Trainline.com assisting TOCs with fraud investigations

[ianBR]

It's clear from these forums, press releases (and a quick look on linkedin) that the Trainline.com has quite a few people assisting TOC's by investigating fraudulent transactions.

Given the trainline is a commercial enterprise, what's in it for them to invest so much in supporting TOC's by identifying fraud? Any revenue from cases found would flow only to the TOC and not trainline.com
Or does the trainline have some arrangement where it shares any revenue that the TOC's recoup through investigations/prosecutions.

I find it bizarre that trainline.com will spend so much on employing fraud analysts, but aren't willing to invest one hour of their developers time to fix the lack of warnings when a railcard stored in their trainline app has expired.

Do other online retailers work in the same way with TOC's, or is this unique to trainline?

 

[Haywain]

Given the trainline is a commercial enterprise, what's in it for them to invest so much in supporting TOC's by identifying fraud?

Well, every discount that a customer isn't entitled to is also a loss of commission to the seller, and every refund is also a loss of commission. That's what's in it for Trainline in the simplest terms.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Apr 2023 ==

Do other online retailers work in the same way with TOC's, or is this unique to trainline?

Maybe, but none sell anywhere near the number of tickets that Trainline do.

 

[yorkie]

Given the trainline is a commercial enterprise, what's in it for them to invest so much in supporting TOC's by identifying fraud? Any revenue from cases found would flow only to the TOC and not trainline.com

Apart from any other reasons, this fraud costs retilers money. If a customer has obtained a fraudulent refund, the retailer does not get their commission but still retains the costs (TOD fees if e-tickets not used, Lennon fees, and supplier costs!)

I find it bizarre that trainline.com will spend so much on employing fraud analysts, but aren't willing to invest one hour of their developers time to fix the lack of warnings when a railcard stored in their trainline app has expired.

The former costs the retailer a lot of money, whereas the latter does not.

It's also completely different job roles with different skill sets required.

 

[Haywain]

I find it bizarre that trainline.com will spend so much on employing fraud analysts, but aren't willing to invest one hour of their developers time to fix the lack of warnings when a railcard stored in their trainline app has expired.

It's also that they can clearly identify a commercial benefit to one and not to the other.

 

[AlterEgo]

It's clear from these forums, press releases (and a quick look on linkedin) that the Trainline.com has quite a few people assisting TOC's by investigating fraudulent transactions.

Given the trainline is a commercial enterprise, what's in it for them to invest so much in supporting TOC's by identifying fraud?

Trainline is the biggest source of online rail fraud by virtue of being the biggest seller. Given it has to be accredited and has to work closely with the industry to be so, it is very much in their interests to show they are "reducing fraud". In my opinion they go for very low hanging fruit.

 

[Jayjay1010]

there are some issues to iron out however, it is known that not all E Tickets are scanned, for a variety of reasons, so could Trainlines automatic refund policy mean they are short changing themselves. I don’t think any refunds should be automatic, but also TOC need the right infrastructure to deal with the percentage of E tickets such as Northern. Does Southeastern have a high percentage of e-ticket purchases similar to Northern?

 

[yorkie]

there are some issues to iron out however, it is known that not all E Tickets are scanned, for a variety of reasons, so could Trainlines automatic refund policy mean they are short changing themselves. I don’t think any refunds should be automatic, but also TOC need the right infrastructure to deal with the percentage of E tickets such as Northern.

I am not sure it's right to say there is an "automatic refund policy" but it depends on what you mean by that.

Can you quote which part of the policy you think should be changed, and what you think it could be changed to?

Does Southeastern have a high percentage of e-ticket purchases similar to Northern?

Southeastern is far behind rolling out e-tickets compared to Northern.

 

[Jayjay1010]

I am not sure it's right to say there is an "automatic refund policy" but it depends on what you mean by that.

Can you quote which part of the policy you think should be changed, and what you think it could be changed to?


Southeastern is far behind rolling out e-tickets compared to Northern.

