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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