Sherrif's suck, and here's why
Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2013 5:47 pmI just posted this on Facebook, but thought I'd share my recent experience with you guys too
Here's how it's audio related! imagine you're driving a tour / gig van or truck, loaded with gear and this happens:
I was driving the the other day and came to a Sheriff / Police check with license plate recognition. My license plate triggered something and I was instructed to pull over. They took my drivers license and came back telling me I had $3500 in unpaid fines against two company cars (it's my company), as well as $3800 in unpaid personal fines. I've never once received any correspondence regarding these amounts
So for the personal fines, I was given a Seven Day Notice which means my drivers license would be suspended if I failed to take any action in the next week. I went to the Infringements Court where I was treated like a piece of shit, and given a list of the offenses. 16 out of 17 offenses are for driving an UN-REGISTERED vehicle in a toll zone, starting in 10/2007 till 06/2008. With late fees, and all at the warrant stage, that comes up to $3600. What I noticed is the address they had me at was an old one. So I just got off the phone with VicRoads and in fact I changed my address 2 days after the lease ended at the old place I was renting. All these fines were sent to the old address, 8 months after I updated the address with VicRoads. And more to the point, that vehicle has never been unregistered (or had its registration suspended) from 2003 till 2011!! So that's good, shouldn't have happened but with plenty of proof on my side I should be able to get these removed
But the company fines were a different matter
Fyi, A company is its own entity and can be considered to be another person for this case, so my personal and company matters are totally unrelated.
With company registered vehicles, you don't get a fine, you get a nomination statement and need to nominate a driver. Failure to disclose the driver get a $600 penalty so it was only 4 offenses, but coupled with late fees and non-nomination fees it came to $3500. Once again, all due to an incorrect address on their system. Thing is, they were sending me reminder notices to the old address, while they were sending me new fine notices to the new address - you'd think they'd kind of figure it out?
Anyway, that day they felt like being a little harder on company directors, so even though I was given 7 days to sort out my personal matters, I was given zero time to sort out the company matters. If I could not pay the company debt then and there (oh yeah, they had their own EFTPOS facilities on site), they would clamp my car and sell it in two days. There were two other vehicles that were clamped already and the owners looking pretty sour, so I figured better I just be on my way and I can sort this out later. I'd be happy to pay the fines but not the late / warrant / non-nomination fees (all up around $3k).
But here's the kicker, because I paid, the matter is now closed and there is no way for me to argue it. They gave me a choice of either loosing my van then and there, or here's a little eftpos facility so you can give us money with no chance of ever getting it back, regardless if we were right or wrong, and I can F@#$ing prove you ARE wrong! And all in the first hour I've ever heard anything about it
Here's how it's audio related! imagine you're driving a tour / gig van or truck, loaded with gear and this happens:
I was driving the the other day and came to a Sheriff / Police check with license plate recognition. My license plate triggered something and I was instructed to pull over. They took my drivers license and came back telling me I had $3500 in unpaid fines against two company cars (it's my company), as well as $3800 in unpaid personal fines. I've never once received any correspondence regarding these amounts
So for the personal fines, I was given a Seven Day Notice which means my drivers license would be suspended if I failed to take any action in the next week. I went to the Infringements Court where I was treated like a piece of shit, and given a list of the offenses. 16 out of 17 offenses are for driving an UN-REGISTERED vehicle in a toll zone, starting in 10/2007 till 06/2008. With late fees, and all at the warrant stage, that comes up to $3600. What I noticed is the address they had me at was an old one. So I just got off the phone with VicRoads and in fact I changed my address 2 days after the lease ended at the old place I was renting. All these fines were sent to the old address, 8 months after I updated the address with VicRoads. And more to the point, that vehicle has never been unregistered (or had its registration suspended) from 2003 till 2011!! So that's good, shouldn't have happened but with plenty of proof on my side I should be able to get these removed
But the company fines were a different matter
Fyi, A company is its own entity and can be considered to be another person for this case, so my personal and company matters are totally unrelated.
With company registered vehicles, you don't get a fine, you get a nomination statement and need to nominate a driver. Failure to disclose the driver get a $600 penalty so it was only 4 offenses, but coupled with late fees and non-nomination fees it came to $3500. Once again, all due to an incorrect address on their system. Thing is, they were sending me reminder notices to the old address, while they were sending me new fine notices to the new address - you'd think they'd kind of figure it out?
Anyway, that day they felt like being a little harder on company directors, so even though I was given 7 days to sort out my personal matters, I was given zero time to sort out the company matters. If I could not pay the company debt then and there (oh yeah, they had their own EFTPOS facilities on site), they would clamp my car and sell it in two days. There were two other vehicles that were clamped already and the owners looking pretty sour, so I figured better I just be on my way and I can sort this out later. I'd be happy to pay the fines but not the late / warrant / non-nomination fees (all up around $3k).
But here's the kicker, because I paid, the matter is now closed and there is no way for me to argue it. They gave me a choice of either loosing my van then and there, or here's a little eftpos facility so you can give us money with no chance of ever getting it back, regardless if we were right or wrong, and I can F@#$ing prove you ARE wrong! And all in the first hour I've ever heard anything about it