Help!! Thameslink ticket

[Sambam]

No this is because they think I ignored the letters. I wouldn’t be fined 500£ but I didn’t ignore the letters it’s because I moved house.

 

[spag23]

Did you at any stage receive a single justice procedure notice or other notice to attend court?

As often happens on this forum, the OP seems to have confused an "out of court settlement" with a (court only) "fine". They were pressing for the former but (due to not updating their address, thus terminating the correspondence) have incurred the latter.

 

[kacper]

No this is because they think I ignored the letters. I wouldn’t be fined 500£ but I didn’t ignore the letters it’s because I moved house.

Royal Mail offer a service to redirect letters to your new address

 

[swt_passenger]

Royal Mail offer a service to redirect letters to your new address

That was suggested back in April, and a few times since. I suspect the letter proposing an administrative settlement (post #34) was not accepted by Thameslink and there’ll have been further correspondence that was not received.

 

[island]

No this is because they think I ignored the letters. I wouldn’t be fined 500£ but I didn’t ignore the letters it’s because I moved house.

£455.50 is a reasonably normal amount that someone is fined in court for railway offences once everything is added up. So again, you said you were willing to pay the fine, now you have the fine notice to pay, what is the issue?

 

[Fawkes Cat]

It may be possible to reduce the amount due - but there's no certainty of this.

You appear to have been prosecuted without you knowing about the prosecution. In those circumstances, it's possible to go back to the court and ask them to hear the case again.

The process for doing this is known as making a 'statutory declaration'. You can do this (I think for free) at the court, or you can do it in front of a lawyer. But neither of these routes are perfect in that if you do it at court they will want to hear the case again at once - and if you plead guilty or are found guilty then a fine will be imposed on you , quite possibly in exactly the same amount that they are already chasing from you. If you make the statutory declaration in front of a solicitor then there's a fixed amount they can charge you, and this will delay the case going back to court (which might give you the chance to negotiate an out of court settlement with the railway) but it's quite likely that the solicitor will try to sell you extra service (them negotiating with the railway and/or defending you in court). You don't have to buy these services but if you do they won't come cheap.

The easiest way out of this problem is to find the money and pay the court what is due. A statutory declaration might get you to a cheaper resolution, or it might not. And it will certainly be time consuming and stressful.

Ultimately, the choice is yours, but you may want to see if you can find the money and pay up.

 

[skyhigh]

No this is because they think I ignored the letters. I wouldn’t be fined 500£ but I didn’t ignore the letters it’s because I moved house.

You moved house but failed to tell them your new address or arrange postal redirection as advised. Essentially you are in a problem of your own making now - GTR have done nothing wrong here.

You could potentially make a Statutory Declaration but unless you can convince GTR to settle out of court (which will probably be harder given you took no action to get any post they would send) you will just be convicted again and end up with the same fine.

You have 10 working days from the date of the letter you were sent to pay the fine. Whatever you do, do not put your head in the sand and hope it goes away.

 

[John R]

No I didn’t I completely Forgot too

You said in your very first post that you suffer from anxiety, but failed to do the one thing that the forum advised you on several occasions to do, in order to stop the matter escalating and thus add to your anxiety.

The simplest thing to do is to suck it up, pay, and learn a couple of valuable life lessons in the process. I'd suggest trying to reopen the case will just add to your anxiety, and the outcome may not be much different in terms of cost.

 

[Hadders]

Just to make sure I'm understanding everything:

- You were caught travelling with an invalid ticket
- The train company (GTR) wrote to you asking for your version of events before deciding how to proceed
- You asked for our advice, we helped you to draft a letter which you sent to GTR requesting an out of court settlement
- You told us that you would be moving house so we recommedned your made arrangements for you post to be redirected, and suggested you contacted GTR to let them know your new address. You failed to do this.
- You've now been prosecuted in the Magistrates Court and had a fine imposed as a punishment

Have I go this right? I'm afraid I don't have much sympathy with you. Did you receive a reply to your letter - I suspect you were offered an out of court settlement by GTR but as you didn't pay it they were left with no option but to send the case to the Magistrates Court where it was heard in your absence.

The only thing you can do now is to follow the advice of @Fawkes Cat in post #66. If you were genuinely unaware of the court proceedings then you can make a Statutory Declaration, which means the court case will be reheard. What you could then do is try and see if GTR would agree to a settlement.

Do be aware that doing this will involve a considerable amount of work from you, if you are not prepared to do this then it might just be best to pay the fine.

 

[Deafdoggie]

Do be aware that doing this will involve a considerable amount of work from you, if you are not prepared to do this then it might just be best to pay the fine.

They couldn't even be bothered to set up a Royal Mail redirection. I can't see them working to do this.

 

[Buzby]

They couldn't even be bothered to set up a Royal Mail redirection. I can't see them working to do this

There are very good reasons why someone wouldn’t want to pay for this (very expensive) Royal Mail service. The mail redirect may or may not be successful as it can fail with a moment’s inatention by the local postie and it gets delivered anyway, then there’s all the agencies that RM DO advise, from TV Licence and credit reference agencies. It’s all in the T&C’s you must agree to in order to purchase the service - and they’re not liable if they make mistakes. It isn’t as cut’n’dried for blame.

 

[Deafdoggie]

There are very good reasons why someone wouldn’t want to pay for this (very expensive) Royal Mail service. The mail redirect may or may not be successful as it can fail with a moment’s inatention by the local postie and it gets delivered anyway, then there’s all the agencies that RM DO advise, from TV Licence and credit reference agencies. It’s all in the T&C’s you must agree to in order to purchase the service - and they’re not liable if they make mistakes. It isn’t as cut’n’dried for blame.

Yes. But we're talking about effort here. If you're expecting a prosecution letter it's worth the effort to set up a redirection.

 

[Haywain]

There are very good reasons why someone wouldn’t want to pay for this (very expensive) Royal Mail service. The mail redirect may or may not be successful as it can fail with a moment’s inatention by the local postie and it gets delivered anyway, then there’s all the agencies that RM DO advise, from TV Licence and credit reference agencies. It’s all in the T&C’s you must agree to in order to purchase the service - and they’re not liable if they make mistakes. It isn’t as cut’n’dried for blame.

It is still vastly better than doing nothing at all. And the OP also had the option of telling Thameslink.