Foreign speed offences

chases0102

Hi all, I was on holidays with my wife and son last month and we rented a car from Enterprise.

Recently was issued with two separate 25 Euro admin charges from Enterprise for speeding fines - also informed that I'll receive the fines from the French authorities within 60 days.

I was shocked, couldn't believe it.

Now, I genuinely, 100% do not think I was speeding excessively other there - the opposite in fact, being the other side of road/car and all.

How can they prove this, or rather, is there any way I can challenge this?

Does anyone have any experience of this?

FishOnABike

chases0102 wrote: »

Hi all, I was on holidays with my wife and son last month and we rented a car from Enterprise.

Recently was issued with two separate 25 Euro admin charges from Enterprise for speeding fines - also informed that I'll receive the fines from the French authorities within 60 days.

I was shocked, couldn't believe it.

Now, I genuinely, 100% do not think I was speeding excessively other there - the opposite in fact, being the other side of road/car and all.

How can they prove this, or rather, is there any way I can challenge this?

Does anyone have any experience of this?

Yoh don't gave to be speeding excessively to get a speeding fine - just speeding. Many main roads have fixed cameras and portable speed cameras are common too.

I've read a thread on TripAdvisor of fines being issued for 6kmh over the limit.

The equivalent of our non dual carriageway N roads have an 80kmh limit vs our 100kmh and their motorway limit drops from 130kmh to 110mh in rain. In built up areas it is 50kmh - this might only be indicated by the town or village name sign without any accompanying speed limit sign.

If you were in your own car you would probably have heard nothing more of it but in a rental car the notice will be sent to the rental company and they charge an administration fee for giving the driver details to the police. It's in their terms and conditions.

CiniO

chases0102 wrote: »

Hi all, I was on holidays with my wife and son last month and we rented a car from Enterprise.

Recently was issued with two separate 25 Euro admin charges from Enterprise for speeding fines - also informed that I'll receive the fines from the French authorities within 60 days.

I was shocked, couldn't believe it.

Now, I genuinely, 100% do not think I was speeding excessively other there - the opposite in fact, being the other side of road/car and all.

How can they prove this, or rather, is there any way I can challenge this?

Does anyone have any experience of this?

If it's a speeding detected by speed camera, then most likely there'll be a picture of you driving the car as a proof.

And of course you can challenge this in French court. Everyone has a right not to accept a fine and challenge it in court.

munchkin_utd

i got done for being 1km/h over the limit in France (after deduction of a few percent leeway) and the letter was posted to my home address and even translated and all in case I didnt speak French!

I think the previous post on ways you can trip up in France might be one to contemplate, especially the 50kmh in urban areas being designated by just the town boundary sign (and they arent the only place to do this) rather than the Irish convention of posting a separate limit sign at the town boundary.

chases0102

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the replies. In some ways, the speeding offence doesn't really bother me, but this admin fee from the rental company. They're unreal!

How much was the fine munchkin_utd?

FishOnABike

The fine depends on how much over the speed limit you were travelling and there is a reduction if you pay within a time limit (which I think is extended for foreign drivers).

See https://english.controleradar.org/speeding-fines.php and http://english.controleradar.org/speeding-in-france.php for scale of fines.

If you were less than 20kmh over the limit and pay quickly it would typically be €45 for each offence.

eusap

My experince of rental companies and speed fine,

Caught speeding in Belgium, Hertz charged me €28 for admin to provide my name and driver licence number to Belgian Police, no mention of me having to pay fine. Heard nothing for 6 months.

Then got another letter from hertz (another €28 admin) with a copy of belgian police letter basically telling hertz they where not chasing me and hertz are the registered owner. Letter from hertz said please pay the €80 fine or we will pay it and recoup fine plus admin from your card.

I paid the €80, which i would have done the first time only i had no info to pay the fine. Pay the fine and forget about it

CrankyHaus

Don't rentals in France nowadays come with speed limit drop indicators?
I was over there in a Europcar rental a couple of years ago and the fecking thing wouln'd stop beeping at me every time I entered a village or other lower speed area.

chases0102

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Bit of an update on this - the letter from the French authorities arrived, but alas, to my parents house down the country. I don't know how this happened.... Does this change anything?

Micky 32

I go over to France a lot. To be fair to the french the cameras have a big sign warning you before the camera.

FishOnABike

chases0102 wrote: »

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Bit of an update on this - the letter from the French authorities arrived, but alas, to my parents house down the country. I don't know how this happened.... Does this change anything?

Is that the address you used when hiring the car or the billing address for the card you used when hiring the car or possibly the address on your driving license?

The car hire company would have forwarded whatever contact information they have for you to the French police when requested.

AndrewJRenko

chases0102 wrote: »

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the replies. In some ways, the speeding offence doesn't really bother me, but this admin fee from the rental company. They're unreal!

How much do you think they should charge for processing what is presumably a paper transaction like this?

CiniO

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

How much do you think they should charge for processing what is presumably a paper transaction like this?

€5 to €10 would be plenty to cover the cost and make nice profit.
Anything above it is just unreal.

chases0102

Yeah, about 5 - 10 Euro is surely enough for what would amount to minimal work.


Just re the address - I think it's my license that is attached to that address. Everything else - such as card I booked with, address I would have given, would have been my own.

Paddy@CIRL

Pay it, rental car companies are surprisingly resilient and won't just forget about it.

