French traffic fine

jd87

Hello. I hired a car in France at the end of June from Avis. A few weeks ago I received a letter from Avis France saying I've received a traffic fine and that they've passed my details onto the issuing organisation and charged me a €42 admin fee

The letter from Avis was dated 6th August and it says the fine was issued on 1st July (the last day of my car hire). It's now 2nd September and I haven't received any actual fine from the French authorities. The Avis letter says the issuing organisation is "L'Officier du Ministere Public pres le Tribunal de Police de Paris".

Does anyone have experience of this? Have they possibly decided not to bother chasing me for the fine? I'm worried that the letter might be lost in the post and as more time passes the penalty will increase, but I have no idea who/how to contact someone to fine out what's happening. There's a phone number for the issuing organisation but I don't speak French! The letter from Avis makes it very clear that they will not assist me with dealing with the fine.

EdGasketTheSecond

UK people I know who have got fines in France never pay them and nothing seems to happen

Mercdriver

EdGasketTheSecond wrote: »

UK people I know who have got fines in France never pay them and nothing seems to happen

So you're prepared to pay the fine for the OP then based on your anecdotal 'evidence'?

Thought not.

MikeWhite

We had a ticket in Spain via Avis from March 31st. Got the Avis "We've passed the details on" letter in June. Have heard nothing since. Maybe the authorities sometimes don't bother when they discover the offender is from overseas? Or maybe our fines are slowly making their way to us!

ETA the ticket was issued on the last day of our trip so we had no time to go to the local police station. We asked at the return desk how we could pay it but the person had no idea if we could do it online (handy as it nets Avis the "handling charge").

Aylesbury_Duck

My concern would be that if ignored, the next time I want to hire a car in France, the outstanding fine might cause a problem at the hire desk or if stopped by police for some other reason and checked. I don't know how plausible that is but if it were me I'd be making an effort to get it paid. There must be a way of contacting the issuing authority and lack of language is not an excuse - there are plenty of translation tools on the web.

jimjames

EdGasketTheSecond wrote: »

UK people I know who have got fines in France never pay them and nothing seems to happen

I'd say there was rather a difference between driving your own UK car in France and a French registered hire car that can be traced. They may well chase Avis and try to bill the credit card

jd87

So it's another 3 months on (5 months since the supposed incident) and I still haven't received any fine in the post. Starting to feel like it's just an Avis scam to get their "admin fee". How can I find out definitively if there really is a fine or not?

Arklight

This is one of the many reasons why I won't touch Avis with a ten foot pole.

With any other hire company I would say of course it's not a scam but with them, it just may well be.

[Deleted User]

I'd just wouldn't bother paying it. Lot's of foreigners come over here, especially truck drivers, and !!!! off home having broken loads of road laws and nothing is ever done.

System

Deleted_User wrote: »

I'd just wouldn't bother paying it. Lot's of foreigners come over here, especially truck drivers, and !!!! off home having broken loads of road laws and nothing is ever done.

Not any more. Like the French if they're stopped they get marched off to the nearest cash machine and vehicle is immobilised if there's no payment, if its an offence that needs to be dealt with in a court they're held in a police cell to be put before a magistrate the following day. If the truck is caught speeding by ANPR they tug it the next time it comes back into the UK.

lewishardwick

If it was my own car, I'd be more worried.

I just got a letter from the agency running the M50 toll road in Ireland. A whopping €6 (Inc Admin fee)!

I was there in September...

It may come, it may not. For hire cars it's a bit more effort.