My Nova got a ticket in CA ... I live in GA

On Friday I got a letter in the mail from a collections company saying my parking ticket was delinquent and I had to pay them now. It said my 1971 Chevy Nova was given a ticket at 11:10pm in Paramount, CA on 06/09/2011 for not having 2 license plates. The problem is I haven't been in CA since 2007 and the Nova has been with me. The ticket was for not having 2 license plates on the car. The ticket had my old CA plates and it said it was a red 2-door Chevy. I have both of the license plates still with me in GA.

Do they not write down the year (or early/late), make and model when writing a parking ticket? Or does it just go by the license plate? Do they not write down the VIN number of the vehicle too? Not that they couldn't re-issue the plates but I wouldn't think it would happen that quickly.

The collections company said I had to write a letter explaining this to them and send a picture or scan of my registration. I called the Paramount Police Department and they took down my info and asked me to call someone this morning to talk about it. I'm thinking of asking for a copy of the ticket.

What else should I do? Anyone else issued a bad ticket?

I don't have anything else to add to do. However, document everything. You never know what seemingly insignificant thing might end up being important.

I'd tell them just to go pound sand.

It's a non-moving violation registered to your car (not you) outta state.

It depends on if the state has reciprocity with the other. I'd imagine that GA & CA do not, lol.

If it was a criminal charge they wouldn't send a collections agency to collect they'd send the popo. It's a civil debt.

So I talked to the Paramount Police Department and asked what info was written down on the ticket. They said color, make, model, license plate, and last 4 digits of VIN. I asked if I could get a copy of it and they said they don't have it, they mail it to the processing center and I could get a copy from them. I called the processing center and was told they don't have it because there used to be another processing center before them and they were the ones that received my ticket. All they transfered was the digital information over to the new company.

What I wanted to see is the VIN number, color, make, and model of the vehicle they wrote on the ticket.

They processing company said it is up to the police department to let the ticket go or to enforce it. The guy was nice and sent an email to his contact over at the police department so he could call me and try to get the ticket removed.

Didn't take long. The guy called from the police department and he apologized for the mistake. Told me to ignore anything else regarding the ticket that it was being cleared out of the system.

Still kind of curious as to what was written on the original ticket.