On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 19:14:21 -0000, "Graculus"
wrote:

wrote in message
news
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 12:13:20 -0000, "John Rowland"
wrote:


I have written a letter contesting a PCN .

The 14 day limit to pay 60 quid is nearly up... I phoned LB Hackney and
they
say they have received my letter, but they have not yet made a decision.
If
they delay giving me the result until after the 14 day limit is up, do I
then have to pay 120 quid, or will the decision letter give me another 14
days to pay only 60 quid?

TIA.


While it accepted practise to suspend deadlines while an informal
written appeal is considered, it isn't unversally applied (at least, I
cant find anything compelling a LA to do so). Theoretically, then, you
can find that your penalty has increased purely as a result of
questioning whether it should apply. If your appeal is rejected AND
they say that the full penalty applies, I've 'heard' (ahem) that its
not a bad idea to send a cheque for the smaller amount explaining why
you feel it appropriate and stating that in cashing it the authority
acknowledge full and final settlement. 'Apparently' (ahem) their greed
for any amount is sufficient for them to take what they can get )

Often aided by the fact that any cheque sent to them is normally
automatically paid in regardless of what correspondence is attached. Cash
cheque first, sortout the details later.

As a punter, you've no knowledge of the internal processes of your
local council. If they pay cheques in automatically, thats entirely
their lookout. You gave a cheque with conditions attached to cashing
it, if they didn't read the conditions thats up to them. Otherwise you
could say that none of the conditions of use for your credit card
apply to you because you didn't bother to read them!

BTW, what happens when cheques disappear, and you have to quote a card
number, in which case you have little say over how much they take?

I *think* its Cahoot (not sure since I dont have a Cahoot card) but
theres definitely at least one card provider who give you a unique
card number per transaction, with the funding available to that card
number limited to the amount of the transaction that you wish to pay.