HoSS Posted June 10, 2020 Share Posted June 10, 2020 Guilty until proven innocent, a sad decent into the dark ages. This should be clearly winnable in court, but who needs that hassle right? Lesson, if your car is SORN'd take the plates off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sean f Posted June 10, 2020 Share Posted June 10, 2020 Not going to pretend to have any legal knowledge but is there any case for things to be automatically cancelled if they fail to reply or provide information within a given time frame?. Potentially you might be able to take them to the small claims court to reclaim any costs but I doubt it would be worth it and if they can suggest they were doing all they could in the circumstances you may not win anyway. I am in a similar situation with TNT, got a delivery from China in January, got sent the invoice for the VAT and duty in Febuary and paid it, March they send me another bill for the same amount for the same delivery, got through on the phone to query it and was told the phone operators can't access bills etc to check and to send and email. Since then I have had automated responses followed by another invoice every few weeks which has been sent back with copies of the previous email and my bank statement showing it has been paid. Finally had a reply from there complaints people last month which stated they had check the VAT and it was correct, since I was asking why I was being billed twice it wasn't a very useful reply, they language was not good for a while!. After an hour managed to talk to someone who said they would look into it and put me on hold, after 45 minute on hold the line was disconnected at there end, 2 hours later on the phone got through again to a person (sometimes you think you are going to get through, you come off hold and it rings but then it goes to a silent line for a while and disconnects), this time they actually were helpful, looked into it asked a few questions and agreed with what I already knew, it was duplicate invoice and it would be sorted out. Yesterday got another email with another invoice for the same delivery demanding payment. What is really annoying is it is very obvious that no one has actually read any of the emails I have sent in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cackshifter Posted June 11, 2020 Author Share Posted June 11, 2020 Thanks for your support anyway, and apologies for the rant but I just need to vent a bit, as I do find it hardly believable. Well amazingly on Tuesday we got a letter from DVLA complaints team, they had received our letter on 11th May, and despite their website commitment to respond within 10 working days (so maybe they only work 10 days per month?), it crossed with the one we sent to the Chief Exec on Monday. I wish I could say it was good news. The original alleged offence was at the end of our drive on 15th Feb - the enforcement notice said so. The new letter said the offence still stood as the vehicle was sighted on 17th Feb (no year or time) in a street I have never heard of. A quick Google showed the nearest street of that name is around 15 miles away. So that is a complete fabrication (ie we can't substantiate your original offence, but no problem, we'll invent a new one). The letter then said our GDPR request had been received 6 days later than it actually had been according to the Royal Mail - so again a lie, and we would not be prioritised against key workers or HGV drivers for the information. It then went on to say if we had parked under a bridge it was still on the road etc, and the penalty still stood. The writer clearly had read none of the previous letters, even their own, or had chosen to ignore them. Another letter has been returned to the Chief Exec, and we have now also written to our MP. We are awaiting a response from the ICO to our complaint about the non-compliance with GDPR. As @sean f suggests above the time it takes and the effort to write all these letters or make calls, record the receipts etc is wearing, and frankly there are other things I would much rather be doing. I can imagine a lot of folk would be intimidated into paying to make it go away. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted June 11, 2020 Share Posted June 11, 2020 Maybe someone's stolen your plates and is driving round on them? Had that happen to a car I sold. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cackshifter Posted June 11, 2020 Author Share Posted June 11, 2020 Hi, Quite possibly so. But wouldn't you think DVLA might think that as well? Yours probably wasn't the only occasion that has happened. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peaklander Posted June 11, 2020 Share Posted June 11, 2020 2 hours ago, cackshifter said: The letter then said our GDPR request had been received 6 days later than it actually had been according to the Royal Mail I'm not surprised! Having done a fair amount of process mapping and operational improvement work over the years, I can see that both of these could be correct. Some organisations get so wrapped-up in their KPIs that they pull all sort of stunts. One place said that they handled evidence bags within 24 hours of receipt. This they did, if booking-in and putting on a shelf is classed as 'handled'. The same bags then sat on the shelves, sometimes for weeks and even months in some cases. