HELP!!! Being charged £230 for my husband using the Dartford Tunnel!!!

[Happyland8]

Please help.

I'm not a driver & have never driven on the dartford tunnel so none of this is making much sense to me.

DH is in the Army and is deployed just now. We moved house at the end of last year but today I accidentally had a parcel delivered to my old address, when I went to collect it, they had some mail for us.

Anyway, there were 2 letters saying that DH must pay £115 immediately as he has been charged for not paying to use the dartford tunnel. The incident happened back in April (just as our mail redirection stopped unfortunately) and now it's 2 fines of £115 which we really can't afford.

I can't believe a £2.50 toll road could escalate to this. It has also been reviewed in court without our knowledge so that's also a black mark against DH's name unless I can appeal this.

Has anyone been through this? I'm feeling so upset and stressed by this. We aren't home owners yet and I don't want this to affect us getting a mortgage and I just don't know what I'll do if they don't let us off with it

just checked payzone, nearest place is nine miles away. An ideal outing for the first day of the holidays.

This is a nuts thread. It's nothing to do with his driving licence. Dart goes on car reg, the car will be registered to his address, that's what the leasing company will have, as such, that's what needs to be updated.

Call them op, explain your husband has been deployed, see what rhey say.

Where on the approach does it tell you you can pay at a Payzone store?

The signs say “find us online”. I guess they assume that most people in this day and age are capable of googling “Dart Charge”, you can then find the website which tells you the various ways of paying.

I’ve actually just noticed on there that you can pay by phone too.

It’s not very inclusive is it. Especially to those who might be going on holiday without a smart phone

OK that looks to me more like going to court than having been to court.

Write down what you have said here.

Husband in the Army and deployed with limited contact.
No letters received at your address and mail re direct/new occupants have not forwarded anything.

You are not sure whether your dh paid/attempted to pay and you have no way of contacting him at the moment.

You had to move house with very short notice.

Anything else relevant, if you have children or health issues.

Put this in a letter and send one copy to the court and another to the Dartford tunnel address.

IF it has already gone to court then you can apply to have the CCJ removed or satisfied or a note placed on it.

removed - is as if it was never there
satisfied - it has been paid
note - exactly what it says, you write a note saying how the CCJ came about.

The reason they got rid of the tollbooths was it use to cause hours and hours of delays over the water and blocked up surrounding towns. It was hell for all those who live or commute in the area.

The new system is much better, pretty much everyone has access to the internet or can get to a phone to pay. It’s bloody dartford not the middle of nowhere, you can get signal...
You can pay once advance, set up an account or you’ve have until midnight the day after the crossing.

They give you a chance if you forget the first time.

It’s really not that hard.

@CressidaEgg are you looking at the document the OP posted? Which part tells you it’s gone through court? Not what I’m reading at all.

@TacoFriday - if you read the whole thread, you'll see that I said I'd cross-posted with OP when she was putting the document up. Before that, she'd indicated that it had gone through court.

It’s bloody dartford not the middle of nowhere, you can get signal...

Yes but you might be on a long journey that ends somewhere without a signal.
If you are alone you can’t do it while you are driving.
Many people who don’t often cross it might not realise that it’s changed and they need to pay in advance.

As far as I know foreign registered cars can just get away with it.

Seriously there is no way you can cross at Dartford and not know you have to pay. The signs are huge, very clear and plentiful. You also generally have a 3 mile stationary tailback in which to study them at length. I detest the operators of that crossing, but one thing you cannot say is they don't tell you there's a charge.

OP! Follow the advice and call Dart Charge tell them what's happened. Say you've your credit card ready and can you please just pay the original charge here and now. Lay it on with a trowel that DH is in the forces.

DH certainly didn't know you could pay in advance, he was expecting a toll booth. It's another one of those inconvenient things like pay by phone parking, another annoyance if you don't use it regularly. I imagine it is a much better money spinner now though with the fines they can collect, which I can imagine are far more than when it was toll booths.

The new system is much better

It is absolutely not better at reducing the queues as anyone that uses the Crossing and the M25 from at least Swanley to the A2 every single day will attest.

