Word of warning here - if you don't pay the £25 (and fill in the V62 to get a new V5C) and they never received the confirmation from the garage that the vehicle was sold, then it won't be registered at your address. That sounds like nothing right now, but if you leave it until your tax is due and you don't get the reminder or the new V5C sent to your house then you won't be able to tax your vehicle. That's exactly what happened to me the first time I bought a car. I didn't really think to chase them up about it when I didn't receive my V5C. I then discovered after my tax reminder didn't show up that I had to pay the £25 for a new V5C before I could tax it, but far more annoying than that is that it takes them an appallingly long time to process the V62 and send your new V5C. It took them around 7 weeks in my case, during which time I was unable to drive my car at all because it wasn't taxed. I can't even begin to explain how much of a hassle that was given where I work. It's an absurdly stupid system and it seems like a bit of an injustice having to pay the £25 for what is (at least mostly) somebody else's mistake, but under no circumstances leave it right up until your tax is due or you might find yourself in the same mess I was in. When dealing with the DVLA you have to accept that they're completely and utterly impossible to reason with and are only capable of dealing with anything if it conforms with their (entirely arbitrary) procedures. Don't expect any sympathy from them - they'll essentially just repeat their procedure (i.e. that you have to pay the £25, no matter what you say) and tell you to go away. Even getting some sort of update on how long it would take to get my new V5C was completely beyond them.

Hi, I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this. I live in London (Ealing) and I've been having some problems with my postman - or postmen as I'm not sure if it's the same one. Specifically on three separate occasions I've had them throw a parcel through an open window because it wouldn't fit through the letter box. My bathroom has one of those small windows at the top of the window frame that we usually leave open during the day and the postmen evidently seem to think that if a package doesn't fit through the letter box it's fair game to just lump it through the window. The first time they did this the package knocked my shower screen off its railings and landed in the toilet (I came home to find my new phone floating in the toilet - though thankfully it still worked as it was well packaged). On the other two occasions I've just come home to find a package lying in the bathroom/sink with toiletries scattered everywhere. Slightly less annoying is that on a regular basis they just leave packages lying in the garden rather than take it back to the depot. I've never actually spoken to them because I'm out at work all day, but I did contact Royal Mail and they more or less said that if something hasn't explicitly been damaged in the delivery then it's got nothing to do with them - so I guess it's fair game to just keep throwing packages through windows until something breaks... About the only solution I can think of (short of just dealing with the symptom and locking all our windows!) is writing a note to the postmen and leaving it on the door, but I doubt that will help.

Hi, I know this is a seemingly pointless question, but due to some complicated circumstances it would really be convenient for me to do this. I bought a new tax disc for my car back in February which runs out on the 1st of March 2013. What I would like to do is buy a new tax disc which will run out on the 1st of June 2013. I know it's a waste of money, but without getting into the details is this possible or do you have to wait until your tax disc has almost expired before buying a new one? I don't mind paying twice. The reason I ask is that I went in to my DVLA local office to try and do this and they seemed to suggest it was impossible to tax a car twice like this and I'd have to wait. I'm not sure if the person I spoke to really understood the nature of my request, though, and possibly just felt I was wasting my money. Many thanks to anyone who can clear this up.

Thanks for the help. That certainly seems like it could be the problem. We still can't find the master (or test) socket, though. We've had someone round who at least half knew what he was doing and he couldn't find it either. It's a flat in a big complex and there just isn't anything that looks like a master socket and nothing with a plate that can be removed. We can't really trace where the line enters the property either. If it was a problem with the ring around all the sockets how would you go about getting that fixed? Would BT do that or would we be looking at someone else? Thanks again.

I should say that even though there are seven sockets, we don't have anything plugged into any of them. Just the broadband plugged in with a filter into one socket. Some of the sockets don't seem to work at all, some of them the broadband works when we plug it in. We've tried using different sockets for the broadband and one seems to work the best, but still drops out frequently. We're not sure which one is the main socket. Is there anything we could do to cut down on noise on the line? The tech guy we phoned at Be mentioned that if you just put microfilters in each socket that's not being used it can cut down on noise, but I don't know if that's nonsense or not.

We've got seven in the flat.

Hi, We've been having persistent drop outs of our internet connection for 4 or 5 months. We've tried phoning our ISP (Be Broadband) who took us through some troubleshooting steps which didn't solve the problem. The process broke down because we don't seem to have a "test socket" in our flat, or at least we couldn't find anything that looked like a "test socket". Basically at the end they just told us that they can't do anything to fix it and if we want it fixed we should phone BT, who will charge us £130 (or so) for a call-out charge and if it's a problem with the internal wiring of the flat, and not the external phone line, then they won't fix it at all, but will still charge us for the call-out. Anyway, before we actually do this we were wondering if there are any better options. What we'd really like is just to get someone round who knows what they're doing and who can check the connection and diagnose the problem. We're both middle aged types who don't have a clue what we're doing with this sort of thing, yet there doesn't seem to be anybody you can call (other than BT). Very frustrating. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

