London Congestion charge - I forgot
Discussion
Hi,
I wonder if anyone here can help?
I drove into central London on Thu afternoon at short notice, having got off a plane from Hawaii the previous evening severely jet-lagged.
Needless to say, when I got home that night I crashed on the sofa and fell asleep instead of paying the congestion charge online as I have done many times previously...
So, I suddenly remember today and phone up to be told I am due a £40 fine, however there is an appeals system and they logged my call and gave me a call log number.
Has anyone here successfully appealed against the £40 fine on the grounds of 'I genuinely forgot and have paid promptly ever time in the past' ?
Sad I know but I hate giving Ken ANY money.
Joe.
>>> Edited by Bee_Jay on Saturday 14th February 20:46
I wonder if anyone here can help?
I drove into central London on Thu afternoon at short notice, having got off a plane from Hawaii the previous evening severely jet-lagged.
Needless to say, when I got home that night I crashed on the sofa and fell asleep instead of paying the congestion charge online as I have done many times previously...
So, I suddenly remember today and phone up to be told I am due a £40 fine, however there is an appeals system and they logged my call and gave me a call log number.
Has anyone here successfully appealed against the £40 fine on the grounds of 'I genuinely forgot and have paid promptly ever time in the past' ?
Sad I know but I hate giving Ken ANY money.
Joe.
>>> Edited by Bee_Jay on Saturday 14th February 20:46
If you end up paying for it, treat it like an advance speeding ticket that's going to give you 40 shots at speeding free of charge !
Makes me feel a lot better . . . I'm still spending the previous £450 and £60 advance payments I made. I figure on one good speeding session a day !
They've just sent me another advance payment ticket which will give me another 60 days of speeding pleasure ! It's spring and the Rush still hasn't got number plates . . . oh vey, these things do take time . . . 
They know I enjoy it as they're now sending me 'photos of me doing it !
Makes me feel a lot better . . . I'm still spending the previous £450 and £60 advance payments I made. I figure on one good speeding session a day !
They've just sent me another advance payment ticket which will give me another 60 days of speeding pleasure ! It's spring and the Rush still hasn't got number plates . . . oh vey, these things do take time . . . They know I enjoy it as they're now sending me 'photos of me doing it !
I'm campaigning at the moment with the London Evening standard and the Association of British Drivers to get the system changed so that it automatically debits your fast track account whenever you drive into the zone. I know of tons of people that have paid upwards of £400 in the last year because we occasionally forgot. See next post for a copy of my letters to Peter Hendy, Managing Director of Surface Transport for TfL:
Letter One -
cc: Paul Pindar, Chief Executive, Capita
Peter Hendy, Director of Surface Transport, TfL
13th January 2004
AUTOMATED PAYMENTS FROM DEBIT CARDS
Dear Sir/Madam,
I have canvassed support from very many people who regularly use the congestion zone. Our experience would be immeasurably easier if we had the option for our debit cards to be charged automatically whenever entering the zone. I understand that Capita currently offer the facility to buy a monthly ticket and then to claim a refund at the end of this period. Unfortunately, for those of us who are aware of it, this method is time consuming and expensive.
Many of us have paid out over £500 in fines since charging began. We accept that this is due to the fact that we occasionally forget to pay; but Capita should concede that it is precisely the absence of a method for automatic payment that results in normal people like ourselves being penalised unfairly and needlessly.
Given the technology currently being employed for payment by a variety of methods we are certain that a small change to the system will accommodate motorists who forget to pay by crosschecking a list of Fast track drivers who have previously authorised automatic payments against your daily list of outstanding unpaid vehicle registrations.
On a more cynical note I am prepared to contemplate that it serves Capita very well indeed if they fail to act on this straightforward matter. The revenues generated in fines are considerable, and largely dependent on drivers like us forgetting to pay.
We are all mindful that congestion charging is a public service and should be operated as such. It is not in the public service to be collecting fines where you could otherwise be collecting the lesser amount of the congestion charge by prior consent of the motorist.
The cause of the motorist has become a popular one with most of the national papers in recent years. Witness for instance the climb-down on ‘safety’ cameras and speed humps. We believe that most of the revenue which Capita receives is from fines and that the vast majority of those fines are from plain forgetful drivers. A workable suggestion has now been made for you to provide us with a better service. Unless you are able to offer an adequate justification for failing to rectify the situation within 14 days I will campaign in the national press for our proposal to be put into place; with all of the research into contractual agreements and adverse publicity and that this may confer.