AndrewJRenko

CiniO wrote: »

€5 to €10 would be plenty to cover the cost and make nice profit.
Anything above it is just unreal.

chases0102 wrote: »

Yeah, about 5 - 10 Euro is surely enough for what would amount to minimal work.


Just re the address - I think it's my license that is attached to that address. Everything else - such as card I booked with, address I would have given, would have been my own.

Tell you what, lads - you should set up an outsourcing service to do it for €5 - €10 per transaction, and sub-contract your services to the car rental companies. Sure they'd only be delighted to get it done at that price.



You might just find that running a multi-lingual paper transaction processing services ends up costing a little bit more than you expect though.

CiniO

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

Tell you what, lads - you should set up an outsourcing service to do it for €5 - €10 per transaction, and sub-contract your services to the car rental companies. Sure they'd only be delighted to get it done at that price.

No they wouldn't.
Because currently it costs them a fiver, and they charge their custumers €25 t €35 for that service. Why would they give up that free income?

You might just find that running a multi-lingual paper transaction processing services ends up costing a little bit more than you expect though.

What multilingual? Rental company as a vehicle registered owner receives a question from local authorities about who the driver was during offence (date, time) and they just check in their database who rented that car in that time, and send them (local authorities) driver details.

Where do you see multi-lingual paper transaction?

It's a job that office clerk can do in less than 5 minutes.

chases0102

Thanks all for input folks.

Just paid it all. Incidentally, it was 86 in a 80 zone.

May have gotten away with not paying due to the fines coming to a different address, if I just ignored it. But took my medicine!

Tropheus

Had the same problem in Italy, but not speeding. I entered a couple of ZTLs or traffic limited zones in historic city centres. Rental companies there charge €40 admin fee to provide your details and it can take up to 18 months to actually receive the fine.

We had my father in law in the car who is a disabled badge holder so we were entitled to to go into the ZTLs for parking in city centres. I appealed the fines, but there appears to be no joined up process. I never heard back on the appeals, but keep getting reminders regarding the fines. We were to Italy 4 times over the previous 4 years, and there are about 6 of these fines ongoing. Many of the letters also come in Italian so it's not easy to figure out what's going on.

Peregrinus

CiniO wrote: »

What multilingual? Rental company as a vehicle registered owner receives a question from local authorities about who the driver was during offence (date, time) and they just check in their database who rented that car in that time, and send them (local authorities) driver details.

Where do you see multi-lingual paper transaction?

It's a job that office clerk can do in less than 5 minutes.

You're forgetting that the rental company also wrote to the hirer, and advised him of the alleged offence, and of their involvement in supplying his details to the police. And that letter, of course, was in English. Plus they'll have raised a charge with the credit card company, and there's a time and processing cost to that also.

AndrewJRenko

CiniO wrote: »

No they wouldn't.
Because currently it costs them a fiver, and they charge their custumers €25 t €35 for that service. Why would they give up that free income?




What multilingual? Rental company as a vehicle registered owner receives a question from local authorities about who the driver was during offence (date, time) and they just check in their database who rented that car in that time, and send them (local authorities) driver details.

Where do you see multi-lingual paper transaction?

It's a job that office clerk can do in less than 5 minutes.

Customer service is never quite that simple, though, is it? The multi-lingual requirement comes from both sides of the transaction. Rental cars cross borders in Europe. So you will have cars rented in France getting Spanish language tickets in Spain and vice versa.


More importantly, you will have customers coming from all over the world. And you'll have maybe 20%-40% of customers who get a notice like this who will query it by phone or email or social media. So you will need a team of agents servicing multiple languages trained to deal with these queries using IT services built to support these queries.


Now tell me again how you're going to do that for a fiver a ticket?

DubDani

Be lucky that you didn't rent from Avis in France. They charged me 50Euro for their effort of relaying my address back to the french authorities and sending me a letter informing me of the same.

That was 16 months ago, and haven't heard a word from the French authorities. Probably was not worth for them chasing a foreigner.

chases0102

Probably could have saved myself a few quid by not paying! Ah well....

hi5

I too recently got a letter from Hertz in Beauvais, France, they deducted €20.00 from my credit card for the letter, I haven't yet got he fine.
I wasn't intentionally speeding or trying to get anywhere in a rush, so I was a bit surprised.

ironclaw

I got a fine for I think 33km/h in a 30km/h zone in Heidelberg, Germany. It was 20EUR for the fine and I think 20EUR for them to process it.

Whilst you can't get the money back for the fine, if you want to have some self-satisfaction of them expending some manpower, ask the rental car company for a comprehensive overview of their GDPR policy, where you consented to your information being transferred (Because they have to have a record of this) and the information they transferred to the issuing authority. Then ask the said authority for same. They have to do it, and they have to do it fast, or you can involve the local data commissioner. They also can't really charge you for it.

Will cost you some postage stamps, but it will cost them a lot more than the admin charge they levied you so if you are into petty revenge, there you have it.

irelandrover

I got a ticket in france as well. was doing 53 in a 50 zone. I wanst too happy but i remember the fine being not too high either.

ironclaw wrote: »

Whilst you can't get the money back for the fine, if you want to have some self-satisfaction of them expending some manpower, ask the rental car company for a comprehensive overview of their GDPR policy, where you consented to your information being transferred (Because they have to have a record of this) and the information they transferred to the issuing authority. Then ask the said authority for same. They have to do it, and they have to do it fast, or you can involve the local data commissioner. They also can't really charge you for it.

its because of people like this that the admin fees are high.