I have, somewhat inadvertently, outdone myself. Once again I had been to Hastings of a lunchtime to get something, I forget what, and on the way back to the office I stopped at Cafe Anatolia to pick up a kebab for lunch. The NZ Transport Agency send out reminders when your rego’ needs renewing, but after about 6 months of owning the vehicle I hadn’t received a reminder and hadn’t thought to check the sticker on the windscreen. Anyway, caught pants down, rego out by a couple of months. The seller in Auckland clearly hadn’t filled in the ownership transfer document, so NZTA would have given Hastings council their address. Shortly after they received the fine notice, I received the new ownership document and about a week later the unregistered vehicle fine arrived – thank you so much… The local council website indicates that you have to challenge the fine in court. I was technically guilty as charged, but with the extenuating circumstance that I had become complacent and relied on the reminders. Crazy busy as always up to Christmas, so didn’t look into it further and ended up paying the $200 fine at the last minute to avoid it escalating. Turns out I probably had good chance of getting the fine reversed if I had spent the time to present a reasonable excuse. Anyway, too late now, so the kebab ultimately cost $209.50, which trumps the $158 kebab back in 2009…