Railcard purchased tickets without Railcard discount - fined !

I've now read 2 different posts (on Facebook) where people appear to have been fined because they purchased undiscounted, full price peak hour tickets, but did not remove the "railcard discount" when doing so.

Which made zero difference to the overall fare at all, but they were fined by the ticket inspector. She apparently said it was because the OP was "travelling before 10am and the ticket had a Railcard "attached" to her ticket". Regardless of whether it had applied a discount or not. I'd like to dig deeper to get an understanding for this, but has anyone else experienced this?

This is not me (I personally have a Key smart card which has had its own issues but I don't get charged till the end of the day and haven't been fined using one yet)

riceuten said:

Which made zero difference to the overall fare at all, but they were fined by the ticket inspector. She apparently said it was because the OP was "travelling before 10am and the ticket had a Railcard "attached" to her ticket". Regardless of whether it had applied a discount or not. I'd like to dig deeper to get an understanding for this, but has anyone else experienced this?

Click to expand...

On any of the ticketing apps, if you select a railcard, then a train where that railcard is either not valid or its cheaper to purchase without it, then the app normally removes it.

Therefore, if this person has been stopped and the railcard is on their ticket, they have selected a different train to get the discount. Normally seen before 10AM with a Network Railcard.

Just to be clear some railcards do have minimum discounted fares on weekdays. For example:

16-25 is £12 before 10am excluding Advance Fares. Minimum fare restriction does not apply in July or August
26-30 is £12 before 10am excluding Advance Fares
Veterans is £12 before 10am excluding Advance Fares. Minimum fare restriction does not apply in July or August
HM Forces is £12 before 10am excluding Advance Fares. Minimum fare restriction does not apply in July or August
Network Railcard is £13

Being pedantic, the peiple won't have been fined as only a court can impse a fine as a punishment upon conviction. It's likely that they have been charged a Penalty Fare, which might feel like a fine but isn't...

To give a definitive answer we'd really need to know more about the specific cases but booking sites will take account of the £12 minimum fare when a ticket is purchased. What often happens is that the person applies the railcard discount, for example to an Anytime ticket with an undiscounted price of £10. Trains departing before 10am will be shown as costing £10 but trains after 10am are priced at £6.65. People select the train costing £6.65 and travel earlier in the belief that they've bought an Anytime ticket.

Expanding on my example above, what you're suggesting is that someone has purchased a ticket that has an undiscounted price of £10 for travel before 10am. They've applied a railcard discount and been charged £10 (so no discount) but the ticket says it's got a railcard discount attached. Again, we'd need to know more to give a definitive answer.