Court fined. What now?

[shoyeb4me]

Situation:

I am a regular traveller to Luton on Thameslink for academic purpose. Usually I purchase ticket online from National Rail website to avoid rushing at the station. I did the same on 23 Nov 2014, purchased an off peak day return ticket online from Elephant & Castle to Luton with ticket collection from Balham station.

The next day while collecting tickets at Balham station, I was wearing gloves due to freezing weather and by sheer mistake I left the outbound ticket in the machine's ticket holder, took only 2 tickets instead of 3: i) the 2-part return journey ticket (Luton-Ele&Cas) and ii) the booking confirmation slip. There were no ticket barrier at the station for ticket validation to check if I had the correct ticket in hand. Assuming I had all the tickets I boarded the Luton bound train.

Half way through the journey a ticket inspector caught me for not having the outbound ticket. He was more than sure that I had no ticket at all. I showed him my return ticket, the email booking confirmation of ticket purchase, pleaded for the mistakes I have made for not collecting all the tickets. I even offered if we could disembark at Hendon station, go to ticket counter and request for a replacement ticket. He refused on the ground that I did not have any ticket at all and demanded a large sum. Assumed that I had no other way but to accept penalty notice, I asked him the options available to me for solving this issue. The inspector gave a tiny slip and said I need to send proof of tickets to the address given.

Aftermath

Sent letter to prosecution department on early december with all evidences. no reply. I travelled overseas immediately after that. came back a month later. no news, nothing. Moved house, forgot about this thing completely.

Just told by one of my friends that even though I did not receive any letter, I am still subject to prosecution. Panicked. Went to thameslink office, was told they did not receive any letter from me and they sent letters to my address. No reply so they went to court and court fined on March in my absence for breaking railway byelaw 18(1). Panicked. Went to magistrate court ,retrieved case paper, found name was misspelled, apartment no was incorrect and DOB was someone else's . The inspector recorded all these data from a valid photocard so I did not provide any wrong information. Initially fined 300+, for non paying compounded to 600+ and went to bailiff. Immediately paid, settled and closed the account.

My questions are:

1) any criminal offence? record? I asked bailiff, he said none but I need some absolute answer. Don't want to be a defaulter for not declaring criminal offence
2) any way I can recover the money I paid? Spoke to Citizen advise, currently waiting for their return call.

I know i should have been careful in safekeeping travel document but we are only human, so u know.

Please advise. Thanksss much!

 

[bb21]

Oh dear, oh dear, if only you had paid the Penalty Fare on the spot, which was (unfortunately for you) correctly issued. The chance of you getting a replacement ticket at Hendon is nil, especially given that it was your own fault for leaving the ticket behind.

A Byelaw prosecution should not result in a criminal record.

As for getting your money back, well, £300 of that was after you failed to pay court fines, so will be a struggle I reckon by itself. You had the option to make a statutory declaration if you were never aware of the prosecution and wind the clock back to the beginning, but seeing that you have now paid the bailiffs in full, I reckon your chances of seeing that money again is not going to be that great.

Obviously you can afford it, so I think you may as well just put that down to an expensive lesson. You were in the wrong, and could have handled this much better. In order to get this money back, you will in all likelihood have to go through the process again, with associated stress and hassle of having to attend court, and the potential for much greater costs to be awarded to the prosecution team. I don't think it would be worth going through all that if you can put this episode behind you.

Learn from it and be extra-vigilant. Treat tickets with the same care as you would with cash, because that is the only evidence you have of your entitlement to travel, not the confirmation email, not the collection receipts, and most certainly not the ticket in the opposite direction.

 

[LexyBoy]

My reading is that OP asked the RPI what their options were, whereupon the RPI changed their mind and reported for prosecution instead of issuing a PF, but told OP to send proof of purchase (why, when they would have known it would make no difference?). Admittedly, we don't know how long the discussion went on for before this point, but given that it was obvious that OP had paid for travel a PF would very much be the correct route to go down.*

The "lesson" here would appear to be never to answer back and bend over immediately to authority.

Question for shoeyeb4me: did the RPI make clear at any point that you could either pay the Penalty Fare (about £33), or would face prosecution? (Actually you should have been required only to pay the fare of £16.80 on the spot with the remainder of the PF - the same again - within 14 days, but this is rather academic).

* well, in most cases nothing beyond a "be more careful to check your tickets next time" would happen, but this is Thameslink...

 

[shoyeb4me]

Thanks guys really.

The worrying part is "rehabilitation of Offenders Act". I have heard from several people that this could make my conviction unspent.

Does anyone know for sure if Railway byelaws has anything to do with rehabilitation of Offenders Act. Please advise accordingly.

 

[DaveNewcastle]

I agree with bb21.

At this stage, it is difficult to recover any of your money. You have paid a statutory fine which can only be recovered by a complex and very uncertain legal procedure, and you have paid a substantial amount of the prosecution's costs, an amount which has already been agreed by the Prosecutor and the Court. Leave to Appeal was not requested.

You could waste time and energy composing a pleading letter to the Company in respect of their costs. But in the absence of any compelling evidence, I'd say all those strategies are doomed.

If you really want to pursue this please let me know but you will be investing with poor odds of success.

 

[najaB]

Thanks guys really.

The worrying part is "rehabilitation of Offenders Act". I have heard from several people that this could make my conviction unspent.

Does anyone know for sure if Railway byelaws has anything to do with rehabilitation of Offenders Act. Please advise accordingly.

Byelaws offences are outside the scope of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act as they aren't recordable in the first place. Since they aren't returned by any 'normal' search of the PNC there is no way for them to become 'spent'.

In other words, you have nothing to worry about in that regard.