June25

Paying Online Makes it Convenient

On Friday I received my first parking ticket since moving last year. There are usually spaces outside my building and I've never seen a traffic cop around the neighborhood, therefore I was justified in parking there for extended periods of time.

I should've known better to tempt fate. As I got into my car yesterday afternoon, I noticed a rained-on and now dry parking ticket. I couldn't be upset because I know the rules, so I quickly scanned the ticket to see how I could pay it and move on. Parking violaters have two options:

1. Plead guilty and write a check and send it to the address on the card.
2. Plead not-guilty and go to court.

I'm guilty and I know it, but that doesn't prevent me from suspecting that the Hilti people called the cops to have them come around.

Anyway. I was about to write a check to the city when I noticed you can pay your ticket online. Nice! So I went to the web site, followed the directions and received this error message:

City of Kansas City - Municipal Court Ticket System Error
Your ticket amount information was not located.
If you have waited 15 days for this information to be entered into the system,
please call (816)513-2700 to report this issue.

Uh, what? 15 days? I can't pay my ticket online for 15 days? They're telling me that I could send/receive four letters in the regular mail in the time it will take them to enter a parking ticket into the system? I could get another sinus infection and be done with my antibiotics by the time my ticket is payable online? If I were in the city of Kiev, I could obtain technical terms and conditions from the sewage authority BEFORE I could pay my parking citation on the internet?

I only have 45 days to pay the ticket and one-third will be gone once it's finally online. I think that's hilarious.

+ original post date: June 25, 2007 08:00 AM
+ categories: Dwellings, Funny, Ha Ha, KC, WTF