DVLA Unlicensed Vehicle £160 Surety - Refusal to Refund
Comments
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Is it normal business practice these days, in the context of being an authorised agent of the DVLA, to restrict one's business hours for communication with "customers" from 8am-5pm Monday - Friday, and NOT tell them that that means they must make contact by 5pm?
They're not unreasonable business hours - and if you google "Redcorn", the opening hours are given clearly, as well as on the "Contact us" page of their website.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=redcorn
https://www.redcorn.co.uk/contact-us/
If you leave it until the last ten minutes of a 15-day period, you really should not be surprised if problems arise.0 -
You must get Vehicle Tax within 15 days and contact the vehicle pound...after this period you will lose the surety fee.
It's unclear here if that means you have to contact the vehicle pound within the 15 days (which is reasonable), or if you can tax within the 15 days and contact later (which you did).
One could certainly argue that 5:20pm on day 15 is really 9am on day 16 in business terms. That's how courts work, for instance.
It might be worth getting a better look at the terms and conditions - is it 15 days or 15 working days?
You don't have much to lose by filing a Letter Before Action demanding your £160 back, taking it to small claims court otherwise. State your case, with evidence, and hopefully they'll agree it's easier to just pay it.
Why did it take 2 weeks to get it passed the MOT? Older less common car?0 -
I don't want to get dragged into a morality debate about my offence. I have accepted my guilt. I have paid £100.00 for the vehicle to be released from a wheelclamp. I have paid the £160.00 surety pending getting the vehicle taxed.
I paid the annual vehicle license tax on the 15th day. I now must pay back-tax and a fine for having an unlicensed vehicle.
The vehicle was parked on a road at the time of my offence, which was really really unlucky because I had just taken it out of a private garage where it had been kept off-road for several months.
I had popped into my home with a few things from the boot of my car which I was then going to take into a local garage a few hundred feet away for the servicing and MOT. In that short 10-minutes, Bingo - I was clamped!!
What I still feel aggrieved about is that I was told I had 15 days to get the vehicle licensed so that's what I did. I was not told that I had until 5pm of the 15th day. Oh and by the way, most Post Offices open until 5.30 pm. I paid my Licence Tax at 5.20pm - 20 minutes too late to tell the clampers, Redcorn Ltd.
Is it normal business practice these days, in the context of being an authorised agent of the DVLA, to restrict one's business hours for communication with "customers" from 8am-5pm Monday - Friday, and NOT tell them that that means they must make contact by 5pm?
The DVLA leaflet on "Wheelclamping and removing vehicles" states: "How to claim a refund of the surety fee - You must get Vehicle Tax within 15 days and contact the vehicle pound...after this period you will lose the surety fee. Please note: You may need to provide confirmation of Vehicle Tax."
Thanks for the advice re: small claims court - I am wondering what law(s) I might use to argue my case that the surety should be returned - Consumer Protection?? I will send a Complaint to the DVLA's wheelclamping complaints service and I might contact someone like the BBC's You and Yours, as I really do see this as a "bit of an earner" for the wheelclampers with a blind eye being turned by the DVLA.
Why did it take so long to put the car through MOT and get it repaired and re-MOT'd if you had already arranged it?. If the garage did the repairs and MOT themselves then it's pretty poor of them for taking so long to do it.
Also what time of day was it clamped?. I would say you have a case if you taxed it on the 15th day before the time it was clamped. But if it was clamped before 5:20PM (which it sounds like it was) then that would have gone into the 16th day after it was clamped.0 -
The DVLA leaflet on "Wheelclamping and removing vehicles" states: "How to claim a refund of the surety fee - You must get Vehicle Tax within 15 days and contact the vehicle pound.
It's unclear here if that means you have to contact the vehicle pound within the 15 days (which is reasonable), or if you can tax within the 15 days and contact later (which you did).
In contract disputes there's a general principle that, where wording is ambiguous, the benefit goes to the party that didn't write it.
That wording is potentially ambiguous, and could have been made unambiguous very easily using plain English - it's not like it's explaining some obscure and convoluted idea. "You must get vehicle tax and contact the pound within 15 days" would do it if that what was meant.
Although a DVLA leaflet isn't a contract, it is the explanatory info that they provide about what you must do, so it'd be reasonable to apply the same principle. In this case that would be the OP.
Also, while businesses run within business hours, road tax itself runs (and normally can be bought) midnight - midnight. If there's any special restriction on when (during that midnight - midnight day) it can be bought for this purpose then it should be up to the DVLA to make that known.