The policy states:

Automatic refunds for UK rail products

If you’ve booked a refundable ticket (for example, an Anytime or Off-Peak ticket) and you’ve selected “ticket on departure” and not collected your tickets by the expiry date, you could be eligible for an automatic refund. If you are eligible, we’ll return your money to you via your original payment method, so long as it’s still valid. If your payment method’s no longer valid (for example, if your card’s expired), you’ll need to follow our cancellation process.

I think all passengers should have to apply for a refunds. It doesn’t change the entitlement.

 

[yorkie]

Automatic refunds for UK rail products

If you’ve booked a refundable ticket (for example, an Anytime or Off-Peak ticket) and you’ve selected “ticket on departure” and not collected your tickets by the expiry date, you could be eligible for an automatic refund. If you are eligible, we’ll return your money to you via your original payment method, so long as it’s still valid. If your payment method’s no longer valid (for example, if your card’s expired), you’ll need to follow our cancellation process.


The policy states:

Automatic refunds for UK rail products

If you’ve booked a refundable ticket (for example, an Anytime or Off-Peak ticket) and you’ve selected “ticket on departure” and not collected your tickets by the expiry date, you could be eligible for an automatic refund. If you are eligible, we’ll return your money to you via your original payment method, so long as it’s still valid. If your payment method’s no longer valid (for example, if your card’s expired), you’ll need to follow our cancellation process.

I think all passengers should have to apply for a refunds. It doesn’t change the entitlement.

There's no fraud risk in this particular case as this format of ticket would not be valid unless it has been printed/collected.

The fraud risk is where tickets have been fulfilled (either paper tickets which have been collected or e-tickets) and not clipped/marked (in the case of paper tickets) or not scanned (in the case of e-tickets) and are then submitted for a refund.

In some cases, tickets are even sent for Delay Repay as well as refunded (this can be detected; it's much easier to detect this with e-tickets than paper tickets)

 

[NorthWestRover]

(As Yorkie has posted whilst I was typing) That's paper tickets so nothing to do with e-tickets being scanned or not. If the ticket hasn't been collected, then by definition it can't be used and an automatic refund makes sense.

 

[Jayjay1010]

(As Yorkie has posted whilst I was typing) That's paper tickets so nothing to do with e-tickets being scanned or not. If the ticket hasn't been collected, then by definition it can't be used and an automatic refund makes sense.

thank you for the confirmation, I just read it differently and thought it meant all tickets.

Is there a plan for Southeastern to catch up with Northern and others e-ticket rollout?

 

[island]

thank you for the confirmation, I just read it differently and thought it meant all tickets.

Is there a plan for Southeastern to catch up with Northern and others e-ticket rollout?

Southeastern already offers e-tickets on journeys including those from one ungated station to another where at least one station is outside the London fare zones, and is rolling out barcode readers on its ticket gates to enable e-tickets to be further rolled out across the network.

 

[Bertie the bus]

In my opinion they go for very low hanging fruit.

Why wouldn't they? Reasonable gain for little cost or effort. As some of the low hanging fruit is people who are clearly idiots - some of the cons in the disputes section have to be read more than once to appreciate just how stupid and naïve some people are - it would be rude not go after them.

 

[AlterEgo]

Why wouldn't they? Reasonable gain for little cost or effort. As some of the low hanging fruit is people who are clearly idiots - some of the cons in the disputes section have to be read more than once to appreciate just how stupid and naïve some people are - it would be rude not go after them.

Well I agree, but I don't think they are catching the more intelligent and larger scale fraudsters out there - just going for low level offences, many of which wouldn't he crimes in any other industry. Calling it "fraud" is a stretch.

 

[RPI]

Why wouldn't they? Reasonable gain for little cost or effort. As some of the low hanging fruit is people who are clearly idiots - some of the cons in the disputes section have to be read more than once to appreciate just how stupid and naïve some people are - it would be rude not go after them.

You've hit the nail on the head.

 

[Doubleplus]

This is of course just fine, I’m sure, as long as Trainline’s T&Cs and privacy policy allow them to proactively mine customers’ purchase history to detect and prevent fraud against a third party (I.e. the rairway and train operating companies.) or to disclose the data to others under any circumstances.

