence to Pisa very, very quickly. This was in a Europcar rental.

Europcar have since been in contact to say that I have accrued 5 fines in Italy. This was back in August and I am yet to see the fines but I'm expecting them to be rather large.

I will pay the Europcar admin fees because I don't want to be banned from renting cars.

Should I pay the Italian traffic fines?

Algarve

2,102 posts

80 months

Tuesday 9th January 2018
quotequote all
Are you going to get a choice?

Often European fines will be paid by the hire company and charged back to your card.

imaginativename

Original Poster:

61 posts

92 months

Tuesday 9th January 2018
quotequote all
Algarve said:
Are you going to get a choice?

Often European fines will be paid by the hire company and charged back to your card.
I’ve had an email from Europcar and they have told me that do not have details of the fine due to italian law and that the authorities will be in contact so it looks at this stage to be separate.

LJTS

331 posts

182 months

Tuesday 9th January 2018
quotequote all
I've had an email from Hertz and they've charged me an admin fee for forwarding my details to the Italian Authorities regarding a speeding fine from September.

I'm still waiting for a speeding ticket to arrive in the post.

It was going from Florence to Pisa as per the OP :-)



imaginativename

Original Poster:

61 posts

92 months

Tuesday 9th January 2018
quotequote all
LJTS said:
I've had an email from Hertz and they've charged me an admin fee for forwarding my details to the Italian Authorities regarding a speeding fine from September.

I'm still waiting for a speeding ticket to arrive in the post.

It was going from Florence to Pisa as per the OP :-)
Apparently, the Italians allow 360 days for fines. Bit different to our 14!

LJTS

331 posts

182 months

Tuesday 9th January 2018
quotequote all
imaginativename said:
Apparently, the Italians allow 360 days for fines. Bit different to our 14!
Having searched on Google it seems wise to pay the fine as they use debt collectors in the UK if you don't pay

I'm hoping the fine isn't too expensive but I am expecting it to be at least 160 Euro according to posts on TripAdvisor :-(

a.lex

165 posts

76 months

Wednesday 10th January 2018
quotequote all
imaginativename said:
So I've been a bit of a muppet.

I was in Italy and had to make Florence to Pisa very, very quickly. This was in a Europcar rental.

Europcar have since been in contact to say that I have accrued 5 fines in Italy. This was back in August and I am yet to see the fines but I'm expecting them to be rather large.

I will pay the Europcar admin fees because I don't want to be banned from renting cars.

Should I pay the Italian traffic fines?
Why are you asking on PH? Yes, pay them. The Italians are lovely people, but they're always broke. So give them some money.

Now, do you have to pay them? Probably not. Why not? Because the Italian police don't seem to take these things very seriously and thus make errors. The rental company admin fee(s) are usually charged to the credit card used for the rental, so you can't really avoid them. The rental agreement will provide for this, but it's worth checking that it actually does, because if not, you can ask your credit card company to reverse the charges as being unauthorised. Admin fees, plural, because they usually will charge each time they're asked to identify the hirer of a particular vehicle at a particular time.

Some issues to consider: (1) Who was driving? (2) Can the hirer shift liability to the driver? (3) Have the police followed all of the relevant Italian procedures? (4) Have the police followed all of the relevant Article 6 ECHR requirements?

Eventually, the Italians will write to the hirer. They will probably do this using an Italian "Return Receipt" postal form in order to obtain proof that the letter was delivered. UK posties usually don't read Italian and may not bother getting the signature even if they did. Usually, they just pop the letters (receipt and all) into the letterbox, so no postcard with proof of delivery will make it back to Italy. That could be a problem under (3)...

Even though there are now procedures to facilitate the sharing of certain registered keeper data with other countries (not necessary in your case, given the hire car), there is still very little that can be done (in practical terms) to enforce payment. Most countries seem to have a go with an international debt collection agency, but they seem to leave it at that for traffic fines. Needless to say (?), debt collectors have no power to compel payment in the UK.

mybrainhurts

90,809 posts

254 months

Wednesday 10th January 2018
quotequote all
Pay it....

You don't want Popey knocking on your front door at midnight with a troop of attack nuns and a silly hat, now do you?

Echo66

384 posts

188 months

Wednesday 10th January 2018
quotequote all
Been through pretty much the same situ with the same bunch of car hire shysters .

