Birmingham City Council – PCN’s for CAZ

Friday 24th January, 2024 : As I drove into Birmingham I saw the clean air charge notifications, aware my car is a diesel assumed this would apply to my vehicle. After parking up, I went onto Google and searched for CAZ payment, I clicked on the first hit www.cleanairzones.uk and promptly paid for my duration in the city of 2 days. In hindsight, silly of me to go with the first hit but in all honesty (and never been to Birmingham before) signal was weak being in the Bullring centre and sat in a café, and frankly I was highly strung having driven around with my Sat-Nav looking for my parking space which was made difficult due to the road works and road shut where I wanted to go.

Payment cleared on Monday 27th January and on Saturday 8th February I received 2 x PCN’s through my door advising non-payment of CAZ. Checked my bank and payment had gone so started to look at the website and to my horror realised it was a spam site, I googled reviews to find that many people had been scammed by this website and no contact details can be found on said website.  I promptly advised my bank who repaid the money (£24) within hours, I reported the website to National Cyber Security Centre.

I wonder if I am liable for these 2 PCN’s as Google has mixed answers advising that as a victim of fraud I may not be but other sites advise yes, just pay them type of info.


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I doubt Birmingham will let you off but as it appears they are reoffering the discount now on rejection (they weren't before) it may be worth a polite ask. But we can't guarantee they will reoffer the discount and then you'll be hit for 2 x £120.

Thank you so much for your advice, really appreciate it. I will make the reduced payment and pay more attention of rogue websites in future. Thanks again

Wait a bit to see if anyone else has anything. You could pay one and ask for discretion on the other.

Morning, So BCC have come back to me but reading through their letters I guess I'm stuffed as the fake website gave me no invoice or receipt so I clearly cannot show confirmation of my visit or payment. I have double checked the fake website again and there is absolutely no contact us or phone number to get in touch with.

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Does not your credit card/ bank card/ bank statement show the transaction?

Hi, Yes it does but it seems they need proof from the fake website in the form of an invoice or receipt which I didn't get

Have you checked your browser history to show them a visit to the site and the subsequent pages? Even if you haven't got a receipt show them the logs and your bank statements.

Good shout peodude, I have just done this and have the browser history, I am going to call them and see how far I can get with them