Yours sincerely
Richard Lack
cc: Paul Pindar, Chief Executive, Capita
Peter Hendy, Director of Surface Transport, TfL
13th January 2004
AUTOMATED PAYMENTS FROM DEBIT CARDS
Dear Sir/Madam,
I have canvassed support from very many people who regularly use the congestion zone. Our experience would be immeasurably easier if we had the option for our debit cards to be charged automatically whenever entering the zone. I understand that Capita currently offer the facility to buy a monthly ticket and then to claim a refund at the end of this period. Unfortunately, for those of us who are aware of it, this method is time consuming and expensive.
Many of us have paid out over £500 in fines since charging began. We accept that this is due to the fact that we occasionally forget to pay; but Capita should concede that it is precisely the absence of a method for automatic payment that results in normal people like ourselves being penalised unfairly and needlessly.
Given the technology currently being employed for payment by a variety of methods we are certain that a small change to the system will accommodate motorists who forget to pay by crosschecking a list of Fast track drivers who have previously authorised automatic payments against your daily list of outstanding unpaid vehicle registrations.
On a more cynical note I am prepared to contemplate that it serves Capita very well indeed if they fail to act on this straightforward matter. The revenues generated in fines are considerable, and largely dependent on drivers like us forgetting to pay.
We are all mindful that congestion charging is a public service and should be operated as such. It is not in the public service to be collecting fines where you could otherwise be collecting the lesser amount of the congestion charge by prior consent of the motorist.
The cause of the motorist has become a popular one with most of the national papers in recent years. Witness for instance the climb-down on ‘safety’ cameras and speed humps. We believe that most of the revenue which Capita receives is from fines and that the vast majority of those fines are from plain forgetful drivers. A workable suggestion has now been made for you to provide us with a better service. Unless you are able to offer an adequate justification for failing to rectify the situation within 14 days I will campaign in the national press for our proposal to be put into place; with all of the research into contractual agreements and adverse publicity and that this may confer.
Yours sincerely
Richard Lack
Peter,
Thank you for yours of 13th February 2004 in which you responded to my questions regarding automated payment options to registered FastTrack users of congestion charging.
You state the following in your reply:
1: There are operational and legal difficulties in collecting the charge in this manner without explicit authorisation.
2: The cameras are designed to enforce the scheme and not for administering payment.
We would like to respond to each point in turn:
1: Your assertion is incorrect in as far as there are any legal difficulties in the approach I have suggested. All credit and debit card providers in the UK and the majority of the rest of the world make a provision for what is called "continuous authorisation". This is a means by which the card holder can allow a vendor to take continuous debits against a single instruction. I myself use continuous authorisation to pay my household's mobile phone and electricity bills. The majority of utility companies I have spoken to are pleased for their customers to pay in this manner and are perfectly well aware of this option. One would assume then that their billing systems are configured to be able to process payments made in this fashion. I find it extraordinary that a system designed in 2002 and implemented in 2003 is already so far behind the times, and so inflexible in it's ability to be updated that a move to continuous authority cannot be accommodated. Can there be any reason why an option for continuous authorisation was not included in the original specification?
2: We take on board your point about the fitness for purpose of the cameras. We assume this is an allusion to their inaccuracy. Here again we believe you are being selective in your presentation of the facts and contest that for the purposes of fining people the cameras do not work in isolation. Instead, when a number plate cannot be recognised automatically it is placed into a separate workflow whereupon it is further identified by a civilian operator. It is therefore the case that both cameras and manual operators taken together are capable of achieving a very high recognition percentage. Anyone slipping through the net because of poor automated recognition would in any case be subject to further manual checks before a fine is issued. We are simply proposing that your final list of vehicles thought to be eligible for a fine is cross referenced against a list of registered Fast Track users that have opted for continuous authorisation.
It has also been brought to my attention that users attempting to pay the congestion charge in advance are being told for instance that if they buy a monthly pass and travel into London on only 5 days in that month they will be given a refund equating to just 5 of the remaining 15 days. It is precisely this sort of practice that leads us to suspect that TfL are conspiring with Capita to avoid workable payment alternatives being implemented.