No doubt that it’s fully covered… I just don’t seem to be able to pin a clear statement of that, at least not in the latest ‘totally up front and transparent’ terms which were apparent updated last week.

I can certainly see a statement which says that they may use some data to protect from fraud against ‘you’ (the customer) or against ‘us’ (The Trainline company) but not, at first glance, against anyone else.

 

[yorkie]

I can certainly see a statement which says that they may use some data to protect from fraud against ‘you’ (the customer) or against ‘us’ (The Trainline company) but not, at first glance, against anyone else.

Isn't the fraud against both TOC and retailer? Both these parties lose out on revenue and the retailer incurs costs.

If a train is cancelled and the customer chooses not to travel, the customer is entitled to a refund; the retailer has to give the customer the full amount back but the retailer cannot claim costs back from RDG (e.g. TOD costs where applicable, Lennon costs) or any other party (e.g. credit card fees) as well as having their ongoing costs associated with providing such a service.

This is bad enough for retailers to have to bear such costs under such circumstances, but if a customer fraudulently claims not to have travelled, the retailer is experiencing all those costs totally unncessarily, as well as the train company being deprived of its revenue.

RDG has ensured that retailers have a really tough time; it is probably impossible for any retailer to break even on train tickets (unless it charges booking fees or has some other value added form of revenue; the forum's site can only survive without charging a booking fee because we find cheaper fares for customers, and keep a proportion of those savings) even if none of the customers committed fraud. If you then add some fraud into the mix, things get even tougher for retailers.

 

[Doubleplus]

Isn't the fraud against both TOC and retailer? Both these parties lose out on revenue and the retailer incurs costs.

But Trainline has sold a ticket and made money on that ticket. If the ticket is not valid for the journey the customer ultimately took, that is not really their direct concern because they are not the train company. (And the train company does not penalise The Trainline for selling an invalid ticket, as we know.)

In the same way that if I drove my car with two bald tyres, I didn’t defraud Halfords because I only bought two new tyres when I actually needed all four.

People fraudulently claiming refunds from Trainline, that’s different - but from what Trainline themselves have said in the past, they seem to be going further than that, identifying suspicious travel patterns and the like, where tickets have been bought and paid for but which just look like they might be dodgy, and passing that info to the railway companies.

 

[yorkie]

But Trainline has sold a ticket and made money on that ticket. If the ticket is not valid for the journey the customer ultimately took is not really their direct concern because they are not the train company.

In the same way that if I drove my car with two bald tyres, I didn’t defraud Halfords because I only bought two new tyres when I actually needed all four.

I'm not sure what type of fraud you have in mind; looking back at @ianBR's post, there shoud have been a link and a quote provided, and as there wasn't, it is clearly causing some confusion.

I was making the assumption that @ianBR is referring to the sort of fraud where people obtain refunds fraudlently, for example if their ticket is not checked, or if they have seperate tickets (aka "doughnutting") for gatelines each end (which do not get refunded) and a much more expensive ticket for the middle of the journey.

When you refer to a ticket that is simply "not valid for the journey the customer ultimately took", this would usually be a straightforward matter, and would generally not be fraud per se, and this wouldn't require the retailer to get involved.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Apr 2023 ==

People fraudulently claiming refunds from Trainline, that’s different - but from what Trainline themselves have said in the past, they seem to be going further than that, identifying suspicious travel patterns and the like, where tickets have been bought and paid for but which just look like they might be dodgy, and passing that info to the railway companies.

Without actual examples it is difficult to comment, but I would take this to refer to doughnutting, where people have cheap tickets for gatelines and much more expensive tickets for the middle part of the journey; if the journey is made on a TOC such as Northern this rarely ever be fruitful for a fraudster, whereas on TPE the chances of getting away with a refund for the expensive ticket would be very high indeed (notwithstanding them being caught through investigations of purchasing habits).

