HOW TO DRIVE A CITIZEN MAD

This is a cautionary tale of how bureaucracy, given a chance, will kick the stuffing out of an ordinary defenceless citizen. This one is a woman called Erin Douglas.

ON 17 December 2015 she set up a direct debit with the DVLA, and the first payment to them went through smoothly. Erin changed her address and  gave her business address,  but made sure the details on her card for the direct debit still matched.

Fast forward some six months to July 2016. Erin is informed her payment hadn’t gone through – in other words, she’d been driving about with no tax and no knowledge that she didn’t have any tax.

She mightn’t have known but the pen-pushers knew. So when they spotted her car on Alfred Street in Belfast on 15^th of this month at 2.00pm, they clamped it.

Bewildered, Erin contacted the DVLA and discovered that her automated payment hadn’t gone through. Why hadn’t it gone through? The person on the other end of the line had no idea. But she must now go to the post office and fill out a log book if she wanted to get her car taxed.

Erin objected – it wasn’t her fault the automated payment didn’t go through. The person on the other end of the line went off, and after an interval came back and took payment for  car tax over the phone. A confirmation email was also sent to Erin, saying the tax was now paid. Relieved, she asked that a copy of the email be sent to NSL in Belfast so she could get her car released – after all, it had been the DVLA’s cock-up. The person on the other end argued about doing this but eventually relented , told her an email confirming the tax was paid would be sent.

So. She called NSL – aka The Wheel Clampers. Oh dear. The Wheel Clampers’ computer system was up the left . Sorry, afraid we can’t give you any information OR take a payment so your vehicle will stay clamped. There followed four hours of calls back and forth to DVLA and NSL aka The Wheel Clampers. Futile. Waste of time. The NSL computer system stayed crashed for the rest of the day.

By this time Erin was getting …let’s say exasperated. Eventually the man at the Belfast pound said he’d release the car if the DVLA would send an email admitting that the error lay with them. Uh-uh – DVLA would do no such thing.

At this stage Erin was getting seriously worried. Her partner, a Type 1 diabetic, had been away from home (Lisburn) for much longer than anticipated. Blood sugar level was a worry, as was insulin. NSL aka the Wheel Clampers still had a crashed computer system. When asked what Plan B they had in place for such a crash, they said, er, well, we don’t have one.

So Erin now begged the DVLA to send the email, that she had a partner with a serious medical condition . Oh well, DVLA told her, that’s not our responsibility. So Erin and partner got a train back home to Lisburn, leaving the car clamped in Belfast.

Next day Erin called NSL aka The Wheel Clampers at 7.45 a.m. Would you believe it – their computer system was working again! She gave her card details, £100 was charged to release the car. Only it wasn’t £100 –  the NSL/Wheel Clampers guy made a little error and took £260 instead. Oh dear. And she wouldn’t get the error righted until three days’ time.

On the plus side she got her car and drove home in it.

Will anyone take responsibility for this emotional mayhem? Nah. Could such a thing happen again? You betcha. Is the ordinary citizen totally at the mercy of the faceless powers that be? You betcha.

Happy Christmas, DVLA and NSL. May you choke on a turkey bone and when someone rings for an ambulance, they’re told the computer system has crashed.  But maybe you’d like to try the Heimlich manoeuvre?