Today we received a parking ticket in the mail, from a town we have never been to which is 600 km away. They have our license plate number, but the car says it is a Daewoo, and ours is a Mitsubishi. This is obviously a computer error.
What do I do to contest this ticket, and how can I prove that this was not us, and we were not there? My husband actually got a ticket that day at 4:30 pm in our town, for not coming to a complete stop. And the above ticket was at 12:51 pm. It would have been hard to be home by 4:30 if we were in the first town, but not impossible.
Thanks
Barbi
I'll try again. This is clearly a case of cloning. It is becoming more common in France and has been discussed elsewhere. At first there was the famous report of a farmer in the southwest being sent a parking ticket for a violation in Paris. The registration number had been copied from his tractor! Since then there have been several cases involving cars in different regions and the procedure seems to be that you go to the nearest prefecture and usually have to pay the fine first and then prove your case afterwards. Doing it quickly will make sure the scam is registered on the cop computer ASAP. The brighter criminals usually copy the number of an identical vehicle to avoid detection but as this is France some of them are copying trucks, tractors or whatever.
It doesn't matter what you or I think. The idea of admin error is unlikely. Twenty five years ago a member of my staff was accused of overstaying a Heathrow car park by three weeks. She had been working for me contiuously all the time. Your vehicle has been cloned. ANPR Automatic Numberplate Recognition is fine but not perfect hence the confusion between the Daewoo and Mitsubishi. Somewhere there is a Daewoo with your plates (illegal) and your ( legal) Mitsubishi. Don't ask me how they do it but they do.
Read some time ago about a french reg. car being stopped and the driver rather 'roughly' extracted from the vehicle by the gendarmes. The reg. plate matched the one they were looking for but the 'bad guy's' car was registered in Italy. Mistaken vehicle identity? Not sure how you could prove that though, if it were the case. The clone idea is also perfectly feasible. Certainy worth a trip to the gendarmerie I should think.
So you think that our license plate was cloned, rather than it being an admin error? I thought it was odd that the tickets were dated on the same day, do you think that is significant?
Sounds like your numberplate may have been cloned. The general advice seems to be to pay the fine and then protest it with the central fines office from which it was issued together with the supporting evidence you clearly have.Also to report the matter to your local gendarmerie or Police nationale.
My response does not seem to appear so can admin just delete this, its confusing.