Dartford crossing

leitmotif

Hi all.


My partner passed through the Dartford Crossing for the first time this week on the way to a funeral on the continent. I haven't been through it for years, so didn't know about the fact that they don't do the pay at the booth thing any more. Apparently you drive through and a camera notes your number plate and then you have to pay online. Out of grief or carelessness, my partner didn't notice (or it wasn't clear) that the pay online option expires at midnight the next day.


So now she's likely to get a penalty charge notice through the post, though it hasn't arrived yet. I went online and successfully paid for the return leg of the journey (she arrived back this morning). I've seen online that first-time offenders are given a 14-day grace period in the PCN to settle the fee. Is this true? And will we still be deemed first-time offenders if the PCN for the first crossing isn't processed until Monday or later because by then we will already be in the system for having paid the second (return) crossing today?


Any info on this would be much appreciated!

peter_the_piper

I went through there about a month ago and was surprised by the number of signs advising the crossing was coming up and saying that you need to pay by the following day. There were even signs after to the same effect. I think it highly likely that you'll have to cough up.

waamo

Several users have reported good results if you contact them on Twitter. If you aren't on it then join and contact them.

HighamKneeDee

I went through it after an extremely long journey in the summer and by the time I got home simply forgot to pay it in time.
I rang them, gave the car registration and they noted that a penalty charge was in process. they advised to wait for it, to call them, to pay the fee and the penalty charge will be wiped. It was.
In summary, call them.

leitmotif

Gave them a call. They said there's nothing they can do about it. We'll either get a warning letter (in which case we can just pay the charge) or a full penalty charge notice, but it sounds like that's decided automatically rather than by human intervention.

Coupon-mad

No, you can then phone them again if you get a penalty, and tell your story again to a nicer person who got out of bed on the right side.

NOT mentioning the first phone call AT ALL, obviously!