We put it to you once again that the real reason why TfL are not willing to make payment more flexible is that you receive significantly more revenue in fines from drivers who forget to pay than you would ever be able to make from pre-payments and that your commercial position with Capita would no longer be tenable unless the system was inherently tuned towards the purpose of issuing fines.
We have made it clear to you why we think that neither of your reasons for avoiding this issue are valid. Your operational and legal constraints with debit cards are a fiction. We have also had commissioned a study by an independent biometrics expert into the difficulties posed by using the cameras for administering the charge. His professional opinion was that:
"I can see no reason why the same system that is employed in the issuance of fines cannot be employed likewise to run a query against of a list of people who have already decided to pay by continuous authorisation. Indeed the entire list of vehicles identified by the camera is already queried against a list of people who have not paid and against registered hackney carriages, buses, congestion zone residents and disabled persons. The technical constraints here are almost non-existent and the expense involved is negligible. It is true to say that there are issues with any biometric system in incorrect identification, but when used in tandem with manual checks this can be negated to a high degree. The alternative argument then is that biometric identification is not accurate in any circumstances - which is to say that it should not be used for fining any more than it should be used for administering payment. In the case of administering payment the use of the system provides far less scope for error as charges can only be made against those FastTrack users who have provided explicit consent. This has proved to be more troublesome in the case of issuing fines where there is always the possibility of sending a notice to the wrong person due to inconsistencies in DVLA data, problems with inaccurate recognition of the number plate or vehicle identity cloning. As such it is theoretically possible for erroneous fines to be sent to anyone with a UK registered vehicle."
We look forward to hearing from you in due course with a more encouraging response to our suggestion.
Yours sincerely
Richard Lack
Thank you for yours of 13th February 2004 in which you responded to my questions regarding automated payment options to registered FastTrack users of congestion charging.
You state the following in your reply:
1: There are operational and legal difficulties in collecting the charge in this manner without explicit authorisation.
2: The cameras are designed to enforce the scheme and not for administering payment.
We would like to respond to each point in turn:
1: Your assertion is incorrect in as far as there are any legal difficulties in the approach I have suggested. All credit and debit card providers in the UK and the majority of the rest of the world make a provision for what is called "continuous authorisation". This is a means by which the card holder can allow a vendor to take continuous debits against a single instruction. I myself use continuous authorisation to pay my household's mobile phone and electricity bills. The majority of utility companies I have spoken to are pleased for their customers to pay in this manner and are perfectly well aware of this option. One would assume then that their billing systems are configured to be able to process payments made in this fashion. I find it extraordinary that a system designed in 2002 and implemented in 2003 is already so far behind the times, and so inflexible in it's ability to be updated that a move to continuous authority cannot be accommodated. Can there be any reason why an option for continuous authorisation was not included in the original specification?
2: We take on board your point about the fitness for purpose of the cameras. We assume this is an allusion to their inaccuracy. Here again we believe you are being selective in your presentation of the facts and contest that for the purposes of fining people the cameras do not work in isolation. Instead, when a number plate cannot be recognised automatically it is placed into a separate workflow whereupon it is further identified by a civilian operator. It is therefore the case that both cameras and manual operators taken together are capable of achieving a very high recognition percentage. Anyone slipping through the net because of poor automated recognition would in any case be subject to further manual checks before a fine is issued. We are simply proposing that your final list of vehicles thought to be eligible for a fine is cross referenced against a list of registered Fast Track users that have opted for continuous authorisation.
It has also been brought to my attention that users attempting to pay the congestion charge in advance are being told for instance that if they buy a monthly pass and travel into London on only 5 days in that month they will be given a refund equating to just 5 of the remaining 15 days. It is precisely this sort of practice that leads us to suspect that TfL are conspiring with Capita to avoid workable payment alternatives being implemented.
We put it to you once again that the real reason why TfL are not willing to make payment more flexible is that you receive significantly more revenue in fines from drivers who forget to pay than you would ever be able to make from pre-payments and that your commercial position with Capita would no longer be tenable unless the system was inherently tuned towards the purpose of issuing fines.
