Government and the WWW
I’m trying to pay a ticket online. Yes, I was driving while on my cellphone, which is now a first offense in NJ. But it’s still a payable offense, so the ticket says I can pay my ticket online. I was issued the ticket on 1/16, and since today’s the 19th I figured I’d give it a try.
Here’s the site:
the first thing I notice is that I have to pay an extra fee online, even though I guarantee that this is a cheaper process than me paying in person:
The Convenience Fee is assessed to fund the interconnection between NJMCdirect.com and the Automated Traffic System. The Convenience Fee is based on the penalty and the amount of the traffic ticket, (fee schedule shown below). Consistent with the N.J.S 2B:12-30, the money is deposited in the Administrative Office of the Courts Automated Traffic System Fund.
Penalty Amount : Convenience Fee Applied
$1.00 - $40.00 : $1.00
$41.00 - $87.00 : $2.00
$88.00 - $200.00 : $3.00
>$200.00 : $4.00
By the way, the site doesn’t do anything in Firefox for me. It just hangs and never comes up with the page. In Internet Explorer it’s slow as molasses. But, here’s the best part, the site has _hours_ where they accept payment. Here’s the relevant bit:
Online Payment Hours
Payments can be made on this website during the following hours:
Mon - Thurs
7:30AM - 11:45PM (EST)
Fri
7:30AM - 10:45PM (EST)
Sat
7:30AM - 3:45PM (EST)
Sun
1:00PM - 11:45PM (EST)
Huh? What is there a human on the other end answering to the HTTP requests? Why are Sunday’s hours so short? Potential maintenance issues?
Anyhow, I enter the ticket number as indicate, and for the license plate number, I type in exactly what the ticket says, including the hyphen. I get a generic error, “Invalid license plate number.” Even though it says nothing about the format of a plate “number” (mine has letters, why is this called a number anymore?) I decide to leave out the hyphen. I then get the following error message:
NJMCdirect is unable to locate the ticket information. Please contact the court to resolve this matter, or refer to the back of the traffic ticket for alternate payment options.
I triple checked the information, and it’s all correct. Wheeeeeeeee!
February 15th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
I got a ticket the same day on rt 80 in Morris Co.
It took 2 weeks for it to appear online and the day I checked it, it said it was payable. I checked back 2 days later so I could pay it and then it said it’s not payable. I hate New Jersey.
March 31st, 2008 at 8:42 am
I got a ticket and went to pay on-line and the ticket didn’t have the court ID # on it so I can’t fill in that box, so I called the number on the ticket and was told by a recording that they don’t start work until 10:00 AM. Wish I could sleep in until 10:00 AM - but hey, Mr. Tax Payer is their employer and that rube will pay for any number of sleepy headed employees.
July 16th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
I got one on July 13th and the officer that issued the ticket said to call the number on the back. Except he pulls away i look at the back and go figure there is no number on there. The ticket has yet to show up on the page also. Its pretty much useless if you ask me.
July 22nd, 2008 at 7:52 pm
I got a ticket on July 21st.
I tried to pay on-line and got the message
“NJMCdirect is unable to locate the ticket information. Please contact the court to resolve this matter, or refer to the back of the traffic ticket for alternate payment options”
September 19th, 2008 at 11:20 am
My wife got one Sep. 18, in NJ. I tried to pay online for her, but got the exact message Rajiv did, _unable to locate the ticket information_. So I called the court, it was picked up in 2 minutes. The lady who picked up the phone said that, it’s probably not in the system yet, check back in a week.
A week?! They have a Pentium II-300 mhz computers with a 500mb hard drive? The workhorse desktop model of 1991?
A few weeks ago I got a parking ticket in Manhattan. Three days later, I got online and paid for the ticket. Quick and very simple process. I actually enjoyed paying for it!
This is 2008, things like this can be linked online… why don’t the courts and the police electronically link their systems?
The funniest thing is the “ONLINE PAYMENT HOURS!” They really have actual people responding to each http request?
Imagine the man working on Xmas day…
“Boss, may I go home and do this from my laptop? I _do_ have internet signals at home.” Let him go, the public probably won’t notice that he accepted the payment from home.