Speeding tickets

[pdedse]

Timely topic for me, and if anyone from North Carolina can weigh in on my situation to let me know if I've just been scammed or not, I'd appreciate it.

I've not had the best luck with my business travel this year. Consistent flight delays leading to lots of late night arrivals on job sites.
Most recently, delays caused me to land in Charlotte, NC very late at night, after which I got into a rental car and had a drive of over two hours to Rockingham, along remote, two-lane roads.

I was probably half-asleep, driving a very quiet car, was pulled over for speeding some time around 1 a.m. in the middle of nowhere. The officer was very polite, and I was with him. I was too tired to think anything good, just said I had had a very long day, and just wanted to get to my hotel and go to sleep. Don't know how fast I was going, but he said "I don't to make this hard for you, and since you're from out of state, I'm going to write this up at a speed that won't make you have to come back to this county to see the judge. You can just pay online." Yippy.

While I was on the jobsite, I did enough online research to learn that California and North Carolina share traffic violation data, so the ticket would eventually get on my CA driving record. While many places, like California, allow online traffic school to eliminate a points ticket from your record, the county where I received the ticket does not. I called the court and checked. I haven't had a ticket in many years, but I was most concerned about my insurance going up.

When I got home from my trip, there were six letters from local NC lawyers all saying "Don't pay that ticket until you call us!" Ok, I'll bite. I called all six of them, and all of them claimed that they could go to court on my behalf, and based on a clean record and the speed I was ticketed for, my offense would be knocked down to a non-moving violation for "improper equipment", what we would call a "fix-it" ticket, that would not incur points.

All of the lawyers would charge a small fee, and with the court costs, it would be slightly more than the price of the ticket itself. One lawyer told me that they could save me a few bucks if I pulled my own CA driving record and send it to them, so I went with them, paid the two bucks to get my own record, and sent it. In any case, the same speeding ticket would be hundreds more in CA.

So I guess I'm waiting now, as my "court date" isn't until June. We'll see.

I used one of these when I lived in Las Vegas. I was nervous about it, but they did exactly what you described and all it cost me was the Lawyer's fee, which was about $150. They knocked mine down to a parking violation, though. I suspect it is less work for the court, too.
We will hope it works out as well for you.

People make money in the strangest of ways.