Advice on Full price ticket fines & admin costs

[ASMG]

Dear All

Firstly I wanted to express how extremely useful this site is, so thank you all that contribute. You have helped by stealth on our recent issue

I will give some context and then pose my question.

My daughter recently was stopped on our local line that she uses daily and asked to present a ticket , which she duly obliged. She was then asked to show her railcard . She has no railcard, no idea what she had done at the time so was issued a penalty. Came home a bit distraught and annoyed with the £50 ;plus full price fare (total £59) . After a bit of head scratching it transpired she was looking for train fares for a summer break back in March and was comparing prices on the Trainline app, so checked prices with and without a railcard.

Looks like she left the railcard option on where you buy the ticket (drop down menu ). So when she bought her next usual ‘commute’ ticket to which was an open return it came back as the normal price as it’s peak time so no discount applied, regardless of railcard, and continued to do this for a couple of months so never noticed. All along a railcard is showing on the drop down until she was eventually challenged in June .

However after we looked through her history on several occasions when she just bought a single off peak the price of the ticket was discounted . So in affect she got cheaper rail fare without owning a valid railcard . She genuinely thought it was discounted because it was off peak or something and didn’t realise she had left the railcard on the dropdown .

So bang to rights, it was a genuine but silly and probably costly error.

Her case was sent to fraud and she received the investigation email , which she responded to and admitted the error. They have already responded to which they have pretty much told us to await the fine , so we are just awaiting an outcome .

Looking through her train ticket history looks like it will be about £200 of full price fares that were discounted and I assume a £150 admin fine (+ the original £59)…..and a big lesson learned!!!

So my question and it is an assumption at this point

I assume she will have to pay the full price of each ticket that was discounted , but as she has already paid for majority of the ticket price , why not pay the difference plus an admin fee . (She totally accepts her error and is willing to pay).

Personally I feel the fine is a little bit harsh as you end up nearly double paying.?

Just wondering if anyone had any thoughts / experiences .

Many thanks

 

[hexagon789]

I assume she will have to pay the full price of each ticket that was discounted

Yes, at full Anytime rate I'm afraid.

why not pay the difference plus an admin fee . (She totally accepts her error and is willing to pay).

Presumably because it's more of a deterrent against actual deliberate fare dodgers, otherwise they'd essentially be able to chance it all the time knowing the worst would be paying the difference plus admin and costs. (Barring the potential for prosecution of course.)

Personally I feel the fine is a little bit harsh as you end up nearly double paying.?

Again I imagine it's the element of a deterrent, but the tickets were invalid so legally it's as though no ticket was held at all, so any part payment isn't counted.

 

[Gloster]

I am afraid that they do not normally make any allowance for what has already been paid. You can expect to pay the full Anytime Single fare for each and every journey made; for a Return journey you will have to pay two fares, one for the outward leg and one for the return. They will then add their investigation costs, which are likely to be £150 or maybe a bit more.

 

[ASMG]

Thank you , your reasoning makes sense (unfortunately!) especially regarding the notion of legally the discounted tickets were invalid .

To be honest the experience frightened the life out of her so the deterrent factor works

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Jun 2024 ==

Interestingly they have obviously looked way back into her ticket purchase history as they have requested evidence of a railcard which she did own in 2021. There will be historical journeys in her data where discounted tickets were purchased with a valid railcard . So they are clearly looking for evidence of misuse . (Luckily she still has the old emails of proof of purchase )

Anyway for completeness I will post the outcome

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Jun 2024 ==

I am afraid that they do not normally make any allowance for what has already been paid. You can expect to pay the full Anytime Single fare for each and every journey made; for a Return journey you will have to pay two fares, one for the outward leg and one for the return. They will then add their investigation costs, which are likely to be £150 or maybe a bit more.

Thanks for the reply and feedback

 

[furlong]

I assume she will have to pay the full price of each ticket that was discounted , but as she has already paid for majority of the ticket price , why not pay the difference plus an admin fee . (She totally accepts her error and is willing to pay).

This is a complicated legal matter, also known as a propensity for certain train companies to enjoy "having their cake and eating it"!

If the correspondence has been mentioning that they were investigating criminal offences, then any settlement should be designed to put the train company back into the financial position it would have been in had she not broken the law. Train companies cannot seek any penalty on top of that in a settlement of a criminal matter - only a court can impose a penalty, after conviction. In a case where a railcard wasn't held but the tickets were otherwise the right ones, this should indeed mean paying back the discount she wasn't entitled to. You don't say which train company you are dealing with but some are better about this than others. If you want a reference, look up the case of Peter Barnett e.g. Daily Telegraph

The City barrister, who was cautioned for fare dodging in 2010, was handed a 16-week prison sentence suspended for 12 months and ordered pay £5,892.70 in compensation to Chiltern Railways at City of London Magistrates. Judge Omotosho said: "Looking at all the evidence in the round I am satisfied that a reasonable attempt has been made by the defendant to calculate loss to the company and in this case the actual loss is £5,892.70 and not the £19,689 as claimed."

The train company might have an argument that it is due additional sums on the basis of the contract entered into when travelling, but if they want to make such an argument they must pursue it separately - not conflated with a potential prosecution - and they don't seem to have tried this in high-profile cases (there would be additional obstacles).

 

[jacksonbang]

Do tickets bought on Trainline not show a Railcard has been used on them? That seems incredibly unfair if that is the case.

 

[skyhigh]

Do tickets bought on Trainline not show a Railcard has been used on them? That seems incredibly unfair if that is the case.

They do.

 

[ASMG]

yeah it does. It also leaves the app on your last setting used in the drop down section at the bottom of the page where you buy the ticket .

I do think apps should require the user to validate the railcard rather than just say you have one.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Jun 2024 ==

This is a complicated legal matter, also known as a propensity for certain train companies to enjoy "having their cake and eating it"!

If the correspondence has been mentioning that they were investigating criminal offences, then any settlement should be designed to put the train company back into the financial position it would have been in had she not broken the law. Train companies cannot seek any penalty on top of that in a settlement of a criminal matter - only a court can impose a penalty, after conviction. In a case where a railcard wasn't held but the tickets were otherwise the right ones, this should indeed mean paying back the discount she wasn't entitled to. You don't say which train company you are dealing with but some are better about this than others. If you want a reference, look up the case of Peter Barnett e.g. Daily Telegraph



The train company might have an argument that it is due additional sums on the basis of the contract entered into when travelling, but if they want to make such an argument they must pursue it separately - not conflated with a potential prosecution - and they don't seem to have tried this in high-profile cases (there would be additional obstacles).

That’s an incredible story (Peter Barnett) .