Received text to contact Capital Resolve for fine I have already paid

sweetgem

Ok so I have always paid my Car tax religiously but the last few years because of poor health I haven't been using it much and it kept breaking down when I did. When my car tax came up for beginning of April 2026 I just naively thought it would just expire and that would be the end of it. I had moved a number of times and because of health and a whole load of other things it never crossed my mind to change address but eventually I grabbed any mail as it was a family members address where I lived for a long time. So after the tax expired I grabbed the mail a month and half later as I don't leave thw house much and saw I had letter from DVLA to pay a fine for taxing my car or Declaring SORN. I was mortified. It was a £40 fine and £16.67 for the untaxed number of months. So I changed my address, paid the fine and declared SORN on 28th May 2026. I couldn't take a screenshot of my banking app and forgot to screenshot the DVLA site to say I had paid but took a screenshot of a notification from my banking app to say the money was going out to the DVLA.

So surprised to receive a text from Capial resolve asking me to contact them in regards to an outstanding Penalty fine to the DVLA.

Called the DVLA stating I had paid ahe said I had not and I will have to pay £80 fee and the fine again to the debt agency. I Said you cannot declare SORN with an outstanding fine because the system online does allow you to move on until you have paid. I told her I definitely paid as my car online is declared as SORN. After me pushing for a while I told her to look into it throughly and then she said oh an attempt to pay was made but didn't go through. So again I said if I didn't pay why did you allow my car to to be SORN? I Said I was willing to pay original amount and she said I can't. Sent me some appeal paperwork via email.

Contacted my bank they said they couldn't see the transaction and I told them there definitely was as I screenshot the notification to say that amount was going to the DVLA. Adding to this you have to go through double security and confirm the payment via banking app before it can be processed by the DVLA and other organisations. I Told my bank something has gone wrong your end or DVLA and I am being penalised. I wasn't going to be fobbed off and told bank to look into it further and call me back.

Any advice and help would be appreciated. All the time and energy wasted on this Beauracratic BS is exhausting.

And apologies for the essay, being succinct has never been my forte.

Thanks

Arunmor

Check your bank statements. Did you press the last button? I failed to do that with a B&B, they phoned me and I paid.

sweetgem

Sorry forgot to say that I checked the bank statement throughly and I cannot see a payment out

sweetgem

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82070384#Comment_82070384

I pressed all the buttons. The notification from the bank to say that money out to DVLA, would not appear if it was not in the stages of being processed by both organisations.

Arunmor

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82070387#Comment_82070387

Then you haven't paid. You need to see it on the running balance screen otherwise it hasn't gone out.

Mildly_Miffed

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6676303/received-text-to-contact-capital-resolve-for-fine-i-have-already-paid

OK, let's try and break that down a bit…

Your VED expired, and you didn't SORN the car. The V11 you would have received is quite clear that you need to do one or the other.

Your car is registered to an address where you cannot be quickly and reliably contacted. That's an offence with a maximum fine of £1,000 in itself.

You claim to have a confirmation of the payment, yet there's no sign of it on your bank statements.

As for not being able to SORN a car while there's an outstanding penalty…? Really? I had no idea about that, and I've been SORNing cars regularly since SORN was introduced in the 1990s. Yet you didn't even know SORN existed a couple of months ago… The fact your car is SORNed now is certainly not proof that you must have paid the penalty.

The simple fact is that you are liable for the penalty through your own disorganisation, no other factor, and that disorganisation is why you now owe the penalty for not paying on time.

sweetgem

Update! Well i am only human and clearly not always on the ball as you are lol. But my bank finally got back to me and said the payment was authorised by them but the DVLA for whatever reason did not accept the payment their end. I am not one to shirk my responsibilities but I refuse to pay an increased penalty when the original payment was made. You may have been able to SORN your vehicle but I was not able to SORN it until I had paid the penalty and maybe that is because the car was untaxed and a penalty outstanding. When I received the SORN declaration by email my assumption was that the Penalty payment had gone through. Technical hiccups happen and that is why I went to my bank to let them investigate the payment failure. Anyhow thanks for stating the logical obvious which I had already gathered before your not so helpful post.