EPCplc chasing an unjustified road tax fine

flyingcowman

Hi all,


Can you advise on the best course of action in this case please.


In September my father took a van and trailer down to Bulgaria for me and paid road tolls / tax as and when required. He has done the trip before so knows the routine. In October I received a fine from EPCplc accusing me / him of not having a vignette whilst on a motorway in Hungary. A timed and dated photo was attached. Anyway, my father had kept all receipts and they clearly showed he had purchased vignettes for the van and trailer two hours before the photo was taken. I appealed through their website and two months later got another letter demanding payment saying I'd only shown one side of my V5 in the appeal. So I sent it back again with another photo. Another two months passed and then another letter to say the vignette only covered the trailer and not the van. That is rubbish as I'd sent two receipts, one for the van and one for the trailer. So I've sent another email back with all the photo's again. I'm not confident as they seem hell bent on extracting money falsely and keep coming back with more and more reasons to reject my appeal and demands that I pay. I have no intention of paying as I have clear evidence their claim is unjustified.


What is the best course of action? I'm a bit worried that a trip back through Hungary in the van might result in being pulled over by the police.


Thanks

MothballsWallet

So, it sounds like this was for something in Hungary, is that correct?

I don't know if EPC would have much luck because they'd probably have to get a court case for this in Hungary and cross-border court stuff is complicated (and expensive).

I'd recommend hanging on for advise from other, more experienced, posters.

flyingcowman

Yes it was in Hungary … What annoys me is they expect me to pay and then argue about it. I know damn well if I did that I'd never get the money back. I wonder how much money they make through false claims and speculation?

MothballsWallet

EPC has an office in London, according to my Google fu, and I'm not sure if this is a penalty charge for parking per se - more like a traffic/toll one, so you may want to head over to pepipoo and register there: the folks there know more about those "tickets" than us.

If you decide to ask them, please don't use a Hotmail/Windows Live email address as their registration page will reject it.

But I'm willing to be corrected by people who know better than me, I've only recently got back into helping out on this board, so I'm still catching my knowledge back up.

StaffsSW

EPC plc letters don't even get opened in my office - they go straight in the bin. I used to keep them filed, but after 4 lever arch files, I found a better use for my shelf space.

In simple terms, the foreign agencies have no method to enforce a local debt overseas. In the UK if you get a debt here (civil or statutory such as unpaid car tax or tl charge) there is a process where the issuing agency can escalate it through a court and instruct bailiffs. But they can only generally do this in the same country as the debt was "earned".

The foreign agencies simply pass on the details to EPC plc, who will then pester you with letters. There is no appeal routes open, but also no chance it will go to a court, here or abroad.

I have tried for a few years to work professionally with EPC plc, but they are not interested, they don't want to see reason, or try to work professionally just want people to send them money by sending out lots of letters.

Ignore it. Then you will a letter from Contractum Debt Services, same people, same office, different letterhead. If you are lucky, then Rossendales might send you a letter, but again, that can go straight in the bin.

I've asked EPC to take a few to court to see if we can get a precedent or line in the sand, but they wont. They know that they can't.

I've even said to my directors at work that I'm so confident that these will never reach court, that if they do I will pay them myself, and we have about £500k worth of alleged debts owing to EPC.

flyingcowman

Makes sense - Thankyou

Giango

Dear StaffSW,
we have been relieved somewhat to hear your contempt for the demands from this company known as EPC plc .
Today we have received 12 x €1220 demands from this company, on behalf of TFL, Transport For London.

We spend a lot of time in Spain and decided to drive back to London with our Spanish registered vehicle, for an approx 2 month visit. Little did we know that each day we drove in Greater London our vehicle would be subject to a £100 daily LEZ charge ! We knew of the congestion charge but had no idea of this new, to us, low emission zone charge. We have a 4x4 from 1990 hence we are included on the naughty emissions list.

Our first 'offence' of driving in to London was committed end of December last year 2018.
After which we were photographed 11 more times driving within Greater London.
Luckily it wasn't more as we could have racked up far more journeys, but had decided to park and leave our car for the most part of our trip, which eventually ended up being more like 3 months.

Anyhow, after being back in Spain a few weeks we today received 12 notices all at the same time, postmarked from Sweden, all from EPC plc. Apparently if we don't pay the PCNs by 23/05 each charge will rise to €1829 each, almost €22K in total !

We do feel sickened by this. Firstly there are no indications visible to a driver that we are possibly committing an offence, as with parking or speeding or bus lanes.
That is another issue though so, sticking with EPC...
We are being notified a whole 4 months after the first 'offence' by EPC & TFL. How are we expected to know we have committed an offence when it is so far after the fact? It gives us no opportunity to take action to prevent it from happening again and just seems so unfair we are kind've lost for words...

What would be your suggested course of action? Most of the threads we have read talk of EPCs inability to take a UK driver to court over offences committed in Europe, but our case relies on the question of if EPC have powers to make us pay a UK fine here in Spain/Europe, we would appreciate any advice.
Many thanks for your time,
best wishes,
Giango and stressed wife

Umkomaas

This isn’t your thread, so posting on here is not in line with forum guidelines.

What you really need to do is as follows:

As we major on private parking tickets here, PePiPoo will be your best bet for council tickets. Register there (but please note that a hotmail address won't work - try using a gmail account instead if you do have trouble registering) and post a new thread; here's your link:

http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?act=SF&s=&f=30

Have a read through some of the other threads there before you post your own to get the hang of what information they need from you in your opening post - but as a minimum you will need to post redacted photos/scans of all correspondence you've received from the council (both sides, if appropriate) as they need to see all the small print.

PePiPoo has an excellent success record in dealing with council tickets.

HTH

neloalmeida

Hi @flyingcowman Just wondering what the outcome was of this ECP process... did you pay in the end?

Umkomaas

neloalmeida said:

Hi @flyingcowman Just wondering what the outcome was of this ECP process... did you pay in the end?

Flyingcowman last visited the forum almost 2 years ago, I suspect he won't see your query. Try a PM to him, then he should get a poke via email.  

StaffsSW

If it's any help, we've filled the reams of EPC/Contractum letters in the circular filing cabinet for over a year now and never had any comeback or issues.