In mid-September, I received notice from PennDOT, regarding an unpaid citation. Seems I had forgotten (suppressed) my speeding ticket in Ohio (July, first time on the highway, cruise control). Letter was to inform me of a license suspension on Oct 23 if it wasn't resolved. Letter stated:
Simple enough? So I send off a money order (oooh, $85 -- $70 fine + $15 late fee) immediately. And wait.
Feeling paranoid yesterday, I decided to verify that everything was cool. So I called the Court; "Oh yeah, we got that way back in September, didn't you get a receipt". I didn't get a receipt, probably because it probably got sent to my Bates St address... So then I called PennDOT. PennDOT had no notice of anything, and suspension was "still on". WHAT?!
Seems there are unwritten protocols and standard procedures. They are not particularly consistent, either. PennDOT claims that they don't get information from out of state courts (except unpaid citations?). That this was undocumented -- and implied the other way -- is just how it is. And, because they had no record of citation resolution... my problem, not theirs. Hearing that, I started to use the magic words to climb, until I found a sympathetic supervisor.
She finally understood everything, and let me understand a bit more of how screwy their system was... but she made some phonecalls on my behalf, and an agonizing hour and a half later, gave me a fax number to call with a contact name. Then I had to play the sympathy game again with the ohio court personnel -- faxes are very much not standard procedure, and even more so, they don't fax to transportation departments. So it got faxed to me, and I faxed it out to the obscure number in the middle of Pennsylvannia.
That was around 3:30pm yesterday. I wanted to wait a bit before calling -- clearly, these systems don't activate quickly -- and the next thing I knew, it was 5pm.
Update: License record is clear. Records show signs of something purged yesterday.