For example, if a passenger frequently travelled from Leeds to Manchester Picaddilly on TPE, if they bought Leeds to Burley Park and Mauldeth Road to Manchester tickets for the gatelines, they could then (think they could) get away with obtaining a refund on the expensive Leeds to Manchester ticket something like 99% of the time, given that even if the ticket is checked (which isn't likely in my recent experience!) the chances of it being scanned are close to zero.

I assume that is the sort of fraud which a retailer would potentially be spotting and reporting to a TOC, rather than your example of a ticket simply being invalid for the journey made (which, on the face of it, wouldn't be fraud at all)

 

[Benjwri]

Isn't the fraud against both TOC and retailer? Both these parties lose out on revenue and the retailer incurs costs.

If a train is cancelled and the customer chooses not to travel, the customer is entitled to a refund; the retailer has to give the customer the full amount back but the retailer cannot claim costs back from RDG (e.g. TOD costs where applicable, Lennon costs) or any other party (e.g. credit card fees) as well as having their ongoing costs associated with providing such a service.

This is bad enough for retailers to have to bear such costs under such circumstances, but if a customer fraudulently claims not to have travelled, the retailer is experiencing all those costs totally unncessarily, as well as the train company being deprived of its revenue.

RDG has ensured that retailers have a really tough time; it is probably impossible for any retailer to break even on train tickets (unless it charges booking fees or has some other value added form of revenue; the forum's site can only survive without charging a booking fee because we find cheaper fares for customers, and keep a proportion of those savings) even if none of the customers committed fraud. If you then add some fraud into the mix, things get even tougher for retailers.

Given this surely it isn’t that hard to believe that Trainline are producing revenue using some kind of deal with certain TOCs to investigate fraud, perhaps where they get some kind of commission for each case from the ‘admin fees’?

 

[Gloster]

Going back to the original question. Could it be that Trainline and others cooperate with the TOCs because that is what it says in the contract between them? The TOCs would be very stupid not to include a clause that allows them to use such an obvious and necessary method of combating misuse: if the ticket sellers don’t like the clause, the TOCs will go to another company.

 

[Fleetmaster]

There are surely GDPR implications here, if personally identifying user data is being passed by Trainine to third parties for tracking purposes. If so, the Terms and Conditions will look very different to the standard boilerplate, mentioning things like Data Controller and such like.

 

[island]

Given this surely it isn’t that hard to believe that Trainline are producing revenue using some kind of deal with certain TOCs to investigate fraud, perhaps where they get some kind of commission for each case from the ‘admin fees’?

It's quite possible. Such an arrangement would of course be commercially sensitive as between Trainline and the TOCs in question.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Apr 2023 ==

But Trainline has sold a ticket and made money on that ticket. If the ticket is not valid for the journey the customer ultimately took, that is not really their direct concern because they are not the train company.

The definition of fraud is quite wide-ranging and includes making a dishonest representation that results in a loss to another. A person buying short tickets from Trainline has caused a loss to Trainline because they dishonestly represented they were travelling from C to D when they were actually travelling from A to D, and Trainline has as a result received less commission on the sale than it would have received had the correct representation been made.

So yes, Trainline is being defrauded when people use it to buy short tickets.

 

[AdamWW]

A person buying short tickets from Trainline has caused a loss to Trainline because they dishonestly represented they were travelling from C to D when they were actually travelling from A to D, and Trainline has as a result received less commission on the sale than it would have received had the correct representation been made.

Only if:
1) Without doughnutting they would have travelled anyway
AND
2) They would have then bought their ticket from trainline (instead of, say, a season ticket from their ticket office).

 

[island]

Only if:
1) Without doughnutting they would have travelled anyway
AND
2) They would have then bought their ticket from trainline (instead of, say, a season ticket from their ticket office).

Neither of those two are realistically likely outside of the theoretical world of RailForums. Virtually all the people we read about on the forum caught doughnutting are going to work or college and they were always making the journey. And people use trainline for all kinds of things, including season tickets.