Until the system of accompanying lorries with flammable loads improves, or organising breakdown recovery on the approaches improves it will not be less congested. But it suits the proponents of the new Thames crossing not to address the issues caused by the daily fuck up at Dartford.

I've not RTFT so apologies if this has been said before. I've been in exactky the same situation (down to the mail redirect and not realising about change of address on the car).

You need to call the people who run dart charge. Explain the situation, mail gone to the wrong place and say you want to settle the fine but have not seen the original copy of the fine (I realise you have, but this is what I did. FWIW I hadn't seen the file but had an enforcement agent arrive at the door). They told me they would reissue the fine. I expected to get £50 fines for each missed crossing but in reality they wiped the first and had me pay £2.50 for the remaining three.

You absolutely must update your car's log book as well as your drivers licence. I made that mistake, won't be making it twice.

I travelled over the bridge and through the tunnel the weekend just gone.

There are signs all along the M25 telling you exactly what to do and when to do it payment wise.

You have until midnight the day after you used the crossing to pay. I fail to see how he missed these signs as they are huge!

I imagine you'll have to pay up I'm afraid.

OK imagine you're driving to Germany. You pay at toll booths all across France and Belgium. You've been driving for nine hours (with breaks). Then you come to a tunnel with no toll booth. On the approach are some signs in German, which you don't speak. You go through the tunnel, and drive on another four hours to your destination. How exactly are you supposed to know that you are supposed to go on line and pay when every other toll road in the world, you pay on the spot?

TSSDNCOP originalsaltedpeanuts it’s not perfect but it is certainly an improvement! The tunnel is still queued most the time (for no apparently reason tbh) but going the other way over the bridge has been cut down from hours to minutes. As someone who goes over there twice a day, it has made a huge difference to travel times.

LaDaronne you plan your journey?? The signs (with prices) make it clear that something has to be paid. Besides, as stated previously they are lenient if it is your first time.

I've just Google Imaged the signs, and the big ones don't give you a price FWIW... and planning your journey is fine, but if as I say every other toll in the world you pay on the spot, how do you plan for the one that doesn't if you don't know about it in advance?

Honestly, if you've driven all that way to a remote holiday destination with no internet, it's just a massive ballache to be chasing up this piddling little debt on your first day. I had no idea you could pay in advance, I'll do that in future, though again it's just another fucking plate to keep spinning - and like a PP I wouldn't be at all surprised if this were a deliberate policy to raise revenue from fines from people who have better things to do than spend ten minutes on line paying a debt when they could do it in twenty seconds on site.

When DH went through there he planned his journey but how was he to know beforehand that you have to go online to pay the Dartcharge, last time he used it it wasn't online.

He didn't think it was that clear by the signs, what you had to do, he rang me and was say something about paying it online and I sorted it out at home for him. He was travelling alone to a camping site for an event and he would have have had to have hoped there was a phone signal and then had to faff about paying this if I hadn't done it.

Honestly guys it’s so obvious I don’t know how anyone can miss it there are more than enough signs with prices on.

Also, it wasn’t ‘twenty seconds on site’ though as it use to cause hours of queues..

Can’t be bothered to argue anymore.

@LaDaronne, good news for you if you can’t be arsed - set up an account, keep it topped up (either regularly or make one off payments) and it automatically deducts the toll. Takes a few minutes, at best.

NOT EVERYONE DRIVING ON UK ROADS CAN READ ENGLISH. The cues are still massive. And I don't think there are signs with prices on. I will set up an account now I know it exists, but I maintain that should I fail to keep that completely fucking pointless extra plate spinning, when we've driven a full day with small kids for a long weekend to visit elderly family in a remote part of East Anglia with no reliable internet or phone cover and no payzone shop for miles, it is a massive ballache to spend half a day fannying around trying to find a local library that hasn't been shut under austerity just to pay sodding two pounds sodding fifty.

this is the sign, when it's not hidden by a high-sided lorry.

60% of drivers find the sign confusing: www.kentonline.co.uk/dartford/news/dart-charge-signs-confuse-millions-41861/

Lots of people failing to understand the charges in comments: