I'm a US citizen and I was in Germany last year from May-Sep. I had a rental car and apparently I got a parking ticket in June 2022. I just got the notice in the mail (at my US address) in February 2023. The original €20 ticket is now €80 because of "late fees" and "interest". From what I can tell, this is from a private company and not the police.

My question is, what if I just don't pay it? I would have paid it if I got it in a reasonable amount of time and it was only €20, thats no big deal. However, I really dont think paying 4x the amount of the original ticket is fair when the notice didn't even get to me until 8-months later. I don't plan on going back to Germany anytime soon, even if I do, could anything even be done?

As a side note, I got some speeding tickets while in Germany, and those were charged directly to the rental car company and passed on to me via automatically charging my card on file. Why wasn't this parking ticket done the same way?

Thanks!