Demand from EPC for Unpaid Toll Fees in Portugal

[Londoncalling1991]

I have also received EPC invoices, so thought I would share my experience to date and info from other sources. 

I received the first EPC invoice months ago, relating to a car I hired in Portugal years ago.

I stupidly paid the amount demanded.

Then I received a whole bunch more going back as far as 2019.

after doing some research I decided to try two approaches.

The first was to challenge EPC - I have never owned a car in Portugal and I have not kept records of hire cars going back almost 5 years, I have no idea if these particular cars and the alleged unpaid tolls relate to me.

I wrote to them via their contact info (selected 'other reason', and you have to upload an image before you can send the query!) and requested that if it was a hired car, that send me a signed copy of the original car hire agreement.

They responded with a completely stock letter simply telling me that it is my responsibility to pay tolls when abroad.

The letter also said that they would not enter into further communication and that I need to pay up with 28 days.

I wrote back again, via their contact saying that they needed to provide the requested info, and I will not be entering into further communication.

With the other invoices I am simply going to ignore them and see what happens. 

I found a someone else who had posted on Reddit with a similar issue.....

Resulting in the car hire company involved posting this letter....

40866d5d-f358-4c74-87b1-81bcc7efe0bd.jpg - Google Drive

DRIVE.GOOGLE.COM

Additionally, it appears that drivers in Spain have received similar EPC letters.....

DriveSmart | ¿Recibes una multa por peajes en Portugal? ¿Debes pagar o no?

DRIVE-SMART.COM

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¿Recibes una carta por no pagar peajes en Portugal de Euro Parking Collection? Los expertos legales explican porqué no tienes que pagar.

Generally,

opinion very much aligns with what has been said here, which is unlikely that EPC have any powers to actually pursue people through the courts, and in any case the costs would outweigh the amounts involved.

I'm not a lawyer and this is not advice!

I will share any updates as I have them 

[dx100uk]

own thread created

[Londoncalling1991]

Just a quick update.

I have received around a dozen of these EPC invoices now.

For about half of them I responded to say I'm not paying if you don't send me proof that I had hired the car in the photos.

They responded with a standard letter saying paying up.

I replied saying the same thing, send me a copy of the hire agreement.

They then responded saying that the case had been cancelled or transferred.

I'm taking that as cancelled.

The remaining 6 or so I just ignored.

They sent follow up letters saying the admin charge has increased, pay up!.

I've ignored them too, and will continue to ignore any subsequent letters. 

[dx100uk]

there is absolutely nothing they can do. 

i remember a while ago after the italian? Gov't/Police launched their investigation regarding how EPC got a hold of private peoples detail from their databases, there was something somewhere that said EPC had collected +1M euro for Italian fines and no-one had seen a penny of it!!