We have made it clear to you why we think that neither of your reasons for avoiding this issue are valid. Your operational and legal constraints with debit cards are a fiction. We have also had commissioned a study by an independent biometrics expert into the difficulties posed by using the cameras for administering the charge. His professional opinion was that:
"I can see no reason why the same system that is employed in the issuance of fines cannot be employed likewise to run a query against of a list of people who have already decided to pay by continuous authorisation. Indeed the entire list of vehicles identified by the camera is already queried against a list of people who have not paid and against registered hackney carriages, buses, congestion zone residents and disabled persons. The technical constraints here are almost non-existent and the expense involved is negligible. It is true to say that there are issues with any biometric system in incorrect identification, but when used in tandem with manual checks this can be negated to a high degree. The alternative argument then is that biometric identification is not accurate in any circumstances - which is to say that it should not be used for fining any more than it should be used for administering payment. In the case of administering payment the use of the system provides far less scope for error as charges can only be made against those FastTrack users who have provided explicit consent. This has proved to be more troublesome in the case of issuing fines where there is always the possibility of sending a notice to the wrong person due to inconsistencies in DVLA data, problems with inaccurate recognition of the number plate or vehicle identity cloning. As such it is theoretically possible for erroneous fines to be sent to anyone with a UK registered vehicle."
We look forward to hearing from you in due course with a more encouraging response to our suggestion.
Yours sincerely
Richard Lack
Best of luck Richard. It drives me bloody crazy.
2 things have happened to me, No 1. You pay every on the spot every day, no problem, you then forget one day but remember first thing the next morning & try to pay, it is too soon for you to have received a penalty notice so you are trying to pay in good faith, sorry, no go £40 fine, great!
2nd. Changed car reg on a day while it was in the zone, accidentally paid for the previous registration (which was now not on any car), phoned cc london to ask what to do, was told to pay again...yeah right! Wrote to them to appeal against the pcn I got a week later. No reply from them, phoned a month later to ask what was happening, was told appeal was turned down (how unfair is that!) and that they had written to me.
I hadnt received the letter so asked if they would resend it, they said they would, 2 weeks later, still no letter, phoned again, we'll send it again they say (by this time the charge had gone up to £120 and they had also written to say that they had logged the offence with the courts and I'd be summoned!)
2 weeks later, final demand, big red letters, phoned again (each time I phone them I am on the phone for approx 20mins to half an hour to an absolute moron) went nuts, was told I had to wait for court documents, then had to file a statutory declaration and had to take it and have it witnessed by a solicitor (clearly trying to make it as difficult as possible)
2 weeks later got a letter from northampton county court to say that case and charges were all dropped but that TFL may pursue this. I am waiting to hear what happens next. To$$ers
2 things have happened to me, No 1. You pay every on the spot every day, no problem, you then forget one day but remember first thing the next morning & try to pay, it is too soon for you to have received a penalty notice so you are trying to pay in good faith, sorry, no go £40 fine, great!
2nd. Changed car reg on a day while it was in the zone, accidentally paid for the previous registration (which was now not on any car), phoned cc london to ask what to do, was told to pay again...yeah right! Wrote to them to appeal against the pcn I got a week later. No reply from them, phoned a month later to ask what was happening, was told appeal was turned down (how unfair is that!) and that they had written to me.
I hadnt received the letter so asked if they would resend it, they said they would, 2 weeks later, still no letter, phoned again, we'll send it again they say (by this time the charge had gone up to £120 and they had also written to say that they had logged the offence with the courts and I'd be summoned!)
2 weeks later, final demand, big red letters, phoned again (each time I phone them I am on the phone for approx 20mins to half an hour to an absolute moron) went nuts, was told I had to wait for court documents, then had to file a statutory declaration and had to take it and have it witnessed by a solicitor (clearly trying to make it as difficult as possible)
2 weeks later got a letter from northampton county court to say that case and charges were all dropped but that TFL may pursue this. I am waiting to hear what happens next. To$$ers
misternomer said:
'Indeed the entire list of vehicles identified by the camera is already queried against a list of people who have not paid and against registered hackney carriages, buses, congestion zone residents and disabled persons.'
Well maybe, but just last week I received a Penalty Notice for a vehicle of mine which has a Blue Badge exemption. Needless to say, the Notice was returned to Coventry with a copy of their exemption letter (which specifies the vehicle and reg no.) rather than a £40 cheque!
