Gov't Efficiency

Here's a classic example of government hard-at-work.

In August of 2008 I received a $5 parking ticket in the city of Columbia, MO. I mailed them a check for the $5 and forgot about the entire thing. About a month ago I received a notice from the City of Columbia that I owed $10 for an Aug 2008 parking fine. I photocopied the check receipt in my register that I had paid the original ticket in Oct 2008, mailed that to them and asked them to please let me know they had received this and that the matter was taken care of and off the records.

I received a note back promptly that I "failed to pay within 15 days of receiving" my ticket and an additional fine of $10 had been added. It had been nearly 2 years since this additional $10 had been assessed, but this was the first time I had heard about it. I thought about sending something smart-assed back like, "it only took me 30 days to pay it, but it took you nearly 700 to alert me that I had not paid on time", or something to that effect. I thought better of it and just mailed the $10 to the City of Columbia. I don't need no trouble from the government. This was on July 10.

Today, July 14, I received another letter in the mail from the City of Columbia stating the following: "Recently all 2008 tickets have been removed from our database, therefore this ticket no longer exists. Sorry about the confusion." Enclosed was my check for $10 which I just wrote 4 days ago.

So let me get this straight, you put a parking ticket on my car in Aug of '08, I pay you for it (relatively promptly, but not within what they considered to be prompt). You cared so little about collecting my $10 that you sat on this fee for nearly 2 years. You make me go through my old checks to prove to myself that I did pay your parking fee. I take the time to photocopy and mail that to you. You reply that this is an ADDITIONAL fee because I was late. I mail you the flippin' $10 and you promptly mail it back to me saying that 2008 has been deleted from the database!

I wonder how many $10s have been written off now? How many of those over-priced government hammers would that have paid for? Thanks Columbia, I am glad to have the $10 back in my pocket. I will gladly pay that to some other merchant who is not paying taxes to the great city of Columbia.