okay. sitch:

• a couple of weeks ago, i took my cat to the vet, and parked on state street, in a rush-hour no-parking tow zone. i always park there on the street when i take my cats to the vet, but i usually go after 9AM, and so i didn’t realize it was a rush hour tow zone (as that’s newish, thanks to the dan ryan construction). in fact, i even fed the meter, because it said the meter was from 8AM – 5PM. (so i think that’s a bit misleading! i want my 50� back!) nonetheless, when i came out of the exam room, my cat was fine but my car was gone. this resulted in a $150 towing fee and a $50 ticket (which i felt was really just them being snarky).
• (it’s important to note that that towing fee prevented me from going back to Baker’s on State to get a totally cute pair of louboutin knockoff platform pumps that i really, really wanted, but which were $80 and so i passed them up on the day i made my awesome shoe sale score. I WANTED THOSE SHOES, DAMMIT.)
• at the end of may, my license plate tags expired, which i forgot about. so yesterday i came out to get my car to go to work and i had another $50 ticket to greet me.
• today, because apparently the meter maids think that you can extract license plate stickers from the secretary of state like magic and it doesn’t take any time at all, i had another $50 reminder that my tags are expired.
• (it’s also important to note that these two tickets are now preventing me from acquiring another pair of shoes, some fabulous mary janes from Topshop. THIS TREND [parking tickets interfering with shoe acquisition] SUCKS. i swear to you, the next time i see a pair of shoes i really want, i’m just going to freaking *buy* them because i will know the next day something bad is going to happen to me!)

since three parking tickets is a bootable offense, and the last thing i want is to get booted, i went to pay my parking tickets today. as the ticket envelopes trumpet you can:

Pay & Search for Your Tickets On-Line @: cityofchicago.org/revenue

okay! i am on board with this plan. i will go, plug in my tickets, give some shoe-denying fucker $150, and prevent the booting of the niquimobile. this is a great plan. nothing can go wrong with this plan!

except … there’s just this one thing. nobody knows what my license plate number is. see, i have “save the boobies” license plates: pink ribbons which bear the legend “Mammograms Save Lives.” a short number appears to the right of the ribbon picture on the plate, and on the right edge is the plate classification, “CD” written vertically. so the question is, is my plate number just the literal number, 1234, or is it the number plus the designation, 1234CD? no one knows! during the “omfg, my car is stolen! no, no, wait, no it’s not, never mind. hey, where’s my car?!” towing fiasco, i asked various and sundry police officers — who, really, you would think would be up on their plate numbering trivia — what it was, and none of them knew. i’m certain that that’s actually the reason my car was never reported un-stolen, because they reported it un-stolen under the wrong damn plate number. so here i am with these three parking tickets, and they have my plate numbers down as 1234, 1234CD, and 1234 (respectively). well, no worries. i’m sure the one i got today won’t be in the system, but i can just find the others and pay them, at least. right? (of course you know where this is going because if it had actually been straightforward to Search For and Pay My Tickets On-Line @ cityofchicago.org/revenue, i wouldn’t be writing a damn blog entry about it, would i?) no! no tickets turn up when searching for IL plate 1234, class MAM, owner’s last name Downard. … odd, because there were two without the CD. okay, try with the CD. … none! okay, maybe they … mistook the pink ribbon for, like, road dirt, and filed me under normal passenger plates. let’s try 1234. no! 1234CD? no! oh-kay … maybe they have it indexed under my ex- (and car loan co-signer)’s last name instead of mine? let’s try 1234, MAM, Smith. … nothing, of course! okay. try searching by notice number. plug in ticket numbers … nothing! hm. driver’s license number? what do you think? the last option available for searching is the vin, but i don’t have my vin handy, so scratch that. so, apparently the conclusion that i am to draw from this is, according to the city of chicago department of revenue, these tickets don’t exist. (except you know that they do, and they’re going to boot me just to piss me off, so i have to get this figured out.) so i designate this as time to find the section on the site that will allow me to pay my tickets. a little diligent poking around and i find another page that will allow you to specify the ticket numbers. up to like 12 tickets on one page! how convenient. (twelve? jesus.) so i plug in all three ticket numbers like a good citizen. and, hallelujah!, the two older ones come up, along with an area to fill in the info for the one i got today, which wasn’t in the system yet. praise jesus and pass the cornbread, i may not get booted yet after all. so. select all three. hit continue. fill in address information, fill in debit card information, hit continue, it helpfully lists the tickets it’s going to pay. both of them. as in only two, not three. … quoi? okay, back out of this transaction, it must have bobbled something, try again. select all three. fill in address again. fill in debit card again. it tells me about the two tickets it’s going to pay. the latter two, not the rush hour tow zone one. huh? okay, whatever, i’ll pay that one separately, you stupid thing. submit. print off proof of payment (it’s not that i don’t trust you; it’s that i just really don’t trust you.) start over, put in remaining ticket number, select to pay it, hey, cool, i don’t have to fill out my address this time, fill out debit card info…

Your Credit/Debit Card Could Not Be Debited Authorization to debit your credit/debit card was not completed for the following reason: We are sorry, but security requirements prevent the use of this card at this time to pay a violation.

but … but you just accepted that card as valid like three minutes ago! you stupid idiots. i’m guessing that this must be some sort of fraud-stopping thingy, to prevent stolen cards from being used to pay off lots of people’s tickets in quick succession, but … it wouldn’t have been necessary to use it twice if your moronic web site hadn’t decided to disobey my instructions to pay all three tickets and substituted its own will to pay only two of them! so now i either have to not pay the ticket, or have to put it on a credit card instead of my checking account? YOU SUCK. YOU SUCK, SUCK, SUCK, SUCK, SUCK.

and i really wanted those shoes. *sulk*