Is the "Promise to Pay" enforceable for a Penalty Fare?

[furlong]

Mod Note: Posts #1 - #2 to originally in this thread.

Appeal on the basis that there were no facilities to purchase a ticket using cash.

It's difficult to see how 'Promise to Pay' requirement can be enforced under the current NRCoT and PF regulations. (Note that a 'Promise to Pay' is not "sold" or "purchased" as no money is exchanged. It is hard to see how it could be defined as a 'Permit to Travel' or a 'travel ticket' or a "Ticket".)

Under NRCoT 6.1.3.2 you were entitled to buy a normal ticket at your destination:

6.1 You must hold a valid Ticket or authority to travel before you board a train where there was the opportunity to buy one unless one of the following circumstances applies:
...
6.1.3 At the station where you start your journey, there is no means of purchasing a Ticket, because
...
6.1.3.2 a self-service Ticket machine is not in working order, or will not accept your preferred method of payment (card or cash);
...
In these cases, you must, as soon as you are reasonably able, buy an appropriate Ticket to complete your journey. The price of the Ticket you purchase will be the same as if you had bought a Ticket at the station from which you first departed.

(Note that while 6.1.1 requires "purchase" of a Permit to Travel with a cross-reference to condition 10, 6.1.3 is absolute and does not. The question then is whether 10.2.2 can override that, noting that at the vast majority of stations on the network it is impossible to comply with 10.2 as drafted as there are neither facilities to issue a Permit to Travel nor a Promise to Pay. Also note 10.2, while stating "you must", spells out no consequences for not doing so - necessary not to because it's normally impossible to comply. Yes, the whole thing is a mess...)

 

[saismee]

It's difficult to see how 'Promise to Pay' requirement can be enforced under the current NRCoT and PF regulations. (Note that a 'Promise to Pay' is not "sold" or "purchased" as no money is exchanged. It is hard to see how it could be defined as a 'Permit to Travel' or a 'travel ticket' or a "Ticket".)

Under NRCoT 6.1.3.2 you were entitled to buy a normal ticket at your destination:

(Note that while 6.1.1 requires "purchase" of a Permit to Travel with a cross-reference to condition 10, 6.1.3 is absolute and does not. The question then is whether 10.2.2 can override that, noting that at the vast majority of stations on the network it is impossible to comply with 10.2 as drafted as there are neither facilities to issue a Permit to Travel nor a Promise to Pay. Also note 10.2, while stating "you must", spells out no consequences for not doing so - necessary not to because it's normally impossible to comply. Yes, the whole thing is a mess...)

I would be say it's reasonable to assume that a Promise to Pay ticket would count as authority to travel without a ticket, rather than a ticket/permit itself. No stated consequences could be assumed as having no valid ticket or authority to travel. I don't really see how you can see this as unenforceable in any case.

 

[CyrusWuff]

Condition 10.2 states the requirement to obtain a Permit to Travel or Promise to Pay when boarding at a station from where Penalty Fares may apply if you don't hold a valid ticket.

 

[sheff1]

Condition 10.2 states the requirement to obtain a Permit to Travel or Promise to Pay when boarding at a station from where Penalty Fares may apply if you don't hold a valid ticket.

Which is impossible to if, at the station at which you are boarding, there is no way of obtaining a Permit to Travel or Promise to Pay.

 

[Tetchytyke]

It's an interesting one.

Condition 10.2 of the NRCoT appears pretty conclusive:

10.2Where notices indicate that Penalty Fares may apply from that station and you do not have a valid Ticket, you must:
10.2.1 purchase a Permit to Travel if there is a working Permit to Travel issuing machine at the station where you start your journey, or
10.2.2 acquire a Promise to Pay from a self-service Ticket machine.

It's also worth noting that the Penalty Fares regulations have this as an exemption:

there were no facilities in operation for the sale of a travel ticket for that passenger’s journey

Note that it says "no facilities", not "no facilities that accept your preferred payment method". A strict interpretation may well be that a card-only machine (or a cash-only machine) is a working facility.

The Promise to Pay thing is really Northern providing a derogation from this requirement to buy a ticket at the TVM if people are using cash. It is the railway granting authority to travel. But the legislation states that you must buy a ticket unless there are no working facilities at all, not that the working facilities have to accept your preferred payment method.

This derogation is in Northern's interests, of course, as it means they don't need their TVMs to handle cash.

 

[pedr]

Note that it says "no facilities", not "no facilities that accept your preferred payment method". A strict interpretation may well be that a card-only machine (or a cash-only machine) is a working facility.

I think the plain language meaning of Regulation 6 (4) is that a person boarding a train at a station which only ever has a machine that only takes card payments can be liable to pay a penalty fare if they do not purchase a ticket from that machine.

The person may not be able to purchase a ticket with a means of payment they have available, if they have cash but not a card (6 (4) (a)) but they would not “usually be able to purchase a travel ticket at the station in question at the relevant time of day using [cash]” (6 (4) (b)) if the station does not usually have a ticket office or cash-accepting machine.

This is not a good policy, from the perspective of customer service, but I can’t see a way to interpret the regulations to allow passengers to board at card-only Penalty Fare stations and then say they can’t be issued a Penalty Fare because they wanted to pay cash.

 

[furlong]

That is why 6.1.3.2 exists which i referred to earlier. That provides a contractual right unfettered by Penalty Fares. They could easily have qualified it as they did (inadequately) in 6.1.1 but they did not. If need be, I think it can basically be brought under 6.2(d) as the operator/retailer advertising that NRCoT appliy: "the operator of the train or the station, or a person acting or purporting to act on behalf of the operator, indicated that the passenger was, or persons generally were, permitted to travel by or be present on the train without having a travel ticket."
The basic point is if you're entitled to pay the walk-up-before-travel fare later in your journey, you can't also be subject to a PF.