Open letter to TFL LEZ - Legalised Highway Robbery

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WandrinAndy

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14-08-2013

To: Transport for London (TFL), Low Emission Zone, Worthing, BN11 === c/o [email protected]

Open letter to who it may concern at TFL LEZ - Legalised Highway Robbery

You have recently issued at least two Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) to me for vehicle number *+++*** of which I am not the registered keeper. These PCN numbers are:

- Issue date 26/07 #reference# - 6 pages
- Issue date 30/07 #reference#- 6 pages

Please save the response I am giving you in this email and apply it to any and all PCNs that you may issue to me. I will not waste my time replying multiple times to your errors in your bureaucratic boxed forms, and I will also not waste international postage responding to your errors by snail mail.

Sadly, the tone of your 12 pages of correspondence (which I had to read and digest) would be well suited to times gone by when Masters could demand absolute unquestionable obedience from Slaves who are already deemed in advance to be guilty of some dastardly deed, unless they can grovel their way back into their Master's favour in order to avoid some unpleasant fate!

Your blatant errors have unnecessarily cost me both valuable time and money, and your extortionate, threatening, and bullying approach has caused me much distress. Should you wish to alleviate my distress by compensating me with a bank guaranteed cheque for a suitably large amount, my snail mail is being redirected to me in the Antipodes for a few months yet.

By the Ides of July 2013, I had already sold my trusty old *+++*** to WeBuyAnyCar for £350, posted the sub-form to DVLA, and departed Heathrow on a one-way ticket to the Antipodes.

Please TFL, review your insidious procedures ASAP as they are clearly NOT Fit-For-Purpose!

Thanks, Andy

PS. Somebody such as me can only afford a cheaper older vehicle that lacks the modern technology that reduces emissions, and even though that vehicle is reliable, affordable, roadworthy, insured, and totally legit elsewhere in the country, it now seems that any local authority can decide to levy extortionate punitive charges upon normally law-abiding visitors who unknowingly stray through an ENTRAPMENT ZONE! The new owner of my trusty old steed can expect to throw away at least £1000 on PCNs! In my opinion this is nothing short of being legalised Highway Robbery! The rich robbing from the poor! Picture the scene:

Gang Lords, feared locally as MR.BIG, menacingly patrolling their Patches, street by street, bullying the weak, vulnerable, and scared visitors who have strayed off course and cannot afford the modern technology, forcing them to pay up! It really is absolutely MIND BOGGLING to me! £1000 is more than a month's income for many normal tax paying citizens! Why don't TFL just call for one's testicles on a plate and be done with it!!! And sadly the British Public passively accepts that this kind of abusive oppression of the weak and poor by British institutions is simply a very British thing. Blimey, but the ruling and political classes nauseate me!

PPS. It is almost frightening how happy I now feel, knowing that I have, for a while, escaped the clutches of the oppressive regimes of the rich landed gentry that crack their barbed whips from the banks of River Thames. I have finally glimpsed some freedom in a fairer society. G'Day.
 
I have sadly had ZERO response from TFL to my earlier email, so have now sent them both a snail-mail 20/8 and an email copy 26/8 about this appalling but true example of the Brutality of the Mayor of London's Penal System. The redacted version of my final missive is below.

20/08 snailmail = Transport for London (TFL), Low Emission Zone, PO Box 4783, Worthing, BN11 9PT
26/08 email = [email protected], [email protected]
=============================================================================

Hi,

PCNs: #reference# (issue date 26/07) and #reference# (issue date 30/07)

Please note that on 2013-08-14 10:01 AEST, I emailed an "Open letter to who it may concern at TFL LEZ" to [email protected] in response to this same matter, but I have sadly yet to receive a response, so I have effectively been forced to post this very slow and very expensive international snail mail...

You have recently issued at least two Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) to me for vehicle number +***+++ of which I am NOT the registered keeper - Please urgently update your records in this regard!

Please save this letter as my response to both of these PCNs and also apply it to any and all other PCNs that you may issue to me.

The reason why I am NO-LONGER-THE-REGISTERED-KEEPER of this vehicle is that, by the 2013-07-15, I had already sold my trusty old vehicle to WeBuyAnyCar for £350, and posted the sub-form (V5C/3 if that's what it's called?) to DVLA, and departed Heathrow on a one-way ticket to the Antipodes. Please find two scanned documents attached to support this fact:

The first is an acknowledgement from the DVLA, printed on 2013-07-30, that states "This confirms that we have updated our records for this vehicle and you are no longer the registered keeper of +***+++".