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cackshifter Posted June 11, 2020 Author Share Posted June 11, 2020 No I am not surprised by that either. DVLA needs to review that practice of that if it is the case. But GDPR doesn't allow for that; the time starts from the date of receipt. In any case we have allowed much longer than officially needed, and followed up with a reminder, again allowed a longer period. Most if not all of the time elapsed was before the lockdown. The ICO's site has plenty of cases where the DVLA has had to be forced to respond 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon_CSK Posted June 11, 2020 Share Posted June 11, 2020 3 hours ago, cackshifter said: The new letter said the offence still stood as the vehicle was sighted on 17th Feb (no year or time) in a street I have never heard of. A quick Google showed the nearest street of that name is around 15 miles away. They have to then prove that it was your vehicle. Ask to see the evidence from this new sighting as there should be photographic evidence.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cackshifter Posted June 11, 2020 Author Share Posted June 11, 2020 Ha, the DVLA don't bother with proof. In any case the GDPR request was made after that offence was alleged to take place. It should therefore be included in the information we ultimately receive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reb78 Posted June 11, 2020 Share Posted June 11, 2020 I feel for you. This type of thing is so time consuming and preys on your mind, yet you are helpless to get it sorted as the speed of response is in someone else's hands entirely. I emailed our water supplier over a week ago to query a leak allowance on our bill and its taken them a week to acknowledge receipt and merely say they are passing it on to the wholesaler. Why couldn't they do that last week!? This has been going on since early February! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted June 11, 2020 Share Posted June 11, 2020 Try your local MP / candidates and/or if you're really bored some of the consumer programmes on TV/radio. Or just tell them you'll see them in court to prove who dunnit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon_CSK Posted June 11, 2020 Share Posted June 11, 2020 I received a similar letter and when I got the photo I took a photo of my car and sent it back to them. The two vehicles looked completely different They were very efficient in cancelling the fine. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cackshifter Posted June 12, 2020 Author Share Posted June 12, 2020 If only they would send us the photograph. Or even look at it themselves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post cackshifter Posted September 25, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 25, 2020 Hi, Just thought I would post an update. DVLA have now (today) withdrawn the threat of prosecution, and say the response to the GDPR request has been despatched to us on 17th Sept - still not arrived. They are awarding £100 for the stress and anxiety all this has caused. All this in a fairly apologetic letter. We had to ask our MP to intervene in the GDPR request, and that must have caused someone sensible to finally look at it. It will be interesting to see what the GDPR dump contains when it finally arrives, as this may shed some light on DVLAs policies which will require further investigation. But it does look like they are rolling over at last. 9 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
western Posted September 25, 2020 Share Posted September 25, 2020 Good to read you have received some progress & the prosecution has been terminated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arjan Posted September 25, 2020 Share Posted September 25, 2020 Some would call it success. I call it the end of misery where it will happen again to somebody soon. Glad it sort of is over for you ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post cackshifter Posted September 25, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 25, 2020 Well we have them cold with a contravention of GDPR; not only on the slow response but also the content was incomplete, despite their insisting it was all they had. They made a completely false accusation of a further offence after the first letter of complaint. They had numerous opportunities to sort this out months ago. It begs the question of whether they try to just intimidate people into paying up whether they have actually committed an offence or not (incidentally if anyone has knowledge of such a thing happening to someone else I would be very interested to hear from them). We had reached the last stage of the DVLA complaint procedure. If they hadn't replied this week the next step was the Parliamentary Ombudsman, and I would actually really like it to go there for them to have a look at the whole sorry mess. Once we get the GDPR dump we should be able to see if for instance clamping contractors had been instructed to clamp it but had told them it was on private ground. The moral of this is: hide the number plate if SORNed! 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peaklander Posted September 25, 2020 Share Posted September 25, 2020 What a heck of a story. Well done for hanging in there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cackshifter Posted September 26, 2020 Author Share Posted September 26, 2020 Thanks for your support folks, it's good to think someone is on your side 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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