Making a collection on an industrial area there was not a lot of room to turn round to exit. I then asked three staff members from the collection point to guide me and reverse me into a tight space near parked cars. I had to shunt forward and one of the staff members shouted after I had caught a car wing and mirror! I exchanged insurance details with the owner and then the Police turned up and took details all over again! For this pleasure they “fined” me 500 KÄ (about 20 Euro) payable at the Post Office.
I have returned to the UK and now want to pay them the fine but cannot find a sensible way. My bank want to charge me £30 to send 20 Euro to Czech!
Harry Monk:
How long do you have to pay? If you are going back you could pay next time, otherwise I must admit my temptation would be to knock them for it.
They have no sense of fun these new Czech police, a 500 KÄ fine would have been about 17 separate receipts, all handwritten and handed out like confetti.
Pay it, why because it may just be that they act like the Finnish police/customs
do and that is after 10days it is doubled and carry s on until you pay the end sum,
I got done in the LATE 90,s in the dock, I phones me missus to pay ASAP, which
she did, the Finn,s have no bank sorting code by the way,(OR did not have then)
No easy answer here, I’m afraid.
First of all, what did they fine you for? You did exactly what the law says you should do - got a banksman to help you with reversing. You crashed - how much of the blame goes onto you and how much onto banksman…? I don’t know.
Anyway, I’m surprised you got postal order for 500 “ducks”. If yo did not have the money and they really wanted you to pay then they should have clamped the truck, remove number plate or keep you licence while you have walked to cash machine to fetch money. This is relatively new thing, may be a year old, to force foreigners to pay their fines. Before they could just forget about it. Another new thing is, if you don’t pay within some time they’ll pass the details to the Customs who will try to recover the money.
You’ll probably receive a letter to remind you but what more happens is purely up to the guy who’ll get the papers to hands - unpredictable, but 500czk is not really worth chasing too much (the cost of extortion would probablybe higher than that).
That said, it may be relatively safe to forget about it…
BUT: the CZ police have built a separate offence register for foreign drivers where they register “black points” for them, in much the same way as for CZ drivers. Those who collect 12 pts are notified by a letter saying they are banned from driving in CZ for a period of time. If they get caught driving in CZ in this period they’ll be dealt with as if they were driving without a licence - that smells of jails but would probably end with a hefty fine.
Second thing, city transport companies across CZ and SK have had a system in place whereby fare dodgers who do not pay the fine on the spot are reminded once (typically after ~year), then hear nothing and after 10yrs receive a nice letter from court or bailiff demanding to pay fine + late charges or face execution. It well may be the police are going to learn this trick too; though I am not sure how it’d work across borders.
So the best advice I can give you is to pay when you are in CZ next. They won’t hunt you down like dogs tomorrow, they won’t wait for you at the border with loaded machine guns, they won’t check their database when they stop you during a routine roadside check. But that 20e paid can save you some headache sometime in future.
PS: that £30 foreign transfer fee at UK banks is bloody annoying. There’s EU rule that says private transfers up to 10,000e with BIC IBAN and SHA condition are free of charge… All the more the A4 form to be filled in when all you need is 4 boxes
HomoFaber:
If yo did not have the money and they really wanted you to pay then they should have clamped the truck, remove number plate or keep you licence while you have walked to cash machine to fetch money.
PS: that £30 foreign transfer fee at UK banks is bloody annoying. There’s EU rule that says private transfers up to 10,000e with BIC IBAN and SHA condition are free of charge… All the more the A4 form to be filled in when all you need is 4 boxes
I offered to pay them there and then as after all it was for a small amount but they said NO you must go to a Post Office to pay!
Can you imagine a parking space outside a Post Office for an 18m truck in Prague!
I am trying to settle the fine but there seems no easy way to pay…Sigh
ossie:
I offered to pay them there and then as after all it was for a small amount but they said NO you must go to a Post Office to pay!
I am trying to settle the fine but there seems no easy way to pay…Sigh
something new to me… maybe the cops are no longer taking cash? something to fight bribery??