The second is the invoice of sale of this vehicle to WeBuyAnyCar, which occurred on 2013-07-13.

I trust that this letter and the information contained herein will put an end to your extortionate and threatening demands, as these are clearly based on inaccurate information! I would also urge TFL to please ASAP review your insidious procedures in collaboration with the DVLA as they are clearly NOT Fit-For-Purpose in the modern world!

I was the previous registered keeper of +***+++, and am for the foreseeable future of no-fixed-abode in the Antipodes, but every few months will get to view the dwindling UK snail mail that Royal Mail manages to successfully redirect to an Australian address for me.

Thank You,
Andy
2013-08-19 (My reference: Wwhbsb-Wwhbaa-Hnbutao-Hnbuaa)

PS. Your blatant errors have unnecessarily cost me both valuable time and money, and your extortionate, threatening, and bullying approach has caused me much distress. I have very grave concerns around the injustice of this extremely abusive penal system, where you seem to feel entitled to threaten innocent law-abiding tax payers, and this on the basis of your records being VERY inaccurate! I am already discussing this issue on the internet, and will include the publication of a redacted version of this letter. I will also send a redacted electronic copy of this letter to the office of the Mayor-of-London, who I would hope would be frightfully appalled about this scandalous state of affairs.
 
TFL
===
In response to my letter of complaint, I have today received a "Notice of Acceptance" from TFL dated 9 September:

- Thank you for your recent representation against the issue of the above mentioned Penalty Charge Notice(s) for Vehicle Registration Mark *+++***.
- We are pleased to inform you that following a review of the issue of the Penalty Charge Notice(s) together with the circumstances and points raised, the representation has been accepted and we have reissued the Penalty Charge Notice(s) to the company you have nominated.
- No further action will be taken against you in respect of the above-mentioned Penalty Charge Notice(s). Transport for London reserve the right to reissue the Penalty Charge Notice(s) to you.
- Yours sincerely


In my view I made no "representation" to them and I certainly did not "nominate" any company for them to harass, so I can only guess that some "great legal mind" has instructed them to use this legalese tripe, so that poor little me somehow remains central to their extortionate bullying tax grab!

They have simply ignored my complaint in it's entirety........ What's the point of complaining? They just ignore it anyway. Lol

DVLA
====

Today I also received a stalling letter from DVLA dated 13 September that thanks me for my application for a refund of vehicle tax, "which we are currently unable to process. Bla bla bla...." and "Normally, we will only pay a refund from the date we receive your response to this letter."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! In this instance I may even just cut my losses and let this powerful but obviously impoverished institution of state keep my hard-earned dosh, and thereby help save my sanity!

They have already been notified of the recent sale of the vehicle, as below.....

The DVLA emphasises the need for one to get the V5C/3 sub-form posted to them quickly, but I guess they then sat on my sub-form which should have arrived in Swansea on 16/07 as it was posted on 15/07, because I finally received a slip of a notice from DVLA that shows the following:

- Date-Printed: 30/07/2013
- Acknowledgement : This confirms that we have updated our records for this vehicle and you are no longer the registered keeper of *******.
- Further information: ..... If you get any penalty notices for this vehicle, you should contact the office that sent you the notice.
- And very nonchalantly says "You may want to keep this acknowledgement for your records".


The Date-Printed is the only date on this notice, making it suitably obscure to be worth next to nothing in my opinion.

Why on earth do they not specify the date on which I became the unregistered owner (the sale date) or even the date on which they received the sub-form in the mail?!

The DVLA obviously sells our personal-info to penal institutions such as TFL, either periodically or by allowing them direct data access, knowing full well that this info WILL BE INACCURATE when vehicles change hands! The DVLA then abdicates all responsibility for this situation by fobbing off their captive clients (the man in the street) to the mercy of the penal institutions to whom they have already supplied my personal-info!

No doubt a system thought out by "great legal minds" similar to those who devised the unfair UK motor insurance model....... and the ridiculous English house purchase system!

===
The vast majority of us Brits are nothing more than vassals to the regime in Westminster and their enslaving Orwellian systems, so I find it terribly ironic when we sing the myth "....... Britons never, never, never shall be slaves."
 
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