It’s scary to get a traffic ticket, especially if you drive for a living or there’s a hike to your insurance on the line that you can’t afford, not to mention paying the fine. It makes sense to pay a service advertising that it can help get you out of a ticket for a modest fee that’s less than your fine. Or does it?

Instead of going to traffic court, California lets people make their plea in writing: it’s called a trial by written declaration. However, this isn’t the equivalent of hiring a lawyer. When you pay a site like TicketBust.com, you’re effectively paying for some expensive form letters.

That’s what CBS Sacramento learned when a truck driver who used the site to get a red light camera ticket dismissed worried that he was paying $250 for something that couldn’t possibly help. The site promises a partial refund of $100 if a customer’s ticket isn’t dismissed, but keeps the $150 “document processing fee.” That fee goes toward…hitting “print” on a computer, apparently, since the site admits that what they do is choose from a “library of stock defense templates” and send the appropriate one to the court. They aren’t lawyers, but also claim that they don’t represent themselves as one.

The problem, consumer reporter Kurtis Ming points out, is that the company brags that it has helped more than 50,000 drivers on its website. Yet they don’t actually keep track, and have no way to know how many customers they’ve really helped.

Call Kurtis Investigation: Can Websites Fight Traffic Tickets? [CBS Sacramento]

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