They didn't make any such restriction so it's reasonable to conclude that any road tax purchased up to midnight on the 15th day is acceptable.0 -
Which is lovely, but the surety has been lost for failing to notify the impounders within 15 days - and the OP didn't do that.Joe_Horner wrote: »They didn't make any such restriction so it's reasonable to conclude that any road tax purchased up to midnight on the 15th day is acceptable.
On a side issue, the only online copy of the INF32 leaflet I can find says...
"How to claim a refund of the surety fee
Produce a valid tax disc to either the vehicle pound or a DVLA local office, within 14 days of the vehicle’s release. After this period, you will lose the surety fee."
The wording is clear there that the notification must be within the time period, not the purchase.
But more interesting is that it's 14 days, not 15. Now, this might have changed - this is an older leaflet (dated 6/11, and referring to tax discs) and not on a gov.uk site, but it would be a strange change to extend by ONE day from precisely two weeks to 15 days.
http://www.driveall.co.uk/files/5113/6897/5727/inf_32.pdf
Also - if you go to the gov.uk site, and follow the link to start releasing the car, it takes you to...
https://www.cartaxenforcement.co.uk/
This also refers to 14 days, but the wording is less clear as to whether it's the purchase or notification.
"You must get Vehicle Tax within 14 days and contact the vehicle pound on 0843 224 1999†. After this period, you will lose the surety fee"0 -
Which is lovely, but the surety has been lost for failing to notify the impounders within 15 days - and the OP didn't do that.
Agreed that's what's happened, but whether that's OK or not depends on the wording of the information supplied to the OP 9- I assume it would have been by leaflet given at the time of seizure rather thah leaving him to hunt round online for whatever version he can find!
If it's exactly as he's quoted above then a court should still read that in the OP's favour as "obtain tax within 15 days, then contact the pound for the refund (within reason) at an unspecified time". That's how the plain English reading of that wording would go, and it's also the most beneficial to the OP.
If the current wording isn't exactly as he's quoted (in quotes...) then all bets are off without seeing the actual wording!
FWIW my best guestimate for the change to 15 days is that the intent was to have the tax bought within 14 (up to midnight) as before, with the 15th day allowed for contacting the pound if you'd bought the tax "out of hours".
But that's not what the quote says and in court they don't get a chance to say "what we really meant was...." if there's a plain English reading that the OP might (reasonably) have made.0 -
Joe_Horner wrote: »Agreed that's what's happened, but whether that's OK or not depends on the wording of the information supplied to the OP 9- I assume it would have been by leaflet given at the time of seizure rather thah leaving him to hunt round online for whatever version he can find!
Oh, absolutely. But without knowing exactly what it says, we can only go on what we do have access to. OP - any chance of a verbatim quote, ideally a scan/photo?0 -
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Those DVLA/government documents you refer to quote "Tax Discs" so that would have been pre-2014 when the tax disc system was scrapped.
The period of time to get your vehicle taxed is indisuptably 15 (fifteen) days from either (some ambiguity here) the date of the vehicle being clamped or the date of the wheelclamp being released from the car. Either way, in this case, I was within my 15 days.
The only definition of the 15 days I was given, by the wheelclamping Agent, was 15 calendar days from when I paid the refundable Surety Fee - nothing about the time of the clamping, or normal business hours, or phoneline times.
The wheelclamping agent, who after all takes your money (£100 for wheelclamp release and £160 surety fee) over the telephone, TELLS YOU THAT YOU HAVE 15 DAYS TO TAX YOUR CAR. They don't say anything about doing so by 5pm!!!
You can tax your vehicle online with DVLA at anytime night or day as long as the DVLA system can see the other necessary valid documents - V5C and MOT. You can tax it over the telephone with the DVLA up to 7pm on weekday evenings, again as long as the DVLA can see the other necessary valid documents.
You can also tax it over the counter at a Post Office (and Sub-Post Offices, subject to early closing), on production of all your other valid documents (V5C and MOT) and Post Offices are open until 5.30 pm on weekdays in the UK, as are most Sub-Post Offices (subject to early closing).
So why would you not be able to contact the DVLA-appointed Agency which took your obligatory but refundable Surety Fee, after 5pm on weekdays (and not at all at weekends)? And why have they not warned you of this? And why hasn't the DVLA issued accurate guidance instead of ambiguous phrases?
I am not trying to pull a fast one here. Firstly I have parted with my money at the time of the clamping. I have fully taxed the vehicle. Incidentally I got it serviced and MOT-ed but as neither the DVLA nor the wheelclamping Agent has brought up the servicing or MOT, then I don't see the comments about how long it took me to do my business as relevant. I was given 15 days. I took 15 days. Of course I regret not taking only 14 days, or 13, or 12 etc, but I was given 15 days, so that was what happened.0
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