MET Parking - NTK £100 charge letter for somewhere we have never been - Car cloned??

rthirlby

Hi, hopefully someone can point me in the right direction as I'm unsure how best to proceed with this having read through the Newbies section.

We have received a Notice To Keeper letter from MET Parking for an alleged breach of the max allowed parking duration of 30 minutes. The location of the alleged parking violation noted on the NTK letter is somewhere we have never been, a petrol station forecourt on the outskirts of London. At the time of the alleged violation we were using the car in another country!

My initial thoughts were that our car number plates have been cloned so I filed an online report to the areas police department and I'm waiting to hear back from them.

What on earth do I do with this? What do I tell MET, the standard templates dont fit this case.

Many Thanks for any advice

Half_way

Odds on its an ANPR missread where a car with similar looking number plates to this had been miss read, as opposed to a criminal cloned plate.
 Do you have pictures of the vehicle that overstayed?

Fruitcake

What happened when you complained to the landowner? This is always Plan A. Point out that as principal they are responsible for the actions of their agents, and are jointly responsible for this data breach.

Complain to the DPO of met, and also appeal using their appeal portal, telling MET in no uncertain terms that this was not your car which was out actually out of the country at the time of the alleged event, and by obtaining and processing your personal data they have breached the Data Protection Act 2015 and the Data Data Protection Regulations 2018.
Give them seven days to respond with a cancellation otherwise you will report them to the ICO.

Report them to the ICO for this data breach if they fail to investigate/cancel.

Complain to the DVLA that they have supplied (sold) your personal data to MET without reasonable cause and without carrying out any checks, which is a breach of the DPA/GDPR as above. Again, tell them in no uncertain words that this is not your vehicle which was actually outside the country at the time of the alleged event.
They will probably reply with a bathtub full of whitewash, so report them to the ICO for this failure once they have responded.

You have to respond to all parties before you can report them to the ICO.

Complain to your MP.

rthirlby

Yes have pictures on the letter, car is near identical to ours (same model and colour) nothing special and very common family car.

Plate reads correctly on the photos.

Can only assume the other vehicle is an untaxed, uninsured clone of ours.

I now have a crime number from the local Police, should I now forward this to MET?

Castle

rthirlby said:

Hi, hopefully someone can point me in the right direction as I'm unsure how best to proceed with this having read through the Newbies section.

We have received a Notice To Keeper letter from MET Parking for an alleged breach of the max allowed parking duration of 30 minutes. The location of the alleged parking violation noted on the NTK letter is somewhere we have never been, a petrol station forecourt on the outskirts of London. At the time of the alleged violation we were using the car in another country!

My initial thoughts were that our car number plates have been cloned so I filed an online report to the areas police department and I'm waiting to hear back from them.

What on earth do I do with this? What do I tell MET, the standard templates dont fit this case.

Many Thanks for any advice

Have you contacted the Garage, they may still have CCTV pictures/video of that particular day.

Half_way

Next question, do you have a smart phone ? Do you use Google maps?
On a pc/computer log into the Same goigle account that you use on your phone, go to Google maps and then on the the lines for the menu go to timeline/location history

rthirlby

Fruitcake said:

What happened when you complained to the landowner? This is always Plan A. Point out that as principal they are responsible for the actions of their agents, and are jointly responsible for this data breach.

Complain to the DPO of met, and also appeal using their appeal portal, telling MET in no uncertain terms that this was not your car which was out actually out of the country at the time of the alleged event, and by obtaining and processing your personal data they have breached the Data Protection Act 2015 and the Data Data Protection Regulations 2018.
Give them seven days to respond with a cancellation otherwise you will report them to the ICO.

Report them to the ICO for this data breach if they fail to investigate/cancel.

Complain to the DVLA that they have supplied (sold) your personal data to MET without reasonable cause and without carrying out any checks, which is a breach of the DPA/GDPR as above. Again, tell them in no uncertain words that this is not your vehicle which was actually outside the country at the time of the alleged event.
They will probably reply with a bathtub full of whitewash, so report them to the ICO for this failure once they have responded.

You have to respond to all parties before you can report them to the ICO.

Complain to your MP.

Hi Fruitcake,

Looks like our posts crossed so didn't see this message until after I had posted.
The land owners customer service team dont want to know and have directed me back to MET. I have asked for contact details of their complaints department.

I will follow your other steps next.


Castle, 
I will ask for this when I have the contact details of the complaints dept ref above.

Half Way,
Yes I have a smart phone and yes I can pull up tracking history for that day

Umkomaas

Plate reads correctly on the photos.

The shown number plate on the Notice to Keeper is usually a computer generated graphic representation, not an actual photograph of the plate. Are there any digits in your VRM that can easily be misread for another one, like a 6 can be misread as a 0, or a C a G ........ ?

Can only assume the other vehicle is an untaxed, uninsured clone of ours.

I think that if this was a real case of cloned plates, you'd be getting far nastier surprises than a private parking ticket for a few minutes overstay at a random petrol station. Chavs don't clone plates unless they've got something major planned!

Brie

rthirlby said:

Yes have pictures on the letter, car is near identical to ours (same model and colour) nothing special and very common family car.

Plate reads correctly on the photos.

Can only assume the other vehicle is an untaxed, uninsured clone of ours.

I now have a crime number from the local Police, should I now forward this to MET?

Is there anything different about the car?  Fluffy dice?  National Trust sticker??  Either there or missing??

This would help prove it's not the same car.

Brie

And you say you were in another country?  Did this involve chunnel or ferries at all - more proof of you and your vehicle being elsewhere.  Alternatively petrol receipt on the day in Scotland or Cornwall?

rthirlby

To update on this we contacted the DPO at MET as per the post above from Fruitcakeand included the police crime number and the PCN has been cancelled.

Thank you all for your help. 😁