Cardiff Newport Road PCN (buslane) Options

[R1234]

Hi,

First time posting (new to the UK).

So I did a contract in Cardiff for a while and for that I stayed in the center of Cardiff. To get there I had to take a specific turn at Newport Road. There's a buslane that is at the end of the road and goes into a left turn a few meters after the lane. The road is a busy one and I can find a lot of complaints about this specific bit now that I've been researching it. My worry is that I only just not got a letter in the post for a fine on the 4th of November (received on the 1st of December according to the rental company) I did this drive 5 days a week and I blindly (stupid I know) followed other cars and tried to keep the traffic flowing as it's a busy street.

Basically I'm terrified of the shitstorm coming my way with a potential 25+ fines in one go on a bit I wasn't aware I was breaking a rule or there being any camera's.

What can I do with this?

I've attached the PCN and blanked out the License plate.
I had to reduce the file-size quite dramatically, let me know if it's not clear enough and I will use an external image hoster.

Thanks in advance.

This post has been edited by R1234: Thu, 6 Dec 2018 - 15:50

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[Mad Mick V]

OP-----Who is the addressee on the PCN --you or the hire company?

The terms of your hire are important before the hire company can pass over liability to yourself. Compare what is required under legislation with your agreement:-

http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showto...t&p=1349860

As usual the Cardiff PCN is duff because it has a will/may glitch.

Last, you or the hire company are asked to pay via a phone line which charges extra. Not on!

Let's take a view on the Sh*tstorm when you have enquired of the Council/ hire company how many PCNs are in the pipeline.

Mick

[R1234]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply, I really appreciate it.

I've rung both of them up and neither can tell me anything. The council says under GDPR they can't tell me until the rental company gives them my information, the rental company claims they have no details of any other dates. The council however already has a 3rd date that they got info about from the rental company that the rental company itself has no administration of. It's a completely confusing case so far.

The rental company is Hertz if that makes any difference. I'll look into the forum you linked.

Thanks again.

Edit I am the addressee on the PCN, apparently they sent a letter to Hertz first who then gave the council my info, who then sent me the PCN.

This post has been edited by R1234: Thu, 6 Dec 2018 - 18:48

[cp8759]

Edit I am the addressee on the PCN, apparently they sent a letter to Hertz first who then gave the council my info, who then sent me the PCN.

So surely now the council can talk to you directly?

[R1234]

Hi,

Yes for this specific PCN. Their answer was that it's easiest to just pay. Which isn't surprising coming from their end.
They refuse to tell me anything regarding potential others and have not been willing to send me a copy over, even though it's been over a month now since the on of the other supposed incidents occurred.

I will read through the topic linked and see what I can do in this case, so far everything I've read tells me that with the Cardiff council it's kind of a waste of time to even raise anything with them.

[cp8759]

Upload the rest of the PCN, however there's already a flaw on the first page. It says that once a charge certificate is issued, "any right to appeal will be lost".

This is wrong, because The Civil Enforcement of Road Traffic Contraventions (Representations and Appeals) (Wales) Regulations 2013 provide under regulation 3(4)(a) that:

"that representations on the basis specified in regulation 4 may be made to the enforcement authority against the imposition of the penalty charge but that representations made outside the period of 28 days beginning with the date on which the penalty charge notice is served (“the representations period”) may be disregarded;"

Therefore the enforcement authority it not required to ignore representations made after a charge certificate has been issued, it has a discretion to either disregard them or to consider them. As a fair (cough cough) and reasonable (cough cough) public authority, it has to be assumed that if representations are made after a charge certificate has been issued, and good reasons are given as to why the representations are late, the authority would give due consideration to whether the representations should be disregarded or not. The authority cannot fetter its discretion by saying that once a charge certificate has been issued, there are no circumstances where it might consider representations.

This post has been edited by cp8759: Sat, 8 Dec 2018 - 15:35

[R1234]

Hi,

Thanks for your response!

I've uploaded both pages, can you not see one? If so which one, I'll reupload it.

[R1234]

So an update on this.

I finally received some feedback from Hertz, but not in the way i was hoping.

For the rest of the fines (another 4), the council took over a month and a half to send out a notice. Afaik this voids the validity of the fine. All good here.
Sadly however, Hertz has decided to blindly pay these fines instead of letting me fight them as they ran outside of the term. Is there anything I can do in this to recoup any of the costs as well as the insulting 42 pound admin fees on invalidated PCN's?

Thanks again.

[cp8759]

So an update on this.

I finally received some feedback from Hertz, but not in the way i was hoping.

