Free Traffic Legal Advice

Hi,

I received a PCN from TfL for ULEZ for 24/06/24 after visiting my folks for the long weekend. Or more precisely I was just informed by a phone call from the person I had recently bought a car from (about 6 weeks ago) that they had received this PCN. We determined that change of ownership which was done online at the time of purchase had some not been processed by the DVLA, and the seller immediately went online to do another transfer of ownership backdated and sent me the confirmation, along with a copy of the front page of the fine which was issued on the 03/70/24 - giving 'me' 14 days (until 19/07/24 according to the PCN) in order to keep the 'discounted' fee. After I sent a chat message back to the buyer saying that I might try to ask for help on a forum, but would redact the address info first (his/partner's info) and that I might need the other pages but I'd let him know, he removed the screenshot of it, so I don't know if he will be willing to provide the rest (though it would probably be standard with other ULEZ fines)

My question is should this be reissued in my name before any payment is made, and would this become automatic if the change of ownership has been made in the database covering that period? In addition I had thought I had made the payment for that journey the day before when I when I had attempted to pay for my for my inbound journey made two days earlier. I had no end of trouble getting the payments to be processed correctly through the TfL Android phone App and tried 3 different bank account cards I had, I ended getting a confirmation on the final attempt and then discovered 2 pending payments in one of my accounts which I then had to spend an inordinate amount of time communicating with the bank trying to find out the procedure to rectify it, which required sending a message to TfL to get a whole of specific details for the bank to allow these pending transactions to be cancelled. Anyway, as a result with everything else that I had going on I didn't remember to check back if I had actually made the outgoing purchase for the following day. Eventually TfL got back to me about the payment on the 26/06/24 simply saying: 'Thank you for your correspondence received on 23 June 2024 regarding payments.
Please be advised that pending transactions are not official payments as we have not received the payment.
We would advise for you to contact your bank if you have made a payment and we have not received it, so they can
investigate the situation further for you.' ..which ignored any of the requests the bank had made🤨

At which point it triggered my thoughts about the outbound payment which I thought I'd made amongst the confusion of the payment process as it had been recommended by my folks to do so, so I wouldn't forget. When I discovered it wasn't paid I wrote a message to TfL on their App about the situation described above and of course have heard nothing back. I guess there's probably no chance of them considering an appeal; I got one when ULEZ first came in (I've 'used' it only 3 times since) and back then signs were not easily seen (nor understandable) and I live far out of London and did not hear of anything about it having been implemented - I received a fine that I challenged pointing out that the signs (which I later saw from some streetview photos) for any newly arrived visitors from overseas would be indecipherable as well, and they dismissed me out of hand.

Thanks in advance

Did you enter the ULEZ and leave before midnight on the same day? Or did you enter and leave on different days?

If you arrived into and then left the ULEZ on a different day then there is likely to be another PCN.

The seller seems to be reluctant to make representations?

They seem to think that having subsequently done the DVLA transfer (with a backdated date) it will sort itself out (for them). It won't.

They are quite likely to get in a right mess. The fact that they were not the RK becomes utterly irrelevant.

At the moment you can choose to pay it (anybody can pay) but don't feel minded to do so because you hope to challenge because of the payment difficulties.

You have nothing, yet, to make representations against.

Surely the simplest thing to do is for OP to take the hit and just pay the PCN.

I'd be a bit hacked off if I bought a car, and subsequently had to deal with any admin at all, due to previous owner's speeding ticket, PCNs etc.

The OP admits that due to time pressures they didn't check if payment had gone through. So it's on them.

Also the OP may have left the mutual friend a bit red faced [if they arranged the deal], no doubt thinking they were doing both parties a favour.

     

Thanks for the replies, I'm going to sit tight and will set up a auto-pay system now as Enceladus has suggested