Legal · Effective October 27, 2026

Terms of Service

The agreement for using Rental Watch. Plain English.

1. Who we are

Rental Watch is operated by Automated Reality LLC ("Rental Watch", "we", "us"). These terms are the agreement between you and us for this website, watches, past checks and our emails. By using any of them you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy.

2. What Rental Watch does

You give us the plate of a car you rented and your pickup and return dates. We check New York City's public ticket records for that plate about once a day, from the pickup date until 30 days after the return date, and email you when a parking ticket or camera ticket (speed, red light or bus lane) issued during your dates shows up, changes, or is shown as paid. A past check lists the tickets issued to a plate between two dates, as the records stand that day.

We cover New York City tickets only. Tolls and moving violations written by a police officer are not included.

3. Information only

Rental Watch is an information service. We are not a law firm, we do not give legal advice, and we are not affiliated with the City of New York or any rental company.

We never collect, hold or send your ticket money, and we do not dispute tickets for you. Every alert links to the city's official page, where you pay or dispute the ticket yourself. Paying or disputing on time is still your responsibility, whether or not we send you an alert. Your rental agreement decides what the rental company may charge you.

4. City records can lag or be wrong

Our alerts are only as good as the city's records. New tickets usually take one to three weeks to show up after they are written, and sometimes longer. The records can be delayed, incomplete, changed later or wrong, and the amounts and status we show may not be current. We can also miss a ticket or send an alert late because of our own mistake or an outage.

Always confirm the amount and status on the city's official site before you pay or dispute. We do not promise that every ticket will be caught, or caught before the rental company sees it.

5. Your part

• Give us an accurate plate, state, dates and an email address you can receive.
• Only watch or check a plate for a car you rented or drove during the dates you enter. Do not use Rental Watch to track other people or their vehicles.
• Do not misuse the service: no scraping, reselling our results, overloading the site or getting around our limits.
• You must be at least 18 to use Rental Watch.
• Keep the private link in your emails to yourself. Anyone with it can see your watch and stop it.

We may stop or refuse a watch or check that breaks these terms.

6. Prices and billing

Free beta. Rental Watch is in a free beta right now and nothing is charged. We never charge you unless you go through checkout and enter a payment card.

Once paid plans are on, the price shown on our site when you sign up is the price you pay. Prices are in US dollars. Payments are processed by Stripe.

• Rental Watch: one payment ($9.99) that covers daily checks from the pickup date until 30 days after the return date.
• Past check: one payment ($4.99), charged only when the check finds tickets. If it finds none, it is free. You pay before the ticket details are shown.
• Fleet plan: $7.99 per plate per month, for 4 or more plates. A monthly subscription for the number of plates you choose, charged when you start and then every month on the same date until you cancel. Cancel any time by emailing us; it ends at the end of the month you paid for.
• Discount codes and free periods: they apply as described when you get them, and may end on a set date. When one ends, the watch stops.

7. Stopping a watch

You can stop a watch any time with the Stop button on your watch page (the link is in every email we send), or by emailing us. Stopping ends the checks and alerts right away. A watch also stops on its own 30 days after the return date.

8. Refunds

Because a watch stops the moment you stop it, we do not refund the unused part of a watch. If you were charged by mistake, for example charged twice, email us and we will refund the mistaken charge.

9. Changes to the service or these terms

We may add, change or stop features. If we change these terms we will update this page and the effective date at the top, and if the change is significant we will email people with an active watch before it takes effect.

10. No warranties

Rental Watch is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows, we make no promises or warranties, written or implied, about accuracy, completeness, timeliness, fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability or that the service will be uninterrupted or error free.

11. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Rental Watch and Automated Reality LLC are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any tickets, fines, penalties, interest, late fees, tow or storage fees, rental company fees, or lost profits, whether or not we sent you an alert.

Our total liability for any claim about Rental Watch is limited to the amount you paid us for the watch or check the claim is about.

Some places do not allow some of these limits. Where that is the case, they apply as far as the law allows.

12. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Any dispute will be handled in the state or federal courts located in New York. Either of us may bring a claim in small claims court if it qualifies.

13. The rest

These terms and our Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about Rental Watch. If any part is found unenforceable, the rest still applies. If we do not enforce a part right away, we can still enforce it later.

14. Contact

Rental Watch, operated by Automated Reality LLC
Email: alerts@automatedrealityllc.com