Dear LPG,

I still drive, although not that far in these days of house arrest.  It is really good to be able to get around a bit in relative safety although I have a story to tell which illustrates that there are lots of different kinds of safety!

One Sunday, not so long ago, I got an early morning telephone call.  It was a young man who told me that he was a police officer before asking me where my car was.  That worried me and I was soon at the front door but all was well.  He then asked if both number plates were still attached and I was able to tell him that they were before asking why.

He told me that there had been an incident involving a car of the same colour, make and model as mine and showing the same registration number.  He said that someone had had my number plates made up and put on the other car and also warned me that being ‘cloned’ in this way was becoming a bit of a fashion amongst car thieves, and that most of them flout the rules of the road because they know they won’t get the resulting traffic violation letters. I was given a police crime number and told that it was more than likely that I might get a few traffic penalty charges, and he was not joking. 

Over the next three weeks I received 21 in all.  My car’s clone had gone the wrong way up one way streets, down prohibited roads, parked wrongly and entered the congestion charge area without paying.  

Two North London councils were involved, and I also found myself in trouble with the congestion charge and low emissions people too. I was lucky enough to be able to work out how to do this online, so I contested them all but I had to go through the whole online process separately for each violation until the congestion charge online application called up all the violations and accepted one explanation for their six. 

Then it is a case of waiting for about a month after which one council sent me a letter telling me that, in spite of the police reference numbers, I needed to prove that my car was in my drive at the time of the violations or send pictures proving that mine was not the same car as the one pictured by their CCTV.  Most of the pictures that the cameras took were of silhouettes of what could have looked like any car. Most of the pictures showed a black car-shaped blob where the only thing that could really be seen is the registration plate because of the reflective paint they are made with, although there was one where it was parked in daylight. 

I think that we all think that our car is unique and I never realised just how similar cars of the same make and model are until I was told to send pictures of mine.  In the end I got back to the police officer who first told me about all this and was given a CAD number to add to my submissions.

You cannot do that online because they will only allow you to send one message per violation, so I spent hours on the phone to the offices of each of my accusers (not to mention the time waiting to get through) and each advisor I talked to told me that this is happening more and more, which left me thinking that the process is bad enough if you did do the crime, and left me asking why, armed with a police crime number they could not get their proof from the authorities. 

After a month, one council finally exonerated me from three violations and then sent me a demand for £195 for the fourth.  When I called to ask about it they told me that it was a mistake and I should ignore it. They alone sent me eight letters.  The congestion charge and low emissions are dealt with by the same office but there was an issue because I sent less information when dealing with each online collective challenge and, even though the advisor I spoke to had the files of both sets of charges in front of him, I had to write another letter to him because he could not attach the information from one set of charges to the other.

The whole experience was inconvenient, time consuming and upsetting and I am a pensioner who has some it knowledge and is not afraid to confront my accusers.  But this could have happened to any pensioner and there are many who can drive a car and see it as their freedom.  I can’t imagine how distressing it would be to get so many parking fine letters for someone not so able, especially when I worked out that I would have been expected to pay £2040 in charges even if I paid them all within that 14-day-half-price period, had I gone down that route.  I also realise that, for many victims the parking violation is the first time they realise that cloning has taken place and it is also quite easy to buy a used car that has been cloned before you parted with your money.

Three months later, I am still waiting to be cleared of some of the fines from one council and, looking back, I have to say that I really resent a system which put me through all this anguish even though the police told me about what had happened and I had their reference numbers to prove it?  

Although I accept that there has to be a process I have to admit that it is only now that the whole thing is all but over that I have remembered to blame the nice person who married his car up with my number plate in the first place. 

AR, Downham.

LPG found some information on the subject…

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