Fines

*ouch* my son and his girlfriend were in Pisa last year and they’ve just received a parking ticket more than a year later  They’re normally pretty observant when it comes to checking signs etc and they’re adamant that they definitely hadn’t noticed a sign. They’re going to pay it but it just seems so unfair to receive it more than a year later with extra costs added because they didn’t pay within 5 days   They only received it last week!
 

Is it worth appealing or writing a letter of complaint 

.. Lax might get back on this one, seems to know a bit about them...      

It's certainly worth appealing against the extra costs. I wrote an email to the police station saying we hadn't received a fine within the limits to pay the lesser one and they said we could pay the smaller fine if we paid immediately.
I'm getting a bit neurotic about "fine traps" now, especially limited traffic zones where there doesn't always appear to be anywhere else to go - particularly when you haven't a clue where you are!

No escape!   

The regulations state that the police have 360 days to issue the fine, not from when the alleged offense occurred, but from the date they received details of the renter from the car hire company.

It's always worth appealing or writing a letter of complaint.  What's to lose?  I wish you luck.  

I guess that it would be helpful to have the letter written in Italian... 

Thanks very much for your input everyone   They’ve paid the fine on-line and sent a complaint letter in English with a Google translation. My son’s girlfriend also sent an email to the Dutch travel organisation to ‘warn’ other unsuspecting tourists; she received a reply, which said that they have received many similar complaints and that they always pass these to their Italian counterparts. Who knows, someday someone may change it to a fairer system… 

Fines for traffic violations by visitors/tourists are, of course, a great revenue stream for the Italians.

Florence takes over €50 million/year in traffic fines - with a resident population of some 370,000!    

Ghiro, sorry, but you are a bit unfair here.    Florence itself may only have some 370,000 inhabitants, but its metropolitan area, which is much larger, adds 1,700,000 people to its population. If we add to this the millions of tourists ( at least 2,000,000)  who visit the city every year and the fact that there are many pedestrian areas and restrictions (not to mention that parking is impossible) that 50 million in fines does not seem a large amount and will certainly help the city to employ the large amount of police officers which we see throughout Florence.
We go weekly to Florence by car, as generally we need to stop on our way for shopping, etc. We never had a fine. On the contrary, we have found that the local police was always extremely kind and helpful whenever we got lost, and this is very likely to happen in Italy. We always park our car at Santa Maria Novella, right downtown. Yes, it is expensive, but convenient (3 € an hour or 160€ for one week), and this is also to be expected in cities like Florence. I know the prices because we were there last Thursday.
In all these years, I have never seen the Italian police, harrassing drivers. Furthermore, I have never seen them fining anyone. And I should add that, on the other hand, there were plenty of drivers who deserved a ticket.  "Give to Caesar...."