Mine was following a car hire i had in Sardinia about 7 or 8 years ago now. Hols were in August. Feb following year CC company calls me about possible fraudulent charge attempt. Turned out to be Europcar Italia. I emailed their UK head office asking WTF was someone doing trying to use my CC details, which passed message on to the eyeties. Took them weeks to respond. When they did they said it was traffic fines. I said no way cos I knew I hadn't been pinged anywhere or even seen plod. Demanded details in English as you have a right to fully understand what you are being charged for.
Weeks go by.
Another email tells me that its actually for damage to the car.
Reply saying no way, the rep signed the car back in at the airport - all clear.
More weeks go by following me requesting more details.

Then i get email saying no, it is for traffic fines. I told them to do one using a pro-forma letter/email template ref denying the debt & disputing it until they provided full details, cc'ed it to UK head office & left it. Nothing.

About a year later I get a DCA letter from a merseyside based company who had bought the debt from europcar italia. Demanding a lung & a kidney or else.

Replied with pretty much same template letter. Nothing ever heard of again & no record of it on my credit reports

You don't have to pay it without full disclosure of what & where etc that must be provided in your first language according to CAB legal. I'd be very surprised if you got that disclosure. Europcar Italia are well known for this crap too.

Helicopter123

8,831 posts

155 months

Wednesday 10th January 2018
quotequote all
a.lex said:
imaginativename said:
So I've been a bit of a muppet.

I was in Italy and had to make Florence to Pisa very, very quickly. This was in a Europcar rental.

Europcar have since been in contact to say that I have accrued 5 fines in Italy. This was back in August and I am yet to see the fines but I'm expecting them to be rather large.

I will pay the Europcar admin fees because I don't want to be banned from renting cars.

Should I pay the Italian traffic fines?
Why are you asking on PH? Yes, pay them. The Italians are lovely people, but they're always broke. So give them some money.

Now, do you have to pay them? Probably not. Why not? Because the Italian police don't seem to take these things very seriously and thus make errors. The rental company admin fee(s) are usually charged to the credit card used for the rental, so you can't really avoid them. The rental agreement will provide for this, but it's worth checking that it actually does, because if not, you can ask your credit card company to reverse the charges as being unauthorised. Admin fees, plural, because they usually will charge each time they're asked to identify the hirer of a particular vehicle at a particular time.

Some issues to consider: (1) Who was driving? (2) Can the hirer shift liability to the driver? (3) Have the police followed all of the relevant Italian procedures? (4) Have the police followed all of the relevant Article 6 ECHR requirements?

Eventually, the Italians will write to the hirer. They will probably do this using an Italian "Return Receipt" postal form in order to obtain proof that the letter was delivered. UK posties usually don't read Italian and may not bother getting the signature even if they did. Usually, they just pop the letters (receipt and all) into the letterbox, so no postcard with proof of delivery will make it back to Italy. That could be a problem under (3)...

Even though there are now procedures to facilitate the sharing of certain registered keeper data with other countries (not necessary in your case, given the hire car), there is still very little that can be done (in practical terms) to enforce payment. Most countries seem to have a go with an international debt collection agency, but they seem to leave it at that for traffic fines. Needless to say (?), debt collectors have no power to compel payment in the UK.
But OP is not questioning his guilt - he has admitted the offences. In these circumstances, why are you encouraging the OP to commit fraud?

a.lex

165 posts

76 months

Wednesday 10th January 2018
quotequote all
Helicopter123 said:
But OP is not questioning his guilt - he has admitted the offences. In these circumstances, why are you encouraging the OP to commit fraud?
I can see why you're confused, but the "issues to consider" I mentioned are generic for a foreign traffic fine situation. The only thing I "encouraged" the OP to do was pay the fine...

There appear to me to be many opportunities for foreign traffic fine enforcement to go wrong, so it can be worthwhile to examine each element if the recipient has some reason to want to avoid capitulation. Many such fines are based on automatic enforcement and the literal application of the laws and regulations, so it seems perfectly fair to me if the authorities are held to the same standards.

Manners2001

144 posts

82 months

Wednesday 10th January 2018
quotequote all
OP - depends if you plan to go back to Italy. I had a ticket a couple years back having travelled a similar route to you actually. I did my research about whether to pay or not (of course, it was an offence I wasn't guilty of, your honour!). The general concensus waas that they wouldn't chase you up in the UK and had no relationship to share details with our authorities here BUT there is the possibility that you could be flagged the next time you wanted to go into or out of Italy.

