Hello, so my friend was doing 3x night shift at the hospital. She was extremely tired when she finished her shift and ran to get the next train back home. she prioritised getting on the train and then intended to purchase it when she got on but accidentally fell asleep during the 40min journey. When she was 3 stops away from her destination she got woken up to pay a penalty fine of £57 ish. This is her first offence, she always pays for her tickets and showed her past tickets to the guy but she still got the fine.
is there any way for her to appeal and be successful?
Unfortunately it is a requirement (and a legal one) to have a valid ticket
before you step aboard the train (apart from in some rare circumstances that probably don't apply in this case eg there was no open ticket office or functioning ticket machine at the station where getting on the train) - so even if she had bought the ticket a few minutes after getting on she could still have been issued with a Penalty Fare. For this reason you should NEVER buy your ticket after you have stepped on the train, always before - we regularly see Penalty Fare cases on here as a result of that.
Staff ticket scanners are usually set up to alert the ticket inspector when they scan the ticket of its exact time of purchase and the scanner will 'know' if that time was after the train left the relevant station.
A Penalty Fare is not a criminal sanction and is the 'least worst' sanction that can be issued.
Having said this there is no harm in lodging an appeal - how to do this should be on the Penalty Fare notice she was given. But a a valid grounds for appeal is not 'I usually buy a ticket but was tired this time and forgot / train was coming and I just got on and intended to buy ticket later' etc or 'it wasn't fair to give me a Penalty fare' - Appeals have to be on the basis that the Penalty fare was wrongly issued. I can't see anything in your post that indicates a good basis for an Appeal to be successful I'm afraid, but if you follow the advice in post #2 people here will see if there is some basis for appeal that you or your friend might not have noticed (eg paperwork incorrect). This is not uncommon.
Your friend needs to make sure she either pays the Penalty Fare or Appeals it promptly (within the deadline allowed which I think is 21 days) to benefit from the 50% discount. A appeal 'stops the clock' on this time period whilst the appeal is considered. There are 3 stages of Appeal.
If your friend regularly travels to work by train would a season ticket be a good option?
- You would then not have to remember to buy a ticket every day before getting on the train
- and a season ticket would probably be cheaper than buying tickets every day
