Failure leads to extra cash (From This Is Local London)

Failure leads to extra cash

10:18am Friday 13th November 2009 in

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THOSE of you who have followed my six months of enforced public transport as a result of my failure to obey speed limits and my glee at being restored to the convenience of car travel again will doubtless be diverted to read that I have already been reminded of the downside of driving. Last week I worked for four days in north-west London.

I decided to pay the congestion in advance, knowing my predisposition to forget to do it afterwards and incur penalty charges. I discovered that the website was out of action while they did mysterious things to it. As a result, I couldn’t pay until my return home on Monday evening. The online service was still unavailable so I paid the £32 for Monday to Thursday using the telephone payment line. On Wednesday, I received an emailed receipt, dated that day for Tuesday to Friday, the Tuesday being charged at £10 as a ‘late payment’.

I immediately rang and pointed out that I had phoned on Monday and paid in advance, not in arrears. The operator told me that there had been problems that week, so I could pay for the Monday at the £8 rate. I suggested that the payment that they erroneously had down for Friday – when I would not be going to London – could be transferred to cover the Monday that I had in fact already paid for. They couldn’t do that; I would have to pay for the Monday and then write and claim back the overcharge and they would check the original phone call.

I intend to do this, but may well find that days and weeks will pass when I haven’t had time to go through the lengthy process that it will doubtless entail. I daresay that Transport for London make a pretty penny out of their failure to provide a proper service to their customers.

They really don’t want us up there, of course, so it’s not in their interest to make it easy. The consolation is that the studios in Ladbroke Grove that I visit frequently are currently in the outer London charging zone that the mighty Boris intends to unfetter from the congestion charge during the next few months. And the reason I do not use public transport is that it takes me under an hour by car, and at least two hours by train/tube/bus.

That’s two hours of precious time each day.