A New York man who keeps receiving parking tickets is stumped. Not because he claims to be a perfect parker, but because the license plates linked to the tickets were destroyed.
It all started when his car was stolen last year, and recovered a few days later by police, reports PIX-11. His insurance company, Progressive, chalked it up to a total loss and sent him his lives plates. He turned them in to the Department of Motor Vehicles and was handed a receipt that said “PLATES DESTROYED.”
End of story, right? Wrong. Ever since then, he says he’s been getting tickets in the mail, with the old plates listed on them.
“This is for plates that were destroyed,” he tells the news station. “I have no idea how they even wound up in the street, if they were destroyed.”
He and his wife have been fighting an estimated $4,000 worth of tickets by mail, and sometimes in court. Though they’re often successful, the whole thing is a hassle. To rub more salt on the wound, the couple had pay $500 after their new car was booted and towed recently, because although it has new plates, the parking tickets tied to the old plates still lead back to them.
He says the DMV doesn’t know what to do, and sent him a latter that the plates had been destroyed and not reissued.
The Department of Finance told PIX 11 it’s trying to help.
“We are dismissing the tickets that are being presented for a hearing. We are working to put an Indefinite Enforcement Hold on the plate,” adding that correcting the identification connected to the plates is a job for the DMV.
The DMV disagrees, noting that by law, it “cannot delete information from a motorist’s record, including that he or she was the most recent registrant of a vehicle.”
Man continues to receive parking tickets despite surrendered plates [PIX-11]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist