Greater Anglia - Penalty Fare - 1st Class

[djk]

Thanks everyone once again for your time and opinions. This is an incredibly useful forum.

ITAL have agreed to waive the administration fees given that they were added at a time when there was ongoing dialogue between Greater Anglia and I to try and resolve the matter.

Having taken your advice on board I have paid the penalty fares.

 

[CockneySparrow]

Finally, despite what you and Greater Anglia might say you haven't been fined as only a court can impose a fine. What you have been given is a penalty fare which is a fare levied on passengers who have made honest mistakes.

Seems like a fine to me, although the terminology is different its basically a fine, ie the OP has done something wrong or made a mistake whatever you want to call it and now has to cough up extra

 

[DaveNewcastle]

Seems like a fine to me, although the terminology is different its basically a fine, . . . .

Indeed.
Some of the pedants / more carefull language users on here, feel that the distinction between a fine and a penalty is helpful. I do not.

The further sum is simply a reflection of the additional costs incurred in pursuing the collection of the outstanding PF.

That is correct. It is entirely legitimate to seek to recover those costs or a reasonable estimate of the costs.

 

[najaB]

Seems like a fine to me, although the terminology is different its basically a fine, ie the OP has done something wrong or made a mistake whatever you want to call it and now has to cough up extra

It's not a matter of semantics, a PF and a fine are very different. A penalty fare is a private matter between the OP and the TOC, whereas a fine is imposed by and paid to the Crown after being found guilty in court.

You can tell that I am one of DaveNewcastle's pedants.

 

[DaveNewcastle]

. . . . None of the other passengers occupying first class that morning with standard class tickets were issued with penalty fare notices. My wife and I were discriminated against for reasons unknown to us.

That is not discrimination!
You would be in a better position if your 'complaint' was against the other passengers. You were in breach of the regulations, very clearly so. There's no point in trying to blame someone else for your fault.

. . . . we did not 'wish' to occupy first class, but were forced to do so by the overcrowded conditions.

You were not forced. Even without having interviewed you, I think that I can be absolutely sure that no force was applied. Please don't make your situation worse by fabricating accusations against others, which only serves to cloud the circumstances.
If force was applied, then lets have the evidence of it, please.

They ignore our complaint that there were no members of staff available to request permission from.

That complaint is perfectly reasonable, but again, it is absolutely irrelevant in the consideration of your factual breach of Railway Byelaw 19.
You can raise that issue seperately, but don't complicate a simple matter by conflating it with another. There is no causal conection between the two, no matter how much you might want to try to devise one. The staff shortage (if indeed there was one) does not mitigate the offence.

It's not a matter of semantics, a PF and a fine are very different.

Indeed they are. As are chalk and cheese. My point was in the utility of the distinction. Does it help the bewildered passenger faced with a challenge following a ticketing irregularity? I say 'no'.

The distinctions which do assist djk are those which separate out the factors which may mitigate travelling in first class accomodation on standard class tickets from those that do not.
The situation has been confused by a lot of factors which djk has introduced, I'm sure in good faith, but which ultimately will be seen to be extraneous. Similarly, this 'fine' / 'penalty' distinction does not engage with the current challenge djk faces.

 

[bb21]

Thanks everyone once again for your time and opinions. This is an incredibly useful forum.

ITAL have agreed to waive the administration fees given that they were added at a time when there was ongoing dialogue between Greater Anglia and I to try and resolve the matter.

Having taken your advice on board I have paid the penalty fares.

Good to hear. It would have been a bit unreasonable for the admin fees to stay in my opinion as not everyone is fully au fait with how this whole thing works.

For future reference, if you wish to appeal a Penalty Fare, it is always best to pay it if you can afford it within the timescale given, whether the appeal is ongoing or not. Fair or not, the way it works is that fees start to be applied after this period regardless of the existence of an appeal.

Now you know, so hopefully this will be useful to you in the future, but let's hope that you never find yourself in that situation again in the first place.

 

[Clip]

Indeed.
Some of the pedants / more carefull language users on here, feel that the distinction between a fine and a penalty is helpful. I do not.
.

Its becoming as tedious as having to say 'Where facilities exist' with ticketing threads too. We know what it means and in the eyes of a passenger it doesn't matter what it is called it is still a fine so it really does not matter if people call it a fine.

 

[pne]

None of the other passengers occupying first class that morning with standard class tickets were issued with penalty fare notices.

How did the OP know that the other passengers in the 1st class were in possession of standard class tickets?

Well, the OP did say in their original post:

We boarded the train, along with a number of other passengers, at our usual spot. However, on boarding the train, we realised we were in a first class carriage. This had not been apparent to us before boarding the train (particularly given the number of people in front of us queuing to get on the train). We get this train regularly and are friendly with a number of the other passengers who use the service. We were all surprised to find ourselves in the first class carriage, and tried to move down the train into a standard class carriage.

Given that he was "friendly with a number of the other passengers who use the service", I presume this means that he regularly saw them in the same standard class coach with him. From this it's not a huge leap to assume that they only held standard class tickets on those many occasions (as why would they travel standard class if they held a first class ticket?), and from that a not unreasonable assumption that on the day of the particular incident, they held a standard class ticket as well.

 

[Hadders]

Seems like a fine to me, although the terminology is different its basically a fine, ie the OP has done something wrong or made a mistake whatever you want to call it and now has to cough up extra

I was more disappointed with Greater Anglia referring to it as a fine in their correspondence with the OP. Whilst I can understand the general public being confused GA should know better.

 

[Islineclear3_1]

Thanks everyone once again for your time and opinions. This is an incredibly useful forum.

ITAL have agreed to waive the administration fees given that they were added at a time when there was ongoing dialogue between Greater Anglia and I to try and resolve the matter.

Having taken your advice on board I have paid the penalty fares.

Well done, and I'm very pleased that you didn't have to pay the additional admin fees. Hope you won't find yourself in this situation again

 

[Tetchytyke]

It's not a matter of semantics, a PF and a fine are very different.

I don't agree. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

I'm glad the administration fees were waived. That's probably the best result the OP could have reached.

 

[najaB]

I don't agree. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

Noting that the OP's case has been resolved, for the sake of discussion...

I agree that a PF may 'feel' the same as a fine, but I don't make the distinction for the sake of pedantry.

In any thread where I mention the difference I always make the point that a PF means that the TOC concerned doesn't think that the poster has been deliberately trying it on, and that it's a way to avoid the hassle of going through the courts.

I personally find it interesting that there are many examples where someone refuses a PF and then later seeks an out of court settlement - effectively paying considerably more to achieve the same result.

I think they should rename them to something like 'Administrative Fare' as it seems (to me) that 'Penalty Fare' is emotive and clouds judgement in the heat of the moment.

I accept that by the time people are posting on here for advice, it's often too late for the distinction to be of much utility.

 

[island]

My view is that you can't be prosecuted if you have paid the Penalty Fare due but not the administration fee- the admin fee is something levied by IFCAS not by the TOC and is specifically a fee for administration and not an additional penalty charge. However IFCAS would be able to sue you in the County Court for the outstanding administration fee.

I'm more than happy to be corrected by someone more knowledgeable though.

Here I go then. Your view isn't correct. Whether or not an administrative fee has been requested, a TOC which has issued a Penalty Fare notice may later initiate a prosecution in relation to the incident. If it does, it must cancel the Penalty Fare notice and refund any sum paid pursuant to it.

I am glad that the OP has settled his issue without having to pay the administrative fee in this instance.