I recently moved into a flat and we're having an almighty hassle trying to get the prepayment meter (a result of the previous tenant not paying their bills) removed. Scottish Power at first said that they wouldn't remove it until we'd lived there for a year, so we attempted to switch to a different company. The other company were perfectly happy to take us on for a fee to remove the prepayment meter, but Scottish Power wouldn't allow us to move because the other company "didn't have the correct registration numbers for our supply". We were baffled as to what that even means, but on further investigation the company we were switching to informed us that there were "two electricity supplies registered" at our property and that if we wanted to switch we would have to pay the fee to remove the prepayment meter twice. Does anyone know where we stand on this? How can you be charged twice for removing a single prepayment meter? How can a flat end up with two electricity supplies? We're pretty confused and actually toying with the idea of just moving flats rather than dealing with it - our bills are literally three times what they were in our old flat (we never turn the heating on, try and use electricity as little as possible and yet it's working out about £180 a month for a two bedroom flat - bills were about £60 a month in our last flat).

No doubt, but then if you could still buy a tax disc whilst sending in the V62 it seems like there wouldn't really be a problem to encounter in the first place. I'm still unsure as to why you can't do this on some level - yes you have the V5C/2, but you're always going to end up with people losing it/not understanding the system. That's a cost, in the form of unpaid tax for a month or more, which doesn't necessarily need to be there if a better system was in place. As for my situation, I had the (expired) V5C/2 and the new V5 actually showed up today, but I admit defeat in terms of understanding why this system is the way it is. I'm going to settle on the first explanation put forward - that "it just is".

This is true, but then I'd be interested to know how many people have ended up in the same situation as myself. From a google search it seems like it's a fairly common thing as there are lots of people talking about it. In fact the main reason I asked this question is that some of the discussions seemed to imply that at one stage (5-10 years ago) you could apply for a tax disc when sending off the V62 in this situation - I don't know whether that's accurate or not, but it raised the question in my mind as to why you can't do this now. It's one of those situations where you can simply blame the driver for not chasing it up early enough, but then theoretically you could blame the driver with any system - even an incredibly inefficient one - so long as technically there's a way to abide by it. If there's a pothole in the road that only 2% of drivers are negligent enough to drive into then you can blame them for not driving more carefully, but you can also ask why there's a pothole in the road in the first place.

The link between the V62 and tax, in this case, is that it's the first step to you becoming the registered keeper, acquiring a V5C in your name and being allowed to tax the vehicle. The steps would be: 1. Fill in a V62 (and enclose the fee if necessary). 2. Wait for the DVLA to process it, change the details for the registered keeper and send out a new V5C in your name. 3. Receive the new V5C and tax your car. Step 1 leads to steps 2 and 3 in the vast majority of cases and in the few cases that it doesn't (when the previous keeper disputes they have sold the car) the consequences of allowing someone to buy a tax disc for the vehicle don't seem to be problematic - namely someone has just taxed a vehicle they are not the registered keeper of. In fact the DVLA adviser's advice when I went into their office was to try and do precisely that - to try and contact the previous seller, get the tax reminder off of them and tax the vehicle myself using the tax reminder and the certificate of motor insurance. That in effect would achieve the same aim as taxing a vehicle with an unsuccessful V62 form, so what's the difference? In short, what is to be lost by allowing someone carrying out the three step process above to tax their vehicle at "step 1" instead of "step 3"? I know you can't, but why?

Thanks for the replies. That's pretty much what happened - I did have the green slip but it was after the two months had expired so I couldn't use it to tax the vehicle. I had naively thought that I could just use the green slip to tax it, which was another part of the problem. Like I said, I don't have a problem taking responsibility for that I was just wondering why the system doesn't let you tax the vehicle with the V62 as it seems a bit needless. I tried asking the DVLA this and they didn't seem to want to answer it - they were more interested in just saying what the system is rather than explaining why it is the way it is. Is it just a sort of nuclear option for ensuring the registration details are up to date? I didn't know that it takes less time if you send the V62 in with the green slip, though. I didn't have to pay the fee (£25 I think) because I had the green slip, but I didn't realise that also makes the process go a bit quicker. The adviser said 4-6 weeks, but I guess that's just the standard information when handing in a V62. That makes me a bit more hopeful I'll be back on the road soon so thanks.

Perhaps I should say first that, like many people, I've found myself in the position of not being able to tax my car due to the fact that I'm not the registered keeper. The previous owner of my car didn't send the V5 document into the DVLA to notify them of the sale, I didn't chase them up to get my V5 and by the time I realised what had happened it was too late. I sent in a V62 to register myself as the new keeper but until the new V5 shows up (4-6 weeks at best) I can't drive my car. That's a common story it seems and I accept some blame for not chasing it up sooner. What I'm really interested in though is how we ended up with this system in the first place. Why can't you tax a car with a V62? Regardless of whether a V62 form is successful in transferring the registration to the new keeper (which it seems like they almost always are) I'm just unsure of why it would even be an issue if someone attempted to tax a car that they were not the registered keeper of. Is there a real risk of people taxing cars they don't own? Who would do such a thing? Altruistic criminals running around paying people's road tax for them? I'm sure there is some valid explanation, but I'm just not sure what it is. Why can't you tax a car simply using the V62? It just seems completely needless to be unable to drive your car for 4-6 weeks simply because, ultimately, a database needs to be updated (regardless of whose fault it is).