It seems that increasing it is the responsibility of the individual motorist in the UK to prove his/her innocence. With my recent experiences with VED and "lost" NIP forms I thought it might be worth offering some advice (for what it's worth).
1. Keep ALL motoring docs in safe place - MOT's, log book, licence, insurance docs etc. Sounds like common sense but a mislaid insurance cert will cause you problems/hassle should you get a "producer".
2. Send all important docs (such as returned NIPs) by recorded delivery. Failure to return these forms could lead to prosecution, what happens when they "lose" the form that you sent back?
3. If declaring a sorn, go to post office where you can get a reciept. I know of someone with a tax exempt vehicle who has had problems because the dvla "never recieved" the sorn that was sent in the post.
4. If you sell a car make sure the log book is filled in correctly and you keep the letter that the dvla send you. Again I know of someone else having a nightmare at the moment with parking tickets from a car they sold.
5. Road tax and insurance are easily kept up to date as you get sent a reminder, no such thing for the MOT which is easily forgotten.
All the above are simple things that you might regret not doing at some point in future. When I had my DVLA/VED "experience" I was extremely relieved that I had kept piles of paperwork which I'm sure helped me avoid a larger fine.
Anyone add anything else to this? Feel free to pick holes...
|
6. Photocopy all documents and keep somewhere else.
7. Scan all documents and email to yourself.
(very handy having policy numbers, tax disk number etc available).
|
7. Scan all documents and email to yourself.
I can see the benefits of scanning documents for reference but why would you e-mail anything to youself? Apart from anything else, unless you encrypt the contents, it's a very insecure method of communication.
|
|
If you scan them they're on your hard drive. If you then email them to yourself, they're then on your ISP's server where you can usually save them. A free backup service.
|
That's assuming you elect to keep copies on your ISP server, and not have them deleted once downloaded.
I assume you are talking about web based email or IMAP, and not POP3 mailboxes?
|
Just bought a new car. Given the V5 (15 years old) by the dealer. Went to post office to buy licence disc, and the chap behind the desk said he needed to send the V5 to DVLA.
I said 'that leaves me with nothing to prove ownership of the car', he responded that the vendor had given me the wrong half, but that he'd already ticked the part of the form confirming that he was sending off the old V5, so couldn't do anything about it. He gave me a receipt that says 'one V5' in the end, but I was not impressed.
|
Ref emailing them - I meant something like hotmail where you can leave stuff on the server and get at it anywhere.
Most useful when I was asked to produce my license when I was in Holland for a few months (and left the thing at home). Dutch plod accepted downloaded print fortunately. (phew)
|
Ref emailing them - I meant something like hotmail
I'd have security concerns about doing that and many e-mail providers have limits on the amount of data and period of time for storing it.
If you want to store documents on the net, maybe something like Yahoo! Briefcase (uk.briefcase.yahoo.com ) would be a better bet.
|
|
Also worth carrying, somewhere safe, photcopies of your passport back pages + driving licence, when abroad. Way easier to get an emergency passport if you can provide details of the lost one.
|
|
|
