A Hampshire woman was left feeling 'nauseous' after receiving 'multiple' fines from the Tyne Tunnel, despite never visiting the transport link 300 miles away from her home.
Susan Woodhead, from Andover, was shocked to find that she had received multiple Unpaid Toll Charge Notices from TT2 Limited, despite being nowhere near the North East of England on the dates she was said to have been snared for a lack of compliance.
And the news hit her so hard after her initial notice on December 3, that she decided to head straight to her local police station - worrying that it may be a scam, or that her plates may have even been cloned.
Read more: Lancashire pensioner wrongly sent Tyne Tunnel fine despite never making a trip through it
Speaking to Chronicle Live, the 69-year-old said: "I was very concerned, I also wondered whether it was a scam and somebody was trying to get money out of me. I took it to the police station, and the police said 'no, but if this wasn't you it may just be a one off, you could just drop them a line but don't worry.'
"Then the following day, I got another one - so, as it was December and my local post office and postmen were having problems because of Covid and difficulties, I opted when I wrote to them to send the letters by registered post, partly because of the Christmas post and that happening.
"I went to the police again, who said it looks like it's a cloned car number and that I could be contacted because if there's a crime, and often these cars with cloned numbers are used by gangs of criminals, I could end up with the police coming to me.
"Then on the 30th of December or early in January, I got three letters from them [TT2 Ltd] all on the same day, all in different envelopes - telling me that they had put on their system that it was not my car, that I wouldn't be fined and that I shouldn't hear anything from them."
But throughout January, Susan said she continued to receive UTCNs from the Tunnel despite correspondence that she wouldn't.
She decided to call the Tyne Tunnel directly, where she says she was told that the number plate had been misread due to a screw on the number plate, which was reading a 'C' as a 'G' - hence the fines.
She added: "They came back and they said 'this is actually a misread number, this registration number is actually a C not a G and it's where the screw head is we're reading it as a 'G' - not on all of our cameras but on some of them.'"
TT2 has said "additional checks" are being put in place to make sure errors such as this do not happen again and said their number plate technology has a high level of accuracy.
Susan was furious that staff didn't check their other cameras which would have potentially rectified the issue before sending out the notices. After it was revealed that the fines were not due to a cloned registration plate, Susan was then in touch with the police once again as well as the DVLA to prevent future stops from officers.
Susan said: "I'm not impressed with these people because it appears that they can send these things out, and you have to react to them. If you don't react to them you could end up with court summons, you could end up with bailiffs.
"You have to prove you were not there - I mean I was fortunate because I park my car outside my office when I'm at work and I have appointments with people, so I have a few people who could be witnesses that my car was where I said it was.
"The police also told me to collect car parking tickets, collect supermarket receipts just to prove where I was.
"I just feel as though it hasn't been resolved satisfactorily because although they said 'it's our error, we're sorry' this is really not good enough.
"This company is not accountable to the people who it treats this way. People who have never been through the Tunnel have all of this to deal with.
"How many other people have been put through this inconvenience?"
Susan tells ChronicleLive that she has had 'a dozen' fines sent to her door collectively throughout the debacle.
Local campaigner Gary Spedding's Tyne Tunnel Fines campaign now has in excess of 13,000 signatures online - calling for reforms on the system TT2 Limited currently have in place, especially with regards to UTCNs and fines alike. Emma Lewell-Buck has also taken matters to Parliament, notifying Jacob Rees-Mogg on the effects it has had on her constituents in South Shields.
Other drivers from across the country who have come forward after being wrongly fined include a Lancashire pensioner who had never driven through the tunnel and a Kent woman who has never even been to the North East.
With regards to Susan's case, Chief Executive at TT2, Philip Smith, said: “An inaccurate Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) reading unfortunately led to Mrs Woodhead receiving an invalid charge notice. It was quashed on appeal and we are very sorry that Mrs Woodhead was inconvenienced and upset and we have apologised to her, personally.
“We have put some additional checks in place to ensure this issue – where a C on Mrs Woodhead’s registration plate was read as a G, due to a bolt placement - does not happen again.
“We would like to reassure tunnel users that, due to the high accuracy of our ANPR system, incorrect number plate readings are very rare and will always be rectified as soon as a customer appeals their UTCN. This means that no-one will ever have to pay for our error.
"We endeavour to sort out any charge notices caused by incorrect readings as quickly as possible, via our customer service team.
“Currently, our ANPR readings are correct 99.8% of the time and our agents manually check around 5,000 readings per day.
“We are putting new steps in place continually to improve this accuracy rate, as we learn more about the technology and how to effectively mitigate against any anomalies that occur in the automatic readings. We are striving to reach an accuracy rate of 99.96% and believe we are track to achieve this.”
