To think that if the post office taxes your old car

[montysma1]

And not your new car as asked at the counter then this is THEIR mistake and not yours?

Husband presented all documents for new car, also had v5 for old car in case this was needed, as he wasnt sure how the new discless system works.
The branch unknown to us, because you have no tax disc actually taxed the old car , which was still taxed ar the time, and not the new car.
Today, after 3 months we have 3 £60 fines as he has been driving around untaxed.
£210 tax charged on old car
£160 to very hurriedly tax the new car(cheaper)
£180 In fines
£550 In total spent.
We will get some but not all of the £210 tax on the old car back...
Post office says this is OUR mistake. Their employee does not pay attention to what is asked, presses send without final check and this is our fault? We would normally do this online but the system wouldnt let him for some reason so he had to use the post office.
Post office complaints team not helping, dvla not interested. No higher body to appeal to......Be aware in the absence of a tax disk, you have no idea whats been done and no protection in the event of a mistake.
Just need a rant.

"In not checking that the car she was taxing was the car with the presented.documents she is contravening the instructions on the dvla web page."

And what instructions was your dh contravening in not checking that he had taxed the correct car?

I'm also not sure how you can tax the same car twice.

In not checking that the car she was taxing was the car with the presented.documents she is contravening the instructions on the dvla web page.

And in one sentence you explain fully why you are throwing a tissy fit over this. Allow me to rephrase it:

In not checking the documentation correctly matched the car to be taxed your DH was contravening vehicular law!

As has been said before, regardless of any error the counter staff may have made... deep breath... it remains the responsibility of the driver/owner to ensure a vehicle is legal. You cannot abrogate that responsibility, however strongly you feel about it.

That's so annoying op. I'd be well pissed off.

Did I read correctly and the old car was still taxed and she taxed it again so that you have paid two lots of tax on the one car? If so, I would argue on that point that the cashier obviously made a mistake as no one would pay two lots of tax on one car.

The old car would have shown up as taxed and insured on the computer screen, so there would be no prompt or need to check physical documents when taxing that car.

I'd be very surprised if there was no confirmation listing the details of the vehicle taxed, now that tax discs are absent.

Has he had back the remaining tax from the old car ? If ownership has passed on he should automatically get this credited. The cashier must have thought he just acquired that vehicle to retax it and no you no longer need the paperwork it is checked online as if you were doing it online yourself.

That should be the top and the tail of it, TheAnswer. If OPs DH had checked the documents he could have notified DVLA quickly, the new car would have been taxed, old car second tax refunded and all would be well with the world. A quick complaint to the PO manager would probably have been in order too.

It is possible to get 2 lots of tax on one car, we bought one that had 1 month to go, so we renewed it... only to find the seller had also done so and the new disc was in the glove compartment. We applied for, and got, a refund.

Why have you had three lots of fines?

Well, I'm going to go gainst the grain and say I think the PO are at fault - from your description the PO employee had all the docs for one car, then asked for the old cars details, then taxed a car still with tax on.

This is an issue of customer care, and there should be apprpriate and sufficient controls within the system to ensure these sorts of mistakes don't happen.

If the docs for the wrong car had been submitted - it should have been pointed out the car was already taxed.

If there was confusion, clarity should have been sought.

Is this covered by the Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman - worth a check.

Why did he not do it from home online?

He didn't tax it on line because the system would not let him for whatever reason. This has also happened to several people that I know. When the on line system won't let you do it, you are taken to a screen telling you to tax the vehicle in the post office and to present the reg doc, mot cert and insurance docs. This is what he did. He did not present MOT or insurance docs for the old car because he was not taxing the old car and he did not ask for the old car to be taxed.

The old car was taxed twice because it was already taxed and the post office taxed it again rather than taxing the new car as asked.

He has three fines because although the car taxing was done on 18th december we were not notified until this week that a camera had taken pics of the untaxed car on 3 different occasions dating back to 20th December. These 3 fines were notified in 3 letters arriving this week. Had they notified us at the time of the first "offence" rather than 2 months later, there would not have been a second or a third offence as we would have realised that the car was untaxed at that point and taxed it, which is what we have done now.

I would possibly make a complaint on the not producing all docs technicality but it's really his word against theirs so don't hold your breathe.