 

[Camsus]

Something interesting to note is that The Trainline actually directly benefit from those people who obtain fraudulent refunds on E-tickets that were used to travel but never scanned at barriers etc. Say a ticket costs £20 and the user applies for a fraudulent refund after travelling, but not scanning the ticket. The Trainline will typically apply an admin fee of around £10, which is theirs to keep, whilst the TOC who carried the passenger gets nothing. Even on low value ticket, such as £2-3, an admin fee of £1 or so is charged. They must make millions in admin fees over the course of a year

 

[Haywain]

Something interesting to note is that The Trainline actually directly benefit from those people who obtain fraudulent refunds on E-tickets that were used to travel but never scanned at barriers etc. Say a ticket costs £20 and the user applies for a fraudulent refund after travelling, but not scanning the ticket. The Trainline will typically apply an admin fee of around £10, which is theirs to keep, whilst the TOC who carried the passenger gets nothing. Even on low value ticket, such as £2-3, an admin fee of £1 or so is charged. They must make millions in admin fees over the course of a year

In which case it is to their credit that they see rooting out the fraud as more important than the profit.

 

[Doubleplus]

It's quite possible. Such an arrangement would of course be commercially sensitive as between Trainline and the TOCs in question.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Apr 2023 ==


The definition of fraud is quite wide-ranging and includes making a dishonest representation that results in a loss to another. A person buying short tickets from Trainline has caused a loss to Trainline because they dishonestly represented they were travelling from C to D when they were actually travelling from A to D, and Trainline has as a result received less commission on the sale than it would have received had the correct representation been made.

So yes, Trainline is being defrauded when people use it to buy short tickets.

That seems quite a ridiculous suggestion. Again, I refer to the Halfords example. If my car had four bald tyres and I elected to buy only two new tyres from Halfords, rather than the full four tyres which I would have needed to drive legally, would Halfords really have legitimate claim to say that they had been "defrauded" when I subsequently (and illegally) drove my car with two bald tyres and two new ones?

The answer is obviously no. Even if all four tyres are a requirement for legal driving, I am under no legal requirement to buy all of those tyres (or any of those tyres) from Halfords. And if I drive on partially-worn tyres then the wronged party is The Crown, not Halfords. Hence no credible suggestion of fraud. Same applies to Trainline. "We would have liked to have made even more commission from this customer" is very sad I am sure, but it is not evidence of having been defrauded.

Any 'commercially sensitive' arrangement between Trainline and third parties for the exchange of passengers' personal information would of course be quite legitimate if it were disclosed to Trainline customers in the T&Cs and privacy policy. But unless I'm missing something, it does not seem to be.

 

[yorkie]

That seems quite a ridiculous suggestion. Again, I refer to the Halfords example. If my car had four bald tyres and I elected to buy only two new tyres from Halfords, rather than the full four tyres which I would have needed to drive legally, would Halfords really have legitimate claim to say that they had been "defrauded" when I subsequently (and illegally) drove my car with two bald tyres and two new ones?

I don't think a simple case of short faring by itself is going to involve a retailer; it wouldn't be applicable.

What we're talking about here is where people buy tickets for short journeys to get through barriers; these could cost a tiny fraction of the actual ticket price. Then they have a much more expensive ticket for the actual journey made, which they fradulently claim a refund on.

Doughnutting isn't easily represented by analogies for other scenarios; there isn't really a comparison with any other industry that I can think of. The Halfords analogy doesn't work for this at all.

 

[Camsus]

This is of course just fine, I’m sure, as long as Trainline’s T&Cs and privacy policy allow them to proactively mine customers’ purchase history to detect and prevent fraud against a third party (I.e. the rairway and train operating companies.) or to disclose the data to others under any circumstances.

No doubt that it’s fully covered… I just don’t seem to be able to pin a clear statement of that, at least not in the latest ‘totally up front and transparent’ terms which were apparent updated last week.

I can certainly see a statement which says that they may use some data to protect from fraud against ‘you’ (the customer) or against ‘us’ (The Trainline company) but not, at first glance, against anyone else.

It states "We may also share your personal data with travel operators to prevent and detect fraud against either you, Trainline or the travel operator."

The inclusion of "travel operator" would appear to cover them.

Screenshot attached.