Italian Efficiency

Back in April, during my trip to Italy, I got a parking ticket during in one of the towns I visited. (I'm not going to argue whether it was right or not, suffice to say that I believe it wasn't). When I got home, I saw that the ticket could only be paid by a transfer from an Italian bank account, so I had no way of paying the ticket. So, I went to see some of the Italians at work to see if I could give them some money to pay the ticket for me. After I said ticket and before I got to the could you pay for me part, each of them immediately blurted out "Don't pay!" Being the good law abiding person I am, I was a bit unsure of that approach. Still, they all said the only thing to do is to ignore it. They said you don't have to pay until they send the bill to you in the mail. They stressed the importance of following the system. They also stressed that, because it was Italy, probably the system wouldn't work. Most likely, they said, the town would forget the ticket and fail to send it to me in the mail. If they did send the ticket, it would go to the rental car company. The said that surely the rental car company would either ignore it or forget to send my address to the police. They said that even if somehow the police did get my address from the rental car company, they would probably forget to forward the bill to me. Or, they might see that I had given a US address and would give up. I was assured by all the Italians at work that it would be impossible for everything to work correctly and for me to get the ticket in the mail.

Fast forwarding to September, a letter came in September saying the rental car company was sending my details to the police. Now, a registered letter arrived at my US address containing the official ticket from the police in the little town I was in. I brought this in to show all my Italian colleagues and find out what went wrong. All were absolutely amazed. They couldn't believe it was possible. They said I must be the unluckiest person in the world. And, they also all said, "Don't pay." They advocated ignoring it until the second notice arrives (if it ever arrives) or else appealing to the regional authority (who probably would have no time to look at it, thus cancelling it by default). This time, however, it came with information on how to pay it from outside Italy (though it still would have been very difficult to do from the US) and so I paid it. The process, while very slow, did work in the end. My impression of Italy is shattered.