Companies regularly running cars from their fleets through the central London congestion charge zone are complaining that they are receiving unjustified fines and being overcharged by a new automatic online system. The system was installed in November last year by IBM so that fleet owners could register their vehicles online and be automatically charged when they entered the congestion zone.

For companies which have large vehicle fleets, rental suppliers and leasing firms, the advantage of registering the vehicles online is a £1 discount on the £8 charge every time one of their vehicles crosses the congestion charge boundary.

However, operations director at Miles & Miles car rental, Bryan Thompson, claims that the system is too slow, too laborious and far from user friendly. He said that if he had to guess, he would say that the system was designed by a two-year-old child.

Mr Thompson said that the firm had contacted Transport for London, but was still experiencing problems. He added that after the new system had been introduced, his firm was charged twice what they should have been and even charged for a hybrid vehicle which entered the congestion zone, even though they are exempt. He went on to say that IBM should buy the previously used Capita system, as that worked far better.

TfL have admitted that there may have been some teething trouble, but added that they had mostly been sorted out now. A spokesman said that TfL was determined to work closely with fleet companies to make sure that the system continued to work well in the future.