Number Plate Cloning - Plain White Van

[Register1]

Hi all,

I think some one cloned my plain white 67 reg. Peugeot van.
It was photographed going over Runcorn new toll bridge, while I was still in work.
I am the only driver.
At work they had a moan, that I didn't pay the bridge toll.
All news to me I said.
I was handed a copy of the number plate, with an image of a white van, going over the bridge, an hour before my finish time.

It is a bog standard white Peugeot Partner Van, there must be thousands of them running around.

The toll is only £2.00, but with it not being paid within time, it was charged at £2.00 plus £20.00

I have looked on my Google time line, and can confirm, I was not forgetful, and I did not cross the bridge.

R1

[anonymous-user]

It's not been unheard of for dealers to fit two vans with the same plates by mistake. I'd contact the police as the first port of call though tbh.

[lyonspride]

Apply stickers or subtle marking to your own van (roof would be a good spot), so if anything comes up in future you can easily disprove it.

[Defcon5]

lyonspride said:

Apply stickers or subtle marking to your own van (roof would be a good spot), so if anything comes up in future you can easily disprove it.

Sticker needs to be on the VRM plate itself. Some camera systems only capture the plate

[Abc321]

Strange that. Last week a mate of mine was spotted on a toll with the ANPR somewhere in Ireland*. White Merc van, his number plate.

He's never been to Ireland*.

EFA: Spoke to him yesterday after a couple jumped on my back. It was on the N6 in Ireland, my error. PH - details matter.

Edited by Abc321 on Wednesday 5th December 10:20

[MrsMiggins]

Where was that? IIRC all tolls were removed years ago in Scotland.

[S11Steve]

CaptainMorgan said:

It's not been unheard of for dealers to fit two vans with the same plates by mistake. I'd contact the police as the first port of call though tbh.

This...

At least once a month we find this somewhere on our fleet.

Also double check the images - it's not unusual for W and H or M to misread by the operators if the plate is dirty or he image is taken in low light.

The charge can be appealed initially with MerseyFlow, and then via the Traffic Penalty Tribunal. A copy of your Google timeline and a witness statement from both yourself and anyone else who could confirm your whereabouts on the day and from experience is enough for the TPT to find in in your favour.

[cptsideways]

I'd be inclined to report to the police just in case, as if it is cloned there is a very high chance its being used for crime & you don't want someone knocking your door down at 2am.

[Foliage]

Defcon5 said:

lyonspride said:

Apply stickers or subtle marking to your own van (roof would be a good spot), so if anything comes up in future you can easily disprove it.

Sticker needs to be on the VRM plate itself. Some camera systems only capture the plate

Yep usual thing to do is switch to a euro plate

[sospan]

When I worked for one company we had pool cars to use. You would log in on picking up the keys and log out on returning them. One incident occurred where a parking fine from a London Council came in. We had a log to prove it couldn’t be our car. At the time of the parking fine I had the car and unless I had driven 200 miles in 30 mins....it was a Vectra. An added clincher was our car was white yet the offending car blue....
We reckoned it was a mistakenly recorded registration.

[over_the_hill]

Is this a fully automated system. If so is it a case that the recognition software has got it wrong. I would contact the toll people first.

[haggishunter]

Abc321 said:

Strange that. Last week a mate of mine was spotted on a toll bridge with the ANPR somewhere in Scotland. White Merc van, his number plate.

He's never been to Scotland.

He should also check his stories before he tells them, there’s no toll bridges in Scotland.

[Register1]

Hi all, OP here.

I have kicked that van back to the lease company, and took a replacement.

You are right about only making the number plate different, I had various windscreen stickers on, but Mersey Toll said they could not clearly see the stickers, only see the number plate.
I will make my number plate different.

It costs an additional ,£12.00 for any transcript from Mersey Flow, .

The boss now believes there is (was) a cloned number player white van running around Widnes / Runcorn.

R1

[Register1]

lyonspride said:

Apply stickers or subtle marking to your own van (roof would be a good spot), so if anything comes up in future you can easily disprove it.

They can not clearly see windscreen stickers, even like these.

[martinbiz]

Register1 said:

They can not clearly see windscreen stickers, even like these.

Sorry, but how do stickers prove or disprove anything, they can be fixed or removed at will

[Mark8303]

I bought a new to me van a couple of years ago. I regularly traveled into the London congestion zone only to discover after a couple of months that the supplying dealer when fitting new plates (with their logo on) had transposed two letters. It turned out my VW van was carrying a reg allocated to a Fiat 500 which ironically was in the London area. I pay for our small fleet of vans on account so it didn’t flag up our end and some poor Fiat driver was probably getting charged for my runs into London. I called TFL to ‘fess up only to be told that it was so difficult to unravel I should go away and not bother about it!

[twing]

Mine got done a couple of weeks ago. Got a Dart-Charge penalty, not a problem as only a few quid and paid it. My car was parked up in a hotel while I was abroad, keys with me the whole time. Can only assume some toe-rag saw it in the carpark, knew I'd be away for a couple of week (arrival date on a ticket on the dash) and took advantage.