Parking fines & non-disc display problem

starbelgrade

A friend of mine bought a new car 2 years ago after the old one gave up the ghost completely. He found someone online to take the old one away to use for spare parts & stupidly gave him the Vehicle Registration Cert rather than send it in himself.

Anyhow, it appears that the dude who took the car away never registered the car in his own name.

My mate just got a shed load of letters through the door, sent on from the people living in the last house he lived in - the car was registered to this address. It turns out, that the car has been parked in a fee paying area since September & with the parking fines & fines for the tax disc being out of date, he owes €1,230 in fines and is in a major panic over it.

Yep - I know it's his own fault, but he's been out of work since last year & hasn't got two beans to rub together, let alone to pay off the fines.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

eyesofvenus

From what i can tell your mate is in the doghouse on this one...
As he is still the registered owner of the car it is ultimately his responsibilty

starbelgrade

Hmm. I was chatting to him earlier & he'd found out some information from the guy he sold it to. It seems that when my mate sold the car, it was parked in a private car park shared by tenants of an apartment block & office workers on the ground floor.

The guy who bought it (for €50), took a few parts that he wanted & left it there. It had been sitting in the car park for over 10 months when either the residents or the owner of the block, decided they'd had enough of it & pushed it out onto the public road outside, where it started picking up parking fines.

My mate had no idea it was there & only found out when the fines were forwarded to him from his previous house.

I dunno if that makes any difference.

Mr Benevolent

Moral of the story: Always keep the VRC and send it off yourself. OP, your mate's story sounds nasty, he's not going to be able to explain himself either. Only thing to do imo is get the car towed, scrapped and pay the fines or go to court when the fines come up and try to explain that away :eek:

cascade35

He could try get some of the people who use the private car park to maybe sign a letter saying the car was abandoned in their car park.
He should also call into his local garda station and explain the situation to them. He will get a rap for not changing ownership but they may help him track down the guy who bought it.
My advice would be to do as much as he can to prove he did not own the car before it goes to court.

Fey!

Ring the nice people in Shannon, or talk to someone in his local tax office (who are often extremely helpful and, I have found, are willing to give good advice).

starbelgrade

Thanks to everyone for their replies - I've had an update since yesterday. My mate was told by the office workers (who he knows, having worked there) that the residents had pushed the car onto the public road, but he rang the local council & the car was in fact towed out of the (private) car park by the council themselves on request of his old boss. They started putting fines on it while it was IN the carpark, before towing it away a few weeks later.

Is that even legal? Seems well odd to me.