Monday, July 9, 2012

Attention Clearwater

To my great irritation, I am in a war with the heretofore-unknown-to-me city of Clearwater, Florida.
Last fall, I got a parking ticket in the mail for my car's license plate and our names/address, issued in a Clearwater parking lot on a Saturday in August, to a red truck.  Adding  insult to injury, the bill said "second notice".
Ok...except we'd never been to Clearwater, don't drive at all on shabbat, and own a gray sedan.
Silly me, I thought I would take care of it by calling the number on the citation.  It was very hard to get to a human being, but I finally used my MIL's trick of choosing the Spanish-speaking option and then pushing 'zero'.  You usually get a person at that point, and they almost always speak English, too.
The woman promised up and down and sideways that she was putting everything in the system to fix the problem, and not to worry about it.  So I didn't.
Nine months passed, and I got in the mail on the same day:  (1) a "final" parking ticket notice; (2) a "delinquent" parking ticket notice with a threat of Collections; (3) a Collections letter from an agency for the "delinquent parking ticket".  I guess time passes in a different, nonsequential way, in Clearwater.
Another telephone call netted me the earnest but untrustworthy promise that it was all "fixed in the system" now, as well as an assurance that, "when you called to change the state on the ticket from Maine to Massachusetts, we did that in the system".  OMFG.
My-sister-the-lawyer and my-father-the-successful-crank advised me to write lots of letters.  So I wrote eight letters:  the mayor, town manager, chief of police, citation office, collector's office, and anyone else I could find in Clearwater - will now be getting certified letters from me explaining this whole thing, complete with a photocopy of our car's registration.
Can I even express how annoying it is to spend time on this, not to mention the $13 in postage and all the effort.  Clearwater, if you're out there, what the heck is going on?

3 comments:

  1. So, Clearwater, FL does exist. I know because I went to kindergarten there, and I didn't have a great experience there either. I'm sorry they are giving you a hard time too.

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  2. Hi Alison! I'm sorry Clearwater didn't do right by you, either. :) Do you have any useful connections? I will keep you posted, and thank you for reading!!

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  3. I don't think I know anyone who still lives there unfortunately.

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