While parking tickets are a nuisance, they’re usually easy to pay. However, if you don’t have the money, your ticket can snowball with court costs and other fees into a large amount that derails your finances.
When your ticket goes unpaid long enough, it also incurs administrative fees and parking surcharges. This means a $90 ticket can quickly go up to $120 after adding in the fees, making it more difficult to pay.
Even worse, what if the parking ticket goes to a collection agency? If that happens, credit cleanup services may be your only way out.
Which Offenses Warrant a Parking Ticket?
You might get slapped with a parking ticket for any of these offenses:
- Parking in a no-stop zone
- Parking a bicycle lane
- Parking in a no-parking zone
- Parking too close to a fire hydrant
- Parking in a place reserved for disabled people
When Parking Tickets Are Sent to Collections
While Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax ignore any tickets below $100, they do pay attention to those exceeding that amount. If your parking ticket is less than $100, it might not appear in the collections category of your credit report.
If the ticket is more than $100, it will appear in the collections category of your credit report when it’s sent to a collection agency.
How Parking Tickets Can Impact Your Credit
Once your parking ticket is sent to a collection agency, it will remain on your credit report for seven years (starting from the date the ticket became past due). It will be considered part of your payment history and might affect your credit score depending on the credit scoring model being used and the amount of the unpaid ticket.
For instance, if your score is calculated using the newest version of the VantageScore® and FICO scores, a collections account of more than $100 will affect your score. If it’s calculated using an older scoring model, the account might not be factored in.
However, since most lenders use the FICO Score 8 model and it considers collection accounts (even those with a zero balance), it’s likely you’ll end up with a lower score if your parking ticket goes to an agency.
The good news is that once you pay off your ticket, the collections account will go back to zero and will fall off your report entirely if your lender uses FICO 9.
Get Parking Tickets Off Your Credit Report
Once you decide to pay off your parking tickets, look at the ticket to find who issued it. This could be the local police or other law enforcement agency.
After you know who it is, reach out to them and ask how to pay your unpaid parking ticket. They’ll help you understand your options, negotiate a lower payment, or enable you to set up a payment plan if you need it.
However, if you think your ticket was issued in error, you can ask the agency how to appeal the notice. Make sure you have the appropriate evidence if you’re going that route.
What Happens if You Can’t Afford to Pay a Parking Fine?
If you can’t afford to pay a parking ticket, you may have to:
- Contest the ticket: You can only do this if you received the ticket in error and will need to provide evidence that can stand up in court.
- Request a hardship waiver: If you’ve been jobless for a few months or don’t have the money to pay for the ticket, you can apply for this waiver. Make sure you can demonstrate that you’re doing all you can to earn a living but are still struggling financially.
- Negotiate a payment plan: If paying for the ticket all at once is not possible, you could always ask for an installment plan that enables you to make payments over a period of time.
If none of these options work, you might have to seek legal assistance. A lawyer will help you understand what you can do and take the right action.
Don’t Let a Parking Ticket Ruin Your Credit
If you parked in the wrong place and got a ticket, be sure to pay it on time. If for some reason the ticket fell through the cracks or you weren’t able to pay it at the time, the unpaid ticket can come back to haunt you and drag down your credit score.
If you need help figuring out how to get an unpaid parking ticket off your credit report, reach out to the experts at The Phenix Group who can guide you through the entire process and get your financial record back on track!
For more helpful credit-related information, check out our blog posts on what happens if you ignore a debt collector and what RTR Financial Services is.