I work on paypoint tills and we have customers for e.g. ask for O2 top ups then come back and say sorry it's actually EE but we can't refund them so I do know customers can be confusing and get it wrong!

But if she was confused she should have asked for confirmation before pressing send. Particularly as he only produced the requested MOT and insurance docs for the new car.

He only had the registration cert and nothing else with him for the old car as he wanted info about SORN before deciding whether or not it was worth his while to do that. He decided not to and then said ok, can I now tax my new car and passed through the website required mot/insurance docs for the new car all together in a plastic file.

So yes, he asked about two different transactions, which is apparently the most confusing thing on earth. But it really should not be beyond the wit of a post office employee who is paying attention to the customer.

You can't tax a new car online until the ownership has been changed at DVLA.

But it really should not be beyond the wit of a post office employee who is paying attention to the customer.

Nor of the customer who is paying attention to the transaction taking place.

Regardless of the error the PO employee made the law still holds you responsible.

You can rail about it til the cows come home, but that won't change the reality: an error was made, your DH did not check the documents, you got fined!

Yes I am aware of that. But thank you for pointing it out.
Incidentally, there were no documents to check and no receipt provided, so which documents ought he have checked?

How annoying! I would also be querying why it took 2 months to send you the first fine, surely there is a timescale to do that and additional fines could have been avoided if you were informed earlier.

Monty, you really can't keep on trying to make this an SEP.

The law is quite clear... and a quick online check would have confirmed the car was not taxed. And I have a piece of paper, a receipt, that confirms the car tax I paid for, so there should have been documentation for your DH to check.

You do get paperwork back after you taxed the car. I do. I got a receipt with my reg number on. You van also check online! www.gov.uk/check-vehicle-tax

I did not do and it was can not van! Bad ipad...

And he did not get a receipt with reg on it. He got a switch receipt only, which she stapled to the New car documents which he had provided. I have already stated this. What he should have been given and what he was given are not the same thing. He had no reason to assume that the receipt He was given was not correct procedure as he generally taxes cars himself on line and does not use the post office.
Unfortunately he made the error of assuming that the woman had done her job. He was also not aware that you can check tax on line as he had no reason to suspect that he had to check having presented documents to tax one car and not another.
My husband attempted to comply with the law. He presented correct documents at a post office to tax a vehicle and paid to tax that vehicle in good faith that the post office would do so.
Unfortunately he is not as infallible and expert on all things DVLA as some commenters here though.

From memory of when I bought my car I think you and your DH are correct. I had to tax my new car and had to hand over my V5 over. Now the tax rules have changed and you are refunded on existing tax, no tax disc etc I can see how they could make this mistake. I would in the first instance make calls to DVLA and post office, explain the situation and follow this up with an email trail. I however do not have any knowledge of DVLA etc but thats the route I would take.

Many many years ago, our car was not insured due to one persons error/fraud (???) but we did have a receipt and the police believed we had paid and did not prosecute.

Only expert because I went on the site and checked what I had to do to tax my car when I had moved and also needed to send the log book back. PO was helpful, did both jobs and I checked on line 24 hours later...

And I am sorry, but I don't believe he did not know he could check on line... you have stated more than once that he usually buys the tax on line. It beggars belief that anyone could use the service and not know what information it holds.

Really, he made a mistake. He did. Him. Good faith has nothing to do with it.

You can't tax a new car online until the ownership has been changed at DVLA.

Yes you can. DS1 picked his car up on the Saturday lunchtime and we taxed it online at teatime. That was a month ago. At first the screen came up saying "go to the PO" but as we have already done DS2's recently we knew that often comes up, so we logged out and back in and it was fine.

Unfortunately OP it's your DH's responsibility to check that they taxed the correct vehicle. He shouldn't have taken the V5 to the PO for the old car, I can't think of one logical reason why he would have, that confused matters. I can't get my head round the idea of why he didn't notice when the PO clerk charged him more money than he should have paid for the current car. You shouldn't be £550 out of pocket because the outstanding tax is automatically refunded on the sale of a car.

Only expect as looked online before taxing mine and ive done it a few times in the post office. Just the one car so no idea re the new rules.... The checked tax online theres an ad every do often on tv. I remember seeing it once...