Exact same thing happened to me last year with Europcar. I got a notice from Europcar that I received a ticket while in Genoa, was charged around a similar amount of administrative fee and was told they forwarded my info onto the police who would send me the ticket. I’m not sure what the ticket would be for, but I did get turned around once and wound up in a pedestrian zone and I bet there was a camera there. I never did hear from the Italian authorities and had worry that this may cause problems on a return trip. Last month I was in Sicily for a month though and rented a car (through Hertz this time) with no problem and had no issue. shrug The Italians probably figure it’s not worth pursuing foreign tickets.
Just received a letter from Hertz with a copy of an Italian notice from the police of some form of traffic violation. It looks like it was from my time in Parma which makes no sense to me as we stayed in a hotel in a business area and our driving was out in the countryside. I call BS on this. I am having a friend translate the notice and will see what it says but I think this is just a way to shake people down for more money.
What sort of traffic violation? Speeding, ZTL or traffic light violation or something else?
Easy enough to contact the relevant police using independent search, to ask them to confirm it is authentic.
We had two violations from our France trip last year - Hertz charged us two admin fees and we received two tickets from the French govt. one was speeding and one was a traffic light violation. Paid online as we continue to travel back. We disputed the one from Italy as it was clear it was the hotel staff driving the wrong way down a one way street - the time on the hotel checkout invoice was enough to dispute that it wasn’t us and it was dropped.
Definitely the right way to play it.
If you were there at the indicated time, the ticket is going to be genuine, not a *scam. If you can prove you weren’t there, this scenario being one of the rare such instances, then fight it with the hoteland/or if appropriate with the council / police.
regards
Ian
- The was an official but illegal ‘scam’ a few years ago in Italy, where they (believed intentionally) set the leeway on traffic light violations to a much shorter amount of seconds than allowed, raking in large amounts of additional revenue.
I was billed directly for a speeding violation in France. I’m still trying to figure out how to pay the government. See “Should I Pay My French Speeding Ticket?”
We paid ours here Site officiel unique de télépaiement | Amendes.gouv.fr. There was a number in the ticket and did it twice with no problems.