On a related note, a review by the RAC Foundation of the first 12-months of the CC (published yesterday), shows that appeals against penalties are running at 5 times the anticipated level (estimated at 35,500 against a forecast of just 7,000).
Of the 15,500 appeals actually processed so far, 11,500 (nearly 75%) have been 'won' by the motorists, which shows that Capita's systems are not nearly as reliable as they would have us believe.
Of course, that may well be another reason why they don't want to get involved right now in the additional complexities of introducing a 'continuous authorisation' scheme - their system is probably just not capable of handling it...
I am glad that someone is already campainging around this...
When I asked why they didn't even give you a day after the fact to pay I was told that their view was that I had already had 90 days to pay before the event which was more than enough time.
Again, I think if they gave you a week to pay their revenues would drop significantly, just like if they did auto-debiting (I am a Fast-Track customer and have been since before the charging came into force).
Revenue protection triumphs over common sense and providing a 'service' once again.
Just remember we voted for these people and they are spending our money...
When I asked why they didn't even give you a day after the fact to pay I was told that their view was that I had already had 90 days to pay before the event which was more than enough time.
Again, I think if they gave you a week to pay their revenues would drop significantly, just like if they did auto-debiting (I am a Fast-Track customer and have been since before the charging came into force).
Revenue protection triumphs over common sense and providing a 'service' once again.
Just remember we voted for these people and they are spending our money...
posted this on another thread and by coincidence this thread started up as well.
I'm disputing a ticket from August last year - sat in my car in Soho (engine running) - waiting for a g/f to come out of a bar - warden walks by - I tell him I'm picking someone up - a few minutes later "friend" comes out and off I go.
Few months later £100 parking fine turns up - going to adjucation now. Looks like I win coz the ticket wasn't handed to me our placed on the car.
Why doesn't Congestion Charge disputes work in this manner ? In fact I'll should start another thread on this.
If you dispute a Westminster Parking ticket - you write back to them saying why - it then either gets dismissed or goes to an adjucator hearing - which you can attend. Pretty fair I would say.
Now I'm disputing 2 congestion charges. One on grounds that their bloody website wasn't taking payments and kept timing out (it was by getting close to midnight) and after which you can't pay for the day b4. And the other was that I strayed into the zone round marble arch (without realizing) - came out of it immediately and I put it down to inappropriate signage.
Now in these cases you have to take your letter to a judge, barrister and have it witnessed by them !
Well that's like saying get it sign by a martian! Anyway I'm disputing both of those.
I'm disputing a ticket from August last year - sat in my car in Soho (engine running) - waiting for a g/f to come out of a bar - warden walks by - I tell him I'm picking someone up - a few minutes later "friend" comes out and off I go.
Few months later £100 parking fine turns up - going to adjucation now. Looks like I win coz the ticket wasn't handed to me our placed on the car.
Why doesn't Congestion Charge disputes work in this manner ? In fact I'll should start another thread on this.
If you dispute a Westminster Parking ticket - you write back to them saying why - it then either gets dismissed or goes to an adjucator hearing - which you can attend. Pretty fair I would say.
Now I'm disputing 2 congestion charges. One on grounds that their bloody website wasn't taking payments and kept timing out (it was by getting close to midnight) and after which you can't pay for the day b4. And the other was that I strayed into the zone round marble arch (without realizing) - came out of it immediately and I put it down to inappropriate signage.
Now in these cases you have to take your letter to a judge, barrister and have it witnessed by them !
Well that's like saying get it sign by a martian! Anyway I'm disputing both of those.
andrew54 said:
I haven't been to London for a few years, what options would I have as means of payment? Are there signs that adequately tell me about the charging system as I drive in? What happens if I read the signs and decide not to enter?
There are big signs and a "C" on the road just before you enter the zones. You can pay at machines in most car parks, or on line at www.cclondon.com. You can register and even pay via SMS message...
Despite all this, I still managed to forget to pay!!!
Zod said:
I am cynical enough about Ken and Capita to believe that they actually budget for Fast Track users to forget say one time in every twenty. This would mean that for every twenty times each of us enters the zone, instead of paying £100, we pay £135.
Tha sad thing is I think you are right...
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