For the rest of the fines (another 4), the council took over a month and a half to send out a notice. Afaik this voids the validity of the fine. All good here.
Sadly however, Hertz has decided to blindly pay these fines instead of letting me fight them as they ran outside of the term. Is there anything I can do in this to recoup any of the costs as well as the insulting 42 pound admin fees on invalidated PCN's?

Thanks again.

Once a penalty is paid there is no chance of appeal. However, if Hertz bill you for the cost, they're effectively charging you for a self-inflicted loss. You are not required to pay anyone for their own self-inflicted losses but this is now a private dispute between you and Hertz. Your options are:

1) Attempt a chargeback on your bank card.
2) Complain to Hertz and ask for a refund (and if they refuse, ultimately you can issue a claim in the county court using the small claims track).

I'm more than happy to help you with this but how far you're willing to go is up to you (I would take Hertz to small claims if it were me, but I'm a very litigious person).

[R1234]

Thanks again for your help, it really is much appreciated as I'm not well versed enough in this.

I will call Hertz again and demand a refund, if they do not comply I will issue a charge back. If nothing works I'll take them to court as I'm tired of the 'abuse' they're dishing out.

If this is the case though, why do they act on this? Is it purely to catch people out that won't take them to court? As it seems incredibly illegal to do this.
I'm guessing the administration fee on the fine still stands after this.

So far they've charged me one additional administration fee for a fine that I've seen no PCN on nor have I received a payment for them, I'm not sure what's best to do this as all of this happened in November 2018 and in my opinion it's beyond ridiculous that it's taken this long.

[cp8759]

If this is the case though, why do they act on this? Is it purely to catch people out that won't take them to court? As it seems incredibly illegal to do this.

To be honest I'm not entirely sure, I suspect it's a combination of incompetence and maybe not having enough staff to deal with all the correspondence (I imagine between council PCNs and police NIPs they must get sacks of post each day). But while they're being incompetent what they're doing is not a crime, so unless people start taking them to county court I guess they can get away with it.

I'm guessing the administration fee on the fine still stands after this.

So far they've charged me one additional administration fee for a fine that I've seen no PCN on nor have I received a payment for them, I'm not sure what's best to do this as all of this happened in November 2018 and in my opinion it's beyond ridiculous that it's taken this long.

Well I think you can get the admin fee back, at least for the PCNs they paid in error. The admin fee is basically there to cover the salaries of the staff who deal with the sackfuls of mail they must receive each day, and you're contractually agreeing to pay them a fee to deal with the administrative burden of handling the correspondence. So far so good. However, section 49 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 says:

Service to be performed with reasonable care and skill

(1) Every contract to supply a service is to be treated as including a term that the trader must perform the service with reasonable care and skill.
(2) See section 54 for a consumer’s rights if the trader is in breach of a term that this section requires to be treated as included in a contract.

Section 54(3) says:

(3)If the service does not conform to the contract, the consumer’s rights (and the provisions about them and when they are available) are—
(a)the right to require repeat performance (see section 55);
(b)the right to a price reduction (see section 56).

Section 56 says:

Right to price reduction
(1) The right to a price reduction is the right to require the trader to reduce the price to the consumer by an appropriate amount (including the right to receive a refund for anything already paid above the reduced amount).
(2) The amount of the reduction may, where appropriate, be the full amount of the price.

So I would argue that where Hertz has incompetently paid the PCNs and charged you for them, when they should have actually transferred liability to you, they have failed to perform the service in accordance with section 49, and you are therefore entitled to a price reduction. Given the amount of hassle and bother they're put you through, I would say the appropriate price reduction is the full price, so the admin charges should be refunded.

However any admin fee for a PCN they dealt with correctly (i.e. the one where they transferred liability to you) is fair and you can't argue over it.

[R1234]

Right so after a serious amount of back and forth I got through to someone that said ' yea what you've done so far with the phonecalls is not good, we need it in writing.'.

They claimed they do this all the time and it's in their terms and conditions. When I mentioned the charging for a self-inflicted loss (again) they were quick to state it needed to be in writing so they did recognise the complaint.

So far this has taken absolute ******* ages with their response time and 'a manager will call you back' nonsense.

Can you advise / assist in this letter? Are there things I need to do and things I should definitely not do?

Thanks again.

[cp8759]

Upload all the paperwork (or emails) you've received form Hertz and I'll draft a letter for you.

[R1234]

That'll require some digging as it's been a few months, I won't be around tomorrow but will upload as soon as I can.

Thanks again!

[cp8759]

There won't be space on here, put them on imgur.com and post a link.