Lucky Me?
Trust me, my life is not usually too eventful. However, something interesting did happen this past week. I got a letter in the mail from the City of Ottawa Courthouses & Provincial Offence Services about a "NOTICE OF IMPENDING CONVICTION".
Obviously I panicked for a moment and looked through the letter several times. It claimed that I had committed an unauthorized parking on private property infraction and had not paid my fine. I had never gotten any notice on my windshield at any point for this ticket that I had apparently missed. After looking at the details about the time and place it occured, I felt even more confused than I already did. I thought long and hard about how that could have happened because of the following...
1) I had never been to that location before in my life. 2) Checking that date on my calandar/agenda, I remembered that I was at home studying for my finals then.
3) There was no way that could have happened 4) BUT there was MY name, MY car licence plate number, sent to my home address... and I even checked online on their website to make sure it was not some sort of scam.
5) I concluded that it was a legitimate letter, and that the offence was marked on my file.
What?!?! How the heck did that happen?! So the first thought that came to my mind was... "Is someone driving around a car with an illegal licence plate with the same number as MY CAR?!" I mean, what are the odds of that? The other way it could have happened was that the officer who was entering the ticket for the actual offender entered the wrong licence plate number somehow, and it just so turned out to be MINE. HAH.
I then did some research to see if anyone else had encountered anything like that. I was not about to pay someone else's fine. When I fianlly had some free time (before the final due date of paying the fine off/getting arrested for not paying it), I went to the City Hall to contest the ticket! I must say that I was slightly nervous. I did not do anything wrong, but had the slight fear that they would not believe my story and make me pay an even bigger fine in the end. (The anxiety might have been because I grew up in Singapore though. LOL) However, thankfully it only took a minute after I explained to the clerk what had happened. He voided the ticket and just said that it indeed was their mistake.
PHEW! Seriously, how often does this happen to people? I must just be SO LUCKY! Perhaps I should go buy a lottery ticket. HAHA.
Till next time!
Cheerios,
Viv.