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Went to that London on 28th October, had to drive through the charging bit.
Then forgot about it until last night, went onto the payment thing at it was £27.50 to pay. entered card details and then it just crashed tried again crashed.
Woke up this morning, went for a ride , got home had a coffee, opened the post.
£160 fine.
Ouch!
It irks me that there's a £10/pa charge to register for auto pay. I drive near it a lot, and work will pay if I enter it, but I still have to remember to log on and pay it. One of these days I'll forget and that £10 will seem cheap! Not sure if there's actually £10 worth of admin for them or if it's just to make people consciously think about avoiding it each time they visit.
Did get stung by the new bridge in Liverpool, but thankfully that's a £2 toll and only escalated to about £25.
Forgot to pay the Dartford Crossing on my way to Belgium a couple of years ago. Something clicked in my pissed up memory about 2 days into the holiday. You get one fine let off on that toll.
Which is nice.
One of my team went across a few months ago and when I paid the charge online I thought it was for both ways. Then got a fine through the post a few weeks later, can't remember what the amount was but given the option of pay now it will be iirc £45. I put a dispute in saying I thought the charge was for both ways. After a few weeks got a reply saying as it was a genuine mistake on my behalf, if I pay within a week I will just be charged the crossing charge.
That Mersey crossing one got me too a couple of years ago. We were away for a few months in the caravan and got home to a pile of fine notices for unpaid crossing charges which I genuinely knew nothing about. I wrote to them explaining things and they reduced the charges to the original £2 per crossing thankfully. Loads online about it, really naff setup.
Yeah, Dartford normally give you a couple of chances if you pay up fairly swiftly - probably feeling guilty that the crossing was paid of years ago and they always said the tolls would stop when it was.
OP, you may have been charged extra for calling it 'that London'.............
I changed the reg on my car and forgot to tell the Dartford folk for months. When I realised I phoned them up to explain and they found a few unpaid tolls against the old reg and said I'd get a bill in the post but probably no fine because it was an honest mistake. Nothing ever arrived and that was 2 cars ago now, so I think I got away with it. Did Serco do their system too?
I can beat that by a long way.
I've got a Norwegian car but was back visiting my parents last winter in the UK. Also visited some friends in London for a couple of weeks. We drove in to Muswell Hill and left the car there.
Apparently you're supposed to know that when you pass an green sign with LEZ written in the middle somewhere near the M25 you are supposed to log in to a section of the TFL site and register your car when you have a foreign vehicle. Surprisingly I didn't know so on return to Norway... Plus a few weeks later as we had moved house and EPCPLC (who issue the fine for TFL) sent the letter to my old address... I received a fine for £1000, plus some more for being late in replying to a fine I didn't know I had.
Still ongoing trying to sort this out because it's only possible to contact EPC by letter and they say you have to allow up to 48 days for them to reply each time.
Bloody nightmare!
Dartford never gave me a chance. I was driving back to Spain and figured I'd pay it when I stopped for the night (kipping in the van) but there was no phone signal.
Tried the next day and it would only accept payment of the fine so I gave up.
Can't remember the amounts but the first letter arrived from a collection agency in Sweden and it was disproportionate. Got one every couple of months for a while, each time with a hefty increase, then they stopped. Last one was a year ago.
I can beat that by a long way.
I’ve got a Norwegian car but was back visiting my parents last winter in the UK. Also visited some friends in London for a couple of weeks. We drove in to Muswell Hill and left the car there.
That should be pretty simple to resolve, LEZ only applies to <Euro4 (~2005) Vans/lorries/busses >3.5t and <Euro3 Vans (~2000) >1.2t. It doesn't apply to cars.
And to be fair on TFL, there are signs on every road saying "LEZ in x miles", "LEZ after next junction", "take ...... road to avoid LEZ". Enough signs to give me anxiety about it and I know I'm exempt 🤣
It's the bane of my life, I drive all over the country and do upto 40k miles a year. Last month I went through the Rotherhithe tunnel as I have done before without issue. However I got a ticket each way as a transit connect is now not allowed. Apparently it's written on a sign near the entrance on a roundabout where you'd also be negotiating a width restriction.
Also picked up a buslane fine, realised my error quickly but camera caught me.
With early payment reductions I think I lost £130 last month. Not a vast amount but money I can't afford to throw away.
Picked up a parking ticket in Islington the month before that.
Turns out it's flat rate overnight then hourly after that, so if you pay at 7.57am you get 3mins parking. I got a fine bang on 8am.
I did get a few con charge fines too prior to having Auto pay, same with Dart charge. Basically it's a memory tax.
On my last trip to the UK the Dartford tunnel phone payment system beat my patience I so drove 2/3 of the M25 instead of 1/3. It would appear that was a wise choice.
Sales guy I used to work with got arrested on arrival in the USA, due to an INTERPOL marker on his passport, when he went on a business trip. This was put on by the Swiss government for an unpaid motoring fine!
Appeal. Though they dont normally side with anyone other than themselves and dismiss most. Threaten legal action and tell them you made TWO attempts but the machine crashed both times. The system is electronic so will have a record of that in its data.
Ask to have a record of that data sent to you, along with previous records of data showing other system crashes. Threaten legal action and tell them the money is unimportant, it is the principle.
Then embark upon a campaign of letting them know of EVERY POTHOLE you see. Take a photo and hound then relentlessly.
The Dartford crossing payment thing is a joke.
I signed up before going to France last year. It took ages to register as the site kept crashing or just hanging without actually processing my account set-up.
I then got a message after using it saying I needed to to up the account as the want enough credit on it.
Covid scuppered or plans for a camping trip to France this year, and in July I got a message saying my account will be deactivated because I haven't used it for however long.
The only way to keep it active was to make a crossing our put more money into the account....so basically make an unnecessary round trip of >200 miles or pay more money into an account I infrequently use that already has enough money in it for several crossings.
Genius.
.