LTA Has Responded to the $1.6K ‘Storage Charge’ of Impounded E-scooter

Let’s face it: unless you’ve just ordered food delivery and are patiently waiting for your delivery personnel to arrive in his shiny e-scooter and that pack of curry chicken rice, chances are, you hate e-scooter.

They’ll appear out of nowhere on the footpath when you’re busy Liking your crush’s Instagram images while blasting Jay Chou’s songs into your ears. And the authorities have heard you: since 1 May 2018, new laws pertaining to PMDs kicked in.

One of which is the size and weight of the devices: each e-scooter cannot weigh more than 20 kg.

Now, read this carefully: people who use a non-compliant e-scooter (i.e. e-scooter that’s heavier than 20 kg) can be fined up to $5,000 and/or jailed up to three months.

Yes, it’s that serious. Not suka suka pray pray one.

So, what’s with this “storage charge” that everyone’s talking about?

A few days ago, a lady allegedly received this letter from LTA, which his friend helped to post online. The original post seemed to have been taken down, but Facebook Page Roads.sg has re-posted it online.

If you can’t read, here’s what’s written:

RIDING A NON-COMPLIANT E-SCOOTER

On 30 July 2018 at about 9.51 AM, you were found using a non-compliant e-scooter along the footpath of Bedok North Road. The e-scooter weighing 27.7kg exceeds the permissible weight of 20kg, hence it was impounded for investigations purpose.

You are required to attend for an interview on 15 October 2018 at 10:00AM at the Land Transport Authority, Investigation Division, 10 Sin Ming Drive, Singapore 575701 to assist in the investigation.

You are required to bring along this letter, and your NRIC/Identification documents for the interview and present this letter to our reception counter. Please note that you are required to settle a flat towing fee of $150 and a storage charge of $21.40 per day from the date of impound.

We would like to caution you that should you fail to respond to our interview request and settle the necessary arrears, the e-scooter will be put up for disposal without further reference to you. Legal proceedings would be taken against you to recover the outstanding towing and storage fees.

It then ended with the officer providing a contact number should the lady want to arrange for an alternative interview date.

So, long story cut short: lady caught riding illegal e-scooter in July and the e-scooter was impounded on that same day.

But what’s confusing everyone are the dates.

Date of Letter and Storage Fee Charges

This image didn’t show the date of the letter, but according to the original image posted, the date of the letter is 5 October 2018. The person posting it online also explicitly mentioned that the letter came in October.

Of course, that would mean the “arrears” would be $150 + the storage fee. And since it is $21.40 from the date of impound (which is on 30 July), that would have been 77 days of storage charges, which effectively mean a grand total of $1,647.80.

I don’t know about you lah, but if I receive this letter, the first thing I’ll do is to call LTA and clarify. And not to post it on social media.

But anyways.

The image obviously got viral, and everyone’s wondering the same thing: Did she really have to pay $1,647.80 and $150?

I mean, if she had paid that, we might all have one more bench in a bus stop #justsaying

LTA has Responded

Well, of course they’d have to. And it turns out that the lady eventually didn’t have to pay a single cent for the storage.

LTA also waive the towing fee “in view of the owner’s extenuating circumstances”.

According to Channel NewsAsia, LTA stated that storage fees would not be charged for non-compliant devices that are forfeited. In other words, if you won’t want the e-scooter anymore (which makes sense, since you can’t ride it legally anyways), you won’t need to pay for the storage fee.

The storage fee would only kick in if the owner of the impounded device fails to collect it after a “grace period” following investigation.

If I interpret it correctly, the lady was told to go for an interview for investigation, so that means she would only be charged the storage fee after the interview and after a grace period.

Of course you’ve got to wonder: why use the sentence “a storage charge of $21.40 per day from the date of impound” when it should be after investigations?

Well, at least now we know.

She’s Actually “Lucky”

Okay, the lady might have shitted her pants upon seeing the letter, but there’s a silver lining to that.

Remember what was mentioned in the beginning of the article? That anyone caught riding a non-compliant device would be fined up to $5,000 and/or jailed up to three months?

At least she didn’t kena that.

So here a lesson to us all: don’t test the system.