Went to see my kid's band at Radfest on Saturday at the Axlerad Beer Garden on Alabama by the HCC campus and ended up getting a parking ticket for $100. I parked on the street near Luigi's Pizza behind a bunch of other cars parked the exact same way, so I mistakenly assumed it was okay. Anyone ever got out of a parking ticket before? I know for speeding tickets there's a myth(?) that you can request a court date and it's dismissed if the cop doesn't show up. Anything similar I can do for a parking ticket?
It's no myth that if you go to court and the cop doesn't show up it's dismissed. At least, that's the way it used to work when I had more time than money. For parking tickets, the juice might not be worth more than the squeeze for $100. I would just pay it up and write it off to what I call 'stupid tax' - the time, effort and/or cost I have to expend to fix a mistake. My research shows that you need to go to court and bring pictures of why you were mis-ticketed...but you readily admit that you just made a mistake. I did see an episode of Scam School where the guy uses white spray-paint to make a no parking sign look like it's too faded to read. But again, time and effort and potentially getting caught and going to jail, just ain't worth it.
Why was it $100 on a Saturday night? I guess midtown has become the equivalent of a speed trap for parking tickets.
I ended up ChatGPT'ing this and it helped me come up with a plan to contest it. It even zeroed into the exact spot I parked in and told me the best way to word it. I contested it online with the verbiage from ChatGBT and lost but they ended up dropping the fine from $100 to $50. So 10 minutes of research saved me $50. I'll take it!
