Summons

[btonbadger]

Morning all,

 

I received a summons this morning from local court regarding an unpaid fine. I'm not sure where I can go with this:

 

1) Company Car, registered to my Ltd Company.

 

2) Car was moved onto the road briefly and caught by one of those untaxed car camera things. I was away on business so the first I knew about it was the fact that the car had been clamped. It cost me £150 or thereabouts which i paid.

 

3) I didn't receive anything else from the DVLA, in fact I didn't even get a renewal form for i, hence why I didn't know it was needing to be taxed.

 

4) realised they hadn't updated the address on the vehicle so got that changed.

 

5) subsequently sold vehicle.

 

6) Happened to call into the office where my ltd company used to be based and a girl there said "oh there's a pile of paperwork for you here". Handed over a number of reminders and the court summons.

 

First I knew about it! otherwise i would have paid the £40 and got shot of it.

 

 

The court summons has the company name on it, no specific person. It was sent to an old address. Is there anything I can do here? Don't particularly want to go to court, don't particularly want to pay them any more than I have to.

[btonbadger]

Incidentally, I should add that SOME correspondence has arrived to the new Ltd Company address but all that referred to the fine and the court summons was addressed to the old company address. I am unsure of the timings of this but surely this proves the DVLA don't know their arse from their elbow?

[buzby]

Your liability as a director of the company would only remain if the company was still trading. Your comments on the 'old' and 'new' company are a little confusing. If the original comp0any is no longer trading, forget about it - there is nothing they can do. If only the address has changed, then it will still remain liable and the fine should be paid.

 

You could try to have the judgement recalled but this is expensive, and there's no guarantee you will be any better off after the case calls agian.

[btonbadger]

apologies, the company still exists and is trading. it is the address that changed.

 

having looked further into the matter, the dates on which they wrote to at the new address overlap with the dates of the letters of the old address.

 

Theefore, DVLA were aware and acknowledged the new address yet continued to "chase" the fine and subsequently send a summons to the old address. In addition as part of the "evidence" they provide is a printout of the cars registered adddress with the NEW address on.

 

By sending to the old address they denied me the chance of paying the fine of £40. I would be happy to pay this as there was an error and the car wasn't taxed.

 

The issue here is their admin error denied me the right to do so as I only received the mail by a chance meeting with someone who works for another company in the old building.

 

How can the DVLA have two addresses on their database registered to one vehicle?

[CrappoMan]

Yes you should have a good chance of convincing a judge that the error was theirs.

 

It's not that they have two addresses for one database, more likely that they have two departments with seperate databases, who dont communicate properly.

 

One thing to think about though :- did they intentionally chase the old address, after sending the first letter and getting no reply, knowing full well that nobody would be there, with the intention of increasing the fines due ? I wouldn't put it past them.

 

I have my own gripe with DVLA, so forgive me if i sound cynical!

 

 

Simon

[btonbadger]

Yes you should have a good chance of convincing a judge that the error was theirs.

 

It's not that they have two addresses for one database, more likely that they have two departments with seperate databases, who dont communicate properly.

 

One thing to think about though :- did they intentionally chase the old address, after sending the first letter and getting no reply, knowing full well that nobody would be there, with the intention of increasing the fines due ? I wouldn't put it past them.

 

I have my own gripe with DVLA, so forgive me if i sound cynical!

 

 

Simon

 

it's a good point but I would suspect it's just down to incompetence.

 

I mean who could possibly provide legal evidence proving the (old) registered address of a car by printing out a sheet that blatantly has the new address on, if they were doing it deliberately?!

 

Have written to the DVLA directly pointing out their error, will await a response before seeing them in court.