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Traffic ticket in Italy - Bologna ZTL?

Posted by on

Hey there, I see there are quite a few people out there getting tickets in Italy. I wanted to share my experience and warn everyone out there about the potential of a scam.

I recently got 3 tickets in the mail from Comune di Bologna - Polizia Municipale. The 2 of the 3 seems like they are a duplicate as the ID numbers are identical. Upon doing some research on the internet, i found no results and finally decided to pay up. HOWEVER, as my last attempt to clarify the situation (as i don't think i went into any ZTL zones) I decided to go to SIXT, my preferred car rental company and see if they would be able to help sort this out as I don't feel comfortable wire transferring ANY money abroad. Before I was leaving the house I pulled up my SIXT account online to print out my invoices for my ITALY rentals. THANK GOD i did that because upon checking my invoices I noticed that the license plate for the car that got tickets was totally different than the license plates for the cars I rented!!! I even checked my SIXT rental car account to see if I got any traffic tickets and it came up null. I checked again and again to see if anything on my invoice remotely looked like the license plate from the tickets that were sent to me and came out with NOTHING! Even the car that the the tickets were for was totally different (FIAT vs RENAULT).

SO with this experience, I strongly advise anyone out there with tickets from anywhere to check their rental agreements and cross check the license plates!

Posted by
3261 posts

It is SIXT that gave your name and address to the Commune di Bologna, so you should take it up with them. Complain loudly and insist they clear your name with the Commune.

Posted by
4535 posts

I would also follow up with SIXT to see if they gave your information, in error apparently, to the authorities. If so, they would be on the hook to correct it and get the charges dropped.

If the authorities are charging you even though SIXT did not provide them with your contact, that would be very strange indeed. I'm not sure how they would have gotten your contact information.

It seems highly unlikely to be a scam. A criminal enterprise would be going through a lot of effort to send bogus tickets in the mail on the hope that you actually traveled to that location and would willingly pay them.

Ignoring the tickets completely, even if you feel they were issued in error, could expose you to collection efforts.

Posted by
11613 posts

More likely a mistake than a scam - perhaps a transposition error in the info that Sixt sent to the Comune? Did you get a charge on your credit card for about $50 in the billing cycle after the alleged infraction? That's usually the first clue that a ticket will be coming.

At any rate, I would follow up with Sixt, and it's good that you keep records.

Posted by
5697 posts

Sounds more like a transposition error when SIXT pulled the data up from their system -- so not only should they clear up the ticket with the Bologna police, they should credit back any charges to your card for passing on your information to the police. Somebody out there is going to get a surprise!

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