At the start of april I paid for a year's worth of London congestion charge at the reduced rate, being a resident, and confirmed on the phone with Transport for London (TFL) that everything was then fine for me to drive.
A month later I started receiving a flurry of penalty notices, five in total, and on phoning again it turned out that the computer had wrongly set my start date to April 20! WTF!!
Several people I phoned at TFL have emphatically agreed this was wrong, and assured me it would be looked into and remedied. But yesterday my car was impounded and I'm told can't be returned until I pay all the penalties and daily charges which now amount to close on £1500
I know they're bang to rights, and everyone I speak to at TFL agrees. But when I finally spoke to a drone in the Penalty Notice Section (and he really did sound like the ultimate geekoid stone-walling bureaucrat) he said I should have made a written representation for each of the penalties, as had been suggested to me earlier.
But as I had explained I haven't done this on principle, since if they have admitted their mistake then they should rectify it without requiring me to jump through their hoops!
Anyway, to cut a long story short(ish), this will be going to court in due course, and I wondered if anyone knew of any campaign or support websites for what must be numerous other people f*cked over in similar ways by TFL?
P.S. Luckily, they're legally obliged to record all phone calls, and I've ordered a CD of these (which take up to 42 days to prepare - Christ alive, even Noah only had to wait 40 days! )
P.P.S The mantra of the TFL Penalty department droid was that a penalty notice is a "legal document", which implies their procedures must be followed. But as I pointed out, so is a cheque but that's worthless if there's no money in your account!
A month later I started receiving a flurry of penalty notices, five in total, and on phoning again it turned out that the computer had wrongly set my start date to April 20! WTF!!
Several people I phoned at TFL have emphatically agreed this was wrong, and assured me it would be looked into and remedied. But yesterday my car was impounded and I'm told can't be returned until I pay all the penalties and daily charges which now amount to close on £1500
I know they're bang to rights, and everyone I speak to at TFL agrees. But when I finally spoke to a drone in the Penalty Notice Section (and he really did sound like the ultimate geekoid stone-walling bureaucrat) he said I should have made a written representation for each of the penalties, as had been suggested to me earlier.
But as I had explained I haven't done this on principle, since if they have admitted their mistake then they should rectify it without requiring me to jump through their hoops!
Anyway, to cut a long story short(ish), this will be going to court in due course, and I wondered if anyone knew of any campaign or support websites for what must be numerous other people f*cked over in similar ways by TFL?
P.S. Luckily, they're legally obliged to record all phone calls, and I've ordered a CD of these (which take up to 42 days to prepare - Christ alive, even Noah only had to wait 40 days! )
P.P.S The mantra of the TFL Penalty department droid was that a penalty notice is a "legal document", which implies their procedures must be followed. But as I pointed out, so is a cheque but that's worthless if there's no money in your account!
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