Hey all,
We've had a court summons for DVLA for an untaxed vehicle with no information of how to contact them to ask questions or change the date (as we can't make the date on the letter) but mainly, we're confused as to why it's gone this far.
We bought a car in November 2014 (first time buying in about 6 years) when we bought it it was taxed up until June 2015, so we didn't worry about it. We got all the documents in our name and insurance sorted within a few days.
On 2nd January 2015, the car got clamped (Happy New Year from DVLA!) and we had to pay a fee to release it and a another fee as a penalty as well as taxing the car going forward. The problem was that we weren't aware that the Tax Disk had been discontinued and that tax was actually no longer transferable, so it wasn't an intentional tax evasion at all.
If they had simply alerted us to the changes when we had registered the car we would have updated the tax immediately. When we spoke to the pound they let us know to expect a bill for the back dated tax too, which would have been fine as it was for only about £40, which we could have paid no problem.
We never received the bill or any further communication on the matter until now when we've had this court summons saying we hadn't responded to the letter they sent in Jan (which we never received)
We don't want to plead guilty as this will cost us nearly £1000 which we can't afford and feel is unfair as we've done all we can to be inline with the law and feel it's their error for not sending the communication/chasing us up in an appropriate way. We also can't attend the court date as we're working at the other side of the country at that time, so if we do have to go we need to change the date, yet there's no info on how to do this or how/who to contact.
Can anyone offer any advise on the best plan of action?
Anyone experienced anything similar?
Thanks in advance.
We've had a court summons for DVLA for an untaxed vehicle with no information of how to contact them to ask questions or change the date (as we can't make the date on the letter) but mainly, we're confused as to why it's gone this far.
We bought a car in November 2014 (first time buying in about 6 years) when we bought it it was taxed up until June 2015, so we didn't worry about it. We got all the documents in our name and insurance sorted within a few days.
On 2nd January 2015, the car got clamped (Happy New Year from DVLA!) and we had to pay a fee to release it and a another fee as a penalty as well as taxing the car going forward. The problem was that we weren't aware that the Tax Disk had been discontinued and that tax was actually no longer transferable, so it wasn't an intentional tax evasion at all.
If they had simply alerted us to the changes when we had registered the car we would have updated the tax immediately. When we spoke to the pound they let us know to expect a bill for the back dated tax too, which would have been fine as it was for only about £40, which we could have paid no problem.
We never received the bill or any further communication on the matter until now when we've had this court summons saying we hadn't responded to the letter they sent in Jan (which we never received)
We don't want to plead guilty as this will cost us nearly £1000 which we can't afford and feel is unfair as we've done all we can to be inline with the law and feel it's their error for not sending the communication/chasing us up in an appropriate way. We also can't attend the court date as we're working at the other side of the country at that time, so if we do have to go we need to change the date, yet there's no info on how to do this or how/who to contact.
Can anyone offer any advise on the best plan of action?
Anyone experienced anything similar?
Thanks in advance.
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