Anyway, if you don’t know when you’ll be going there next or you won’t be going there again and want to pay I think I could contact somebody to help you with that.
what about through the post office? Postal order or such like, do you not have a letter for where you send the money directly? Maybe even put a €20 note in the envelope and send it registered delivery with the papers?
brit pete:
…
…
the Finn,s have no bank sorting code by the way,(OR did not have then)
Oh yes they do! And they did then too
I came here in '94 and the banking system was already WAY ahead of the UK’s.
Regarding the original post, if you can get the full IBAN / SWIFT account number of the recipient it shouldn’t cost any more than a transfer to another UK bank, if you use the regular internet interface to your bank account. At least that’s the way here, I buy stuff for example from Germany occasionally, and the payment is handled in exactly the same way as paying local bills. I bet it’s the same in the UK - unless you go into an actual physical branch office and get a member of staff to do it for you, that’s bound to cost more…
HomoFaber:
city transport companies across CZ and SK have had a system in place whereby fare dodgers who do not pay the fine on the spot are reminded once (typically after ~year), then hear nothing and after 10yrs receive a nice letter from court or bailiff demanding to pay fine + late charges or face execution
let me get this right,
fare dodgers who don’t pay for maybe a bus or train ticket and don’t pay within 10 years face execution
not going there on a holiday in case i don’t get a ticket for a simple mistake could end up losing my head
HomoFaber:
city transport companies across CZ and SK have had a system in place whereby fare dodgers who do not pay the fine on the spot are reminded once (typically after ~year), then hear nothing and after 10yrs receive a nice letter from court or bailiff demanding to pay fine + late charges or face execution
let me get this right,
fare dodgers who don’t pay for maybe a bus or train ticket and don’t pay within 10 years face execution
not going there on a holiday in case i don’t get a ticket for a simple mistake could end up losing my head
The last time I was in Olomouc I went to buy a ticket for the tram but didn’t know how to use the machine, someone noticed I was having problems and came over to offer her assistance, that was to tell me that nobody actually pays to use the trams, and the fine was only as much as the longest fare anyway. So I traveled all weekend for free. This was 18 years ago, I hope they didn’t have CCTV then
I like my head
zetorpilot: it may work like that in finland, germany, czech rep or slovakia or wherever, that you just use different tab on online banking webpage, fill in iban, bic/swift, amount and currency and you’re done and it costs you nothing more than a normal domestic transfer, but it is not like that in the UK. You have to go to the bank, fill in a large form - thankgod is selfcopy, you’d have to fill it 3x otherwise, you need name address of the recipient and of the bank… and costs 20-30£…
welshboy: yes, execution, but not capital punishment but the process where a property of debtor is seized… don’t know what other term there is in English… distraint?
jimti: yeaaahh…18yrs ago… you’d have 3 holes punched into the ticket on the tram/bus and when you got off you passed the ticket to somebody getting on and then when getting on you got another ticket from somebody else getting off fines were next to nothing either…
since then however, the tickets are not for a ride but for a time, date and time is stamped onto tickets so they get useless very quickly (apart from all day ones) and the fine is typically 100x the cost of the cheapest one (50cents in Bratislava)
brit pete:
…
…
the Finn,s have no bank sorting code by the way,(OR did not have then)
Oh yes they do! And they did then too
I came here in '94 and the banking system was already WAY ahead of the UK’s.
Regarding the original post, if you can get the full IBAN / SWIFT account number of the recipient it shouldn’t cost any more than a transfer to another UK bank, if you use the regular internet interface to your bank account. At least that’s the way here, I buy stuff for example from Germany occasionally, and the payment is handled in exactly the same way as paying local bills. I bet it’s the same in the UK - unless you go into an actual physical branch office and get a member of staff to do it for you, that’s bound to cost more…
Sorry mate but all I can say is that when I got fined, the paperwork had no bank sorting code
my wife phoned the Finnish embassy to check , we paid the fine through my bank The paperwork
was a official form , which the German bank excepted as the dates it was WHEN FINNLAND
joined the EU but still restricted imports of alcohol,
something new to me… maybe the cops are no longer taking cash? something to fight bribery??
