Hello,
I do not believe I said they offered an instalment plan. They offered for me to pay £60 on the day, to make an instalment plan to which I said I didn’t have the money for on that day.
People here will be happy to try and work with you to see what options are and advise you on what, if any, prospects there are for you to get any of the money you have paid refunded. I'm sorry to read of how much you have had to pay to resolve this and I suspect it escalated costs wise whilst you were unwell and were not in a good position to try to tackle it.
It might help you to know a bit more about the sanctions railway companies can use when people do not have the correct ticket. Two things typically happen - the consequences of each one are different and how things play out is different so I hope this explains things.
You can see lots of examples of both of these things in other threads on the forum, including ones involving WMR
Route One: A Penalty Fare.
A Penalty Fare can be given by certain approved staff on the day you are stopped. They are £100 + the costs of the correct fare, and the £100 is reduced to £50 if paid promptly. They have a statutory right of Appeal which can be done within 21 days of the date of the Appeal. You would have been given a Penalty Fare notice on the train with details of how to pay it or how to appeal it.
These are typically the 'least worst' outcome if travelling without a valid ticket (apart from being verbally warned by a member of staff and effectively 'let off' I suppose)
Payment within the set time, or a valid Appeal upheld, concludes the matter.
If you do not pay the Penalty Fare in the set period of time then the matter escalates and the railway company would take you to court for non payment. the sum would escalate as a result of that I'm sure as costs etc get added on.
Route Two: Reported for Investigation
The staff member takes your name and address (or obtains these details from scanning your ticket) and passes this to the back office Revenue Protection team to investigate. They write or e-mail you about what happened and typically ask you to pay for the ticket you have not bought (or a correct one) plus and 'admin fee' to cover those costs of this follow up work, or they may ask you to explain what happened before they consider further action.
Those letters will typically make it clear that if you do not engage with them they will consider prosecuting you for travel without a valid ticket.
If the staff suspect deliberate evasion (as opposed to a ticketing mistake) - it is more likely that they will take your details and report it for investigation.
You would then get a letter or e-mail some time later as outlined, about the event.
This would be your chance to reply with mitigating circumstances and offer to resolve the matter without them prosecuting you. If they agree (they usually do) this is essentially an 'out of court settlement offer'.
Perhaps when you rang WMR they regarded that as a request to settle the matter and they offered to do so if you paid them £60, which I appreciate you were unable to afford to do.
If you don't respond or don't pay them the process almost always just escalates to magistrates court prosecution where people are typically found guilty since travel without a ticket is a criminal offence in England.
The court would then issue a fine (the punishment for the offence) plus a victim surcharge plus costs of the railway company for taking the matter to court. There would also be a criminal record of the conviction. In the great scheme of things this is a fairly minor conviction.
If the correct court paperwork is completed then the court fine is related to your income, and court fines can be paid in installments. This is all dealt with by the court - not the railway company.
It then becomes the courts responsibility to collect the money owed (fines etc) - and if it is not paid it's handed over to Court Bailiffs to do that. They are ultimately pretty good at obtaining the money owed.
I hope the above helps explain the process to you. Some or all of this you may already know of course.
This is why people here want to see the paperwork (or whatever of it you can conveniently share) in order to understand which of these routes happened, what happened when and where things are now at. Anything you can do to clarify things will help people here offer you realistic advice on any options that might remain available.
You could also go to your college / student union advice centre or maybe your local CAB if you would prefer help and advice from them as I'm sure they would indicate of they could help at all.
Furthermore
If this helps at all - below is a copy of the standard advice often given to people when they first come to the forum asking what to expect when they have been stopped for travel without a correct ticket - clearly you are beyond this stage but it may help you for context - had you had a chance to seek advice here earlier on this would have been the sort of thing you could have done to minimise the impact (financially or otherwise):
Firstly, you committed a criminal offence by travelling with an invalid ticket and railway companies are entitled to prosecute you in the Magistrates Court if they want to. The good news is they will normally offer an out of court settlement to people who co-operate with them and who haven't come to their attention before.
Next, what happens is the railway company will write to you. The letter will go to the address that you gave them / on any of your ID they checked so you need to be able to access hard copy post at that address as they often send things that way (but also check e-mail and spam). It is extremely important that you reply, and you'll only have a limited time to do so (often 14 days from the date on their communication).
When you receive the letter post a redacted copy of it in this thread, along with your draft reply and forum members will proof read it for you. You'll find lots of example letters you can use in this section of the forum but the reply basically needs to mention:
- That you are sorry for what has happened
- What you have learned from the incident and will not do this again
- That you are keen to settle the matter without the need for court action
- Offer to pay the outstanding fare and the railway company’s administrative costs in dealing with the matter
The railway will probably offer you an out of court settlement. Expect to have to pay the cost of the fare for the journey you made at the full Anytime rate with no credit given for the invalid ticket you purchased. In addition they will charge an admin fee, typically £150. They will also audit your online ticket purchase history and if this shows you've purchased other tickets that were not valid (eg railcard discounted tickets when you did not have a valid railcard, or tickets for only part of the journey, or tickets bought after boarding the train you travelled on ) they will probably factor the cost of these journeys into the settlement offer. Depending on how many journeys you've made over the period concerned this could end up being expensive.
Settlements usually have to be paid in full within a few days of them being offered so if money is tight you might want to think about how you will raise the sum required at short notice.
