Hi everyone, hope you're well.
I received a letter on Friday regarding a dart charge PCN, via debt collection agency Marsten Recovery.
The full fine, plus fees is £191.50, which goes back to an offence that happened in September last year.
The timeline:
Sept 2023 dart crossing. Didn't make the payment within the deadline. (I did pay for two crossings which at the time believed covered both crossings)
- No notification of a missed payment or any correspondence, but i've since found out it can take months for it to be processed.
- I moved house in Oct 2023.
- I also sold my car around the same time. Car owner's address was therefore not updated.
However, I had a Royal Mail postal redirection in place for 9 months, exactly to catch things like this. For some reason, I never received anything alerting me to a PCN.
This debt collection agency letter is the first letter I have received personally. The fine is now £116.50, plus a £75 'compliance fee' added on by the collection agency. I have 10 days to make the payment before things escalate.
In this case, I have not been avoiding the charge but simply had not been alerted to it because of moving house, changing car and potentially some issue with the postal redirection that I'm unaware of.
I'm happy to pay the original PCN (£35 or whatever it is) as fair enough, I didn't pay in time, but I'm not happy paying these extra charges when I haven't been successfully notified about it.
I was wondering if anyone has any advice, or similar situation surrounding these circumstances. I'm not sure who to call at DartCharge regarding this, as that would be my first guess.
Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Letter front page here:
https://imgur.com/a/a8SFjdH
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