Earlier today, I received a penalty charge notice. I’d dropped my son at the airport a couple of weeks ago – and thought my car was registered to auto-pay the Heathrow terminal drop-off charge. Apparently it’s not, because APCOA wrote to me demanding £80 for my mistake, reduced to £40 if I paid within 14 days (five of which had already passed because they used a slow postal service). Hey ho. It was a mistake. One which I’ll hopefully not make again. It’s annoying though.

It reminded me of another letter on my desk. You see my confusion about autopayment came about because I do have AutoPay set up for the various London charges – Congestion Charge, ULEZ, Dartford Crossing. All the Transport for London (TfL) ones but not Heathrow Airport, it would seem…

A mystery charge based on flawed process

Last month, I was checking the transactions on my credit card and I spotted an extra charge to TfL. It seemed strange so I logged on to my account. My son had driven into the ULEZ one day (which I knew about and expected the charge for), but there was another charge he didn’t recognise.

Our car’s registration is KU07 ABC (it’s not really, but I’ve changed the details enough to tell the story, without publishing personal information). When I checked my online account, it showed a picture of KO07 ABC. But the ANPR had identified it as KD07 ABC. KD07 ABC is not a valid registration, so somewhere, either a human or an AI had decided that the charge should be allocated to our car. I suspect it was either based on the fact that our car had been driven in the ULEZ zone previously, or because someone has to check these things manually and they get very, very bored. Regardless, our Volkswagen Golf was not the Seat Ibiza in the photo.

The cheque’s in the post

I contested the charge and was pleased to get an email a few days later that confirmed my complaint had been upheld, based on the evidence provided (TfL’s own photos from my account). But the part that amused me was this – the refund for this highly automated digital charging process was to be sent in the form of a cheque.

So, I have a very analogue cheque for £12.50, to pay into my account (as it’s 2025, I shall do this with a digital photo), but all as the result of a digital process that doesn’t quite work…

Featured image: Traffic sign image licensed under the Open Government Licence version 1.0 (OGL v1.0).