I generally go somewhere in Italy once a year so I paid, and sleep easy at night!

Helicopter123

8,831 posts

155 months

Wednesday 10th January 2018
quotequote all
a.lex said:
Helicopter123 said:
But OP is not questioning his guilt - he has admitted the offences. In these circumstances, why are you encouraging the OP to commit fraud?
I can see why you're confused, but the "issues to consider" I mentioned are generic for a foreign traffic fine situation. The only thing I "encouraged" the OP to do was pay the fine...

There appear to me to be many opportunities for foreign traffic fine enforcement to go wrong, so it can be worthwhile to examine each element if the recipient has some reason to want to avoid capitulation. Many such fines are based on automatic enforcement and the literal application of the laws and regulations, so it seems perfectly fair to me if the authorities are held to the same standards.
Fair enough, but your original comment sounded very much from the 'tin foil hat' school of thinking.

If your innocent, then fight it, but if you know your in the wrong, surely the correct thing to do is man up to it and not waste everyone's time.

fergus

6,430 posts

274 months

Wednesday 10th January 2018
quotequote all
Must be Europcar's auditing period as I've just received a letter demanding EUR40 for their "admin fee", alongside a statement suggesting I wait for the Italian Police to send me their fine directly..... Let's wait and see.

BIG DUNC

1,918 posts

222 months

Thursday 11th January 2018
quotequote all
I had one from Herts of Italy a few years ago saying that I didn't return it full of fuel.

Or rather, that just showed up on my credit card three months later.

I told the card company it was fraudulent and sent both them and hertz date / time stamped photos showing that I picked the car up with half a tank of fuel and gave it back with 7/8 tank of fuel. It all went quiet then, but I will never use Hertz again.

The only reason I took the photos of the fuel gauge on collection was that it was supposed to be full, but I had waited three hours at the airport to get to the front of the useless Hertz queue and was now late to what I was going to. The idea of queuing again to complain about the fuel gauge didn't add up.

The Rookie

286 posts

196 months

Thursday 11th January 2018
quotequote all
LJTS said:
it seems wise to pay the fine as they use debt collectors in the UK if you don't pay
What do you think a debt collector can do?

You are aware a debt collector is very different from a Bailiff or High court EO, there is nothing they can do but write letters, sometimes they may use RED ink to scare you, but that's as far as it goes.

a.lex

165 posts

76 months

Thursday 11th January 2018
quotequote all
Helicopter123 said:
Fair enough, but your original comment sounded very much from the 'tin foil hat' school of thinking.

If your innocent, then fight it, but if you know your in the wrong, surely the correct thing to do is man up to it and not waste everyone's time.
I once received an Italian traffic ticket fine relating to a car I was not (and provably not) driving at the time of the offence. I was slightly perturbed that the entire process appeared to be a perfunctory, conclusory mess. It was Italy, so perhaps I should not have been surprised. Once I had eventually determined what they should have been doing pursuant to Italian and European law, it was clear that they hadn't bothered to do it, possibly because it related to a traffic fine, possibly because it related to a foreigner--I don't know. I did know that I was not overly willing to facilitate the charade, and I did not pay the fine (or respond in any way to the letter, which was not re-sent).

(And, yes, I've been back to Italy numerous times.)

LJTS

331 posts

182 months

Thursday 11th January 2018
quotequote all
The Rookie said:
What do you think a debt collector can do?

You are aware a debt collector is very different from a Bailiff or High court EO, there is nothing they can do but write letters, sometimes they may use RED ink to scare you, but that's as far as it goes.
OK, thanks for the advice

I'll wait and see what happens

anonymous-user

53 months

Friday 12th January 2018
quotequote all
I've been ticketed in Italy for speeding in a hire car - I paid it.

I got ticketed in Italy over a year ago for driving in a restricted zone in piza - car company took 30 euros, never heard from the cops.

It varies - as do all Italian Police (I used to live there)

davamer23

1,126 posts

153 months

Friday 12th January 2018
quotequote all
I had a charge from August 2016 after a violation in Bellagio (drove into a restricted area unwittingly) had to pay £40 to the rental company just to pass on my details to the authorities. November 2017 finally had the actual fine with was around £100.

I did the crime, I paid up, I’ve moved on with my life and put it down to what it was. A costly lapse in concentration and failure to research the area I was visiting.

I could’ve ignored the actual fine but for risk of “can’t pay we”ll take it away” style knock on my door in future I just coughed up.