What is it with being poor..

[scaryclown]

That makes everything more expensive??

I'm fuming/despairing at the moment. I've just managed to get control of my money after a period with no income and no soon as i get my first month finishing with £10 spare the fucking DVLA have written to me to trap me thus...

pay £300 or so quid NOW or we will take you to court where you will have to pay £1000. You cant pay in installments.

so because i'm poor, i'm forced to go to court to be charged £1000 because the court CAN enforce installmemts to pay...

fir a wealthier person, this is inconvenient and manageable, for the poorest its MORE EXPENSIVE ..

what the hell?

Also the reason is that i was clamped for pulling up on my 'to the MOT station' journey to collect the numberplate that i needed to pass the MOT and PAY THE DVLA ...they also charged me £260 to unclamp the vehicle.

UTTER BASTARDS...

my food bill is £120 a month

WIBU to put their windows in?

I find it a bit odd that you would be clamped on your way to an MOT for stopping to collect something you needed to pass the MOT. Someone at the DVLA is not applying common sense here. You appear to have been incredibly unlucky to have been caught at all and clamped. Were you there for some time? I once didn't get my car tax reminder and was driving around for a week or so after the old one expired until I got a final reminder and paid immediately online.

Write to them one last time explaining the situation again. Say that you need to pay the £300 in instalments and you simply can't pay it upfront. If you need a court hearing to get the instalment plan, so be it. Then you explain the same thing to the court.

And ignore the judgeypants idiots on here who are always so sanctimonious. I am amazed there are so many perfect people on MN, I certainly don't come across them in real life.

And you are right about it costing more to be poor, see prepayment meters for energy as an example.

This may not work, but if you do go to court, you can tell them about all of this (calmly) and demonstrate your lack on means on the means form.

They don't have to fine you the whole £1000, they just have the power to, so they can fine you less if they think that's the fair thing to do.

Just make sure you put all your outgoings as well as income on the means form so they can see you have no money. They can make you pay costs but they're not obliged to.

Someone at the DVLA is not applying common sense here.

Or, lacking in psychic ability, they don't know what the OP was doing.

Also I agree re the Captain Vimes Boots theory.

It's also cheaper to be rich because you can buy in bulk - nappies for instance is a good example. If you are rich you can buy big packets that cost miles less per nappy that the small packets that might be all a poor person can afford until they get paid.

the point is that when we do break rules or rules are confusing and unfortunately broken as there is no doubt where fines are concerned changing rules causes confusion but more money will be collected (and I doubt there is anyone on here who has never broken a rule) when you are poor or have little money spare you are punished even more by having no choice but to pay the higher fine as you do not have the spare money to pay the original fine

around here roads are changing to 20mph. a few roads changed earlier in the year other roads overnight no warning, signs few and far between and painted on the road which you are unlikely to see when traffic is heavy yet police were out with their speed guns

I got caught speeding in a new 20mph zone I said I'm very sorry etc and he behaved like I imagine a father would, lectured me on safety and having children in the car and then sent me on my way
Apparently this is unusual but I was about to cry

You're right OP. It's so much more difficult to access anything easily when you need it and don't have the money. You shouldn't have been clamped for that. How else were you supposed to get that number plate? Sympathies

Need to be organised. Only your fault you decided to get the number plate in a car that had no MOT!

think you are missing the point of kilmuir

because the op hasn't got £300 upfront she has to go to court and will have to pay by instalments and the cost to the op will be £1000

should the op not be able to be the fine in instalments (with maybe a d/d charge of 5% added for the inconvenience of having to set up a d/d)

we have all made mistakes, you shouldn't be punished more for making a mistake because you have little or no spare money

KormaBalls:

When I get desperate and start to cry, that when my case gets resolved 

You quoted me? In shock or disgust?

I hope and pray you never have to fight some of the fights I fought. Sobbing doesn't even cover it.

Shame on you for your lack of compassion.

I got towed a few years ago. I was new to the area, couldn't find a spot on my rode (Zone E residents parking) and put my car on the next road along. Turns out, this is a different borough.

Took 3 days to realsie my car was gone (don't use if every day) and went to the car pound.

Cost £350 to release. I cried at the number.

Now, actually, that £350 was annoying, but did not cause me to not pay my rent, or food, or actually really impact me much at all. I think I didn't go out for a few social meals planned. But for a fuck of a lot of people (who maybe depend on their car for work) £350 is a LOT of money and maybe wouldn't have been able to release the car there and then... then you have to pay more because the pound fees go up every day.

Shame on you for your lack of compassion

Unfortunately this isn't the first thread where I've seen a complete lack of compassion from this poster.

because the op hasn't got £300 upfront she has to go to court and will have to pay by instalments and the cost to the op will be £1000

All true, and yes its unfair, BUT she isn't being fined for being poor, specifically: if you don't pay your fine you get taken to court, which costs money. And that is why the thousand pounds, not just because someone decided to be mean to people who couldn't or didn't pay their fines.

user1478

The OP might not be specifically fined for being poor, but that is the result therefore she has every right to feel aggrieved.

It's the law of unintended consequences, and in fact instead of us sitting here typing these words we should each be asking our MP why the hell this sort of injustice happens.

I think there are far bigger injustices to be talking to MP's about than : I got my car clamped and didn't pay, now I have to pay more.

Is it fair, no. But come off it, if you want to talk about the tax on poverty, which is a real problem, this is very much the wrong test case.

