I Feel that there has been a miscarriage of justice against me by Medway and Maidstone council. Last January i came down to your lovely part of kent for a job interview and parked in a car park in Maidstone. I went to pay the machine would not take my cash i had to risk leaving it. I got a parking ticket which i contested was rejected i paid, using the online method as we are all urged to do now on my bank card. in October i got a letter from a debt collectors trying to get money from me for the ticket i rang them straight away to resolve the matter was told to email proof of payment. I sent a copy of my bank statement showing payment thought the matter was dealt with again. on Thursday a bailiff turned up to take my car away, i told him what has happened so far and he went and made some calls. Apparently i had paid Medway council and not Maidstone council, I then questioned how they could have taken my money as i had entered parking ticket numbers and car registration etc when paying online. I have since spoken to both councils to resolve the matter but have had a "Tough luck" response from both. I paid in good faith even though i thought it unjust in the first place and am amazed that Medway council can just take money from people willy-nilly, i wonder how much they have got of other peoples as they have never tried to give my money back that was taken incorrectly and is now going to cost me my car and possibly my job. I donated another £1 today to Medway council via their online payment sysem, daylight robbery. I appreciate that this seems quite trivial but i feel i did everything i am expected to do and i am just having two fingers stuck up at me from two major councils. :evil:

My local council has sent a 'Pre court reminder' to us to pay £200, because we failed to send them back my child's free bus pass after she moved schools. I'll try to cut a long story short. My daughter got a free photo bus pass when she went to our local catholic grammar school. A month or so into her second academic year we decided to move her to another school in a different area a few miles away. We accepted that we would have to pay her bus fare for her journey to the new school. She started her new school and we were paying £5 a week bus fare. Two or three months later we got a bill from the council for £200 to cover the cost of the unused 'free' bus pass for the academic year. My wife called the council and told them we had no idea where it was and they told her to write to inform them to that effect. They said that they had written to advise us in November that we had to return the bus pass. As far as we're concerned we didn't get any such letter. Another couple of months passed and we get another bill for £200. At this point, we turned the house upside down and my daughter found the pass in a box under her bed. We sent the pass back by recorded delivery and thought that was the end of it. Today we have had a demand for £200, to be paid in 14 days, or they'll take us to court. My wife called the council and protested that we'd sent it back. They said said it was too late and we had to pay. They said that we had to pay for the pass to cover the period from the time she moved schools until the present and that, if we had paid by march 16th the matter would have been dropped. Again, we told them that we had never been told, whilst in the process of moving her, that we would have to hand the pass back. They told us that it says 'in the small print' on the back of the bus pass that we should hand it back in the event that she moved schools. We are being asked to pay for an unused free bus pass for a journey to a school that she doesn't attend, whilst we've been paying her bus fare to another school! How can I challenge this? They appear to be immune to reason. Am I imagining this, or is it crazily unreasonable? Would you read the small print on the back of a child's free bus pass? If anyone can advise us how to deal with this situation I would be very grateful. Kind regards