50bales
You're all heart aren't you?

to you OP

Oblomov16 Advising the OP to cry is hardly good advice. You came on gloating about it! "I start of all convinced that I am right. This gets me nowhere. When I get desperate and start to cry, that when my case gets resolved. " and "Oh I didn't do it to get let off. Well, yes I did, "

I hope and pray you never have to fight some of the fights I fought. Sobbing doesn't even cover it. You don't know me because I don't come on here complaining about my lot. It's not a competition.

DeleteOrDecay You mean I have a different point of view.

Everyone coming on here has a back story leading to their complaint which we aren't privy to. Just because I'm not gullible nor believe everything at face value doesn't mean I don't have compassion.

KormaBalls, please don't misquote me. I never told her to cry. I explained what had happened to me and how frustrating it was.

You seem to have a very strange attitude to others problems.

"You came on gloating about it".

I wasn't gloating.

I think whoever invented the saying

I'm too poor to buy cheap

got it wrong

OP I totally sympathise.

Last week I got a parking ticket. I'd parked in a tube station car park, in a disabled bay, using my blue badge. The signage said I therefore didn't have to pay. But the car park uses automated cameras to detect who has paid and who hasn't.

So this week I get a parking fine. I'm totally confused - I checked the signs etc. I ring customer service and it's all automated and tells me even with a blue badge I should still expect to pay for parking "Except where stated otherwise". So I drive back to the station (about an hour away in rush hour) and take photos of the signs, which sure enough say I'm entitled to park there.

I now have to submit the pictures and a covering letter, but that can't be done online, I have to pay to print and post them recorded. Did I mention that I'm disabled? So I've paid petrol to go and take pictures, print costs and postage costs for a fine I shouldn't have got.

Their policy of 'send a fine to anyone who doesn't pay regardless of whether they've followed the posted rules' is blatantly discriminatory and has put me out of pocket. A more vulnerable disabled person or one who isn't as prepared to fight as me may have just paid the £60 fine, or worse, bury their head in the sand. I'm going to fight it, but my point is this is another example of someone who is disadvantaged being fined for that. And disability and poverty often go hand in hand unfortunately.

There was a time when I would have been in the same position OP. Luckily for me I got made redundant from a job where I'd worked for many years and got a substantial pay out. Not enough to completely get me out of debt, but it was enough to get me to a 'comfortable' level in my current account - better than some I know with higher paying jobs. I could now afford £300. Sure I'd resent it, and fight it with a vicious letter writing campaign if possible, but it wouldn't stop me from paying rent, bills or eating.

You can write to the DVLA and offer a nominal amount you could afford - even if it is £1 a month. If you have a refusal to that in writing from them it's likely any court case would get thrown out because of them nut letting you pay. Have you got it in writing that they won't accept installments? That in itself would be invaluable in a court case because it would show you're willing to pay but they're being obstructive. I got a few of XDPs debt hearings thrown out of court simply by having letters refusing nominal payments.

I think it's clear that a certain type of person is very much invested in blaming the poor for their own circumstances, perhaps by way of assuaging their own conscience- it's ok that people are living in poverty because they deserve it or they exacerbate it through their bad choices - but examples like the OP's demonstrate clearly how their choices are limited to start with and the dice is so loaded.

In terms of car ownership - I can't afford a car and I live in a town with reasonable public transport so I don't have one. I read threads on here expressing righteous condemnation of non-drivers: they're childish, incompetent, lazy, entitled, lacking in something fundamental to being an adult, selfish...it goes on and on. If I took on some debt to buy a car and got stung by a big repair bill I couldn't afford, the same people would slam me for daring to own a car without a great big financial safety net. Try want to think they are savvy and responsible and anyone in a less fortunate position is there because they aren't as clever or were feckless in some way. It's lose-lose.

If you appeal again to the dvla, I would send them a copy of your order conformation (to prove you were buying a number plate), proof of your mot appointment and a print out from google maps showing that the shop was on the way to the test centre.

If they still refuse your appeal, try sending a detailed budget and a copy of a payslip to show them that you can afford £x a month but not the whole lot in one go.

I missed a Council Tax instalment (literally didn't have a penny to my name), so they demanded the whole of the remaining payments in a lump sum, up front and within a week (totally roughly £800).

I rang and explained how hard up I was. Answer basically 'tough, can't you borrow the money to pay?'

So I asked 'are you advising me to take a pay-day loan to pay you back?'

'Yes' was the answer.

Hugely luckily I got an overdue pay cheque in that just about covered the total, but I couldn't believe they'd advise me to take a massively expensive payday loan (knowing how broke I was), just to cover CT payment...but I guess then it wouldn't be their problem.

I completely agree with OP that everything is more expensive for the poor. The poor have to be cleverer at budgeting and sourcing which in itself can be expensive.

I must point out though that the one trip to the MOT centre is only valid from point a to point b and if the car stops at an intermediate point then it becomes a separate journey so I really wouldn't expect dvla or a court to take that into account. Sorry.

In defence of the OP re:rich paying lawyers to deal with the fines -where someone said they've never met anyone willing to pay £500+ for a £300 fine, I have to say as a student in a traffic law firm I worked with a client who would challenge every parking ticket (max £60) where the fees were considerably more than that. They did it because they thought traffic wardens were bastards and deserved the hassle and cost to them. Some people have more money than sense. This person was a regular and did it out of a sense of mischief.