Metrolink Penalty Charge

[Throwaway12764]

Hello,

just made an account for this after finding this forum through Reddit.
My partner and I and two friends were charged £60 today for allegedly failing a ticket inspection on Saturday. All four of us had used the contactless tap and go before. We initially realised that something was off when we were all charged incomplete journey fees on Sunday.
Here are some details on our journeys (using letters for stations to keep this a bit more "private")

Me:
Trip 1: A to B
Trip 2: B to A
Ticket inspection on platform at B

Partner:
Trip 1: A to B
Trip 2: B to A
Trip 3: A to B
Trip 4: B to A
Ticket inspection on platform at B

Both friends:
Trip 1: A to B (different card reader)
Trip 2: B to A
Ticket inspection on platform at B

Out of the 10 taps at station B, 8 of them were on the same card reader. All 8 taps showed as successful on the reader, played the "success sound" and also showed the tick on the phone. According to our "contactless journey" on the tfgm website, none of these 8 taps happened though, which is why we were charged with multiple incomplete journeys. We already called the customer service and had refunds issued for those. (The 2 taps our friends did on different machines show on the contactless journey). Our last taps at station B was moments before we had our tickets inspected by the inspectors, who were already on the tram when we tapped our phones on the station card reader, as the train was not due to leave for another 5+ minutes. All four of us have now been charged the £60 penalty fare. I have called the customer service again and we have since filed an appeal on the website.
There must've been an issue with the card reader not communicating properly but that seems hard to prove. I'd assume there to be loads of wrongful charges at that station that day, though.

Is there any way other than hoping for them to do the right thing to prove our case? 4 of us who use the tap and go every day for years without ever missing a tap supposedly missed 8 taps in a single day? It makes me question whether it's worth using tap and go from now on. Might just stick to getting paper tickets in the future.

 

[WesternLancer]

Hello,

just made an account for this after finding this forum through Reddit.
My partner and I and two friends were charged £60 today for allegedly failing a ticket inspection on Saturday. All four of us had used the contactless tap and go before. We initially realised that something was off when we were all charged incomplete journey fees on Sunday.
Here are some details on our journeys (using letters for stations to keep this a bit more "private")

Me:
Trip 1: A to B
Trip 2: B to A
Ticket inspection on platform at B

Partner:
Trip 1: A to B
Trip 2: B to A
Trip 3: A to B
Trip 4: B to A
Ticket inspection on platform at B

Both friends:
Trip 1: A to B (different card reader)
Trip 2: B to A
Ticket inspection on platform at B

Out of the 10 taps at station B, 8 of them were on the same card reader. All 8 taps showed as successful on the reader, played the "success sound" and also showed the tick on the phone. According to our "contactless journey" on the tfgm website, none of these 8 taps happened though, which is why we were charged with multiple incomplete journeys. We already called the customer service and had refunds issued for those. (The 2 taps our friends did on different machines show on the contactless journey). Our last taps at station B was moments before we had our tickets inspected by the inspectors, who were already on the tram when we tapped our phones on the station card reader, as the train was not due to leave for another 5+ minutes. All four of us have now been charged the £60 penalty fare. I have called the customer service again and we have since filed an appeal on the website.
There must've been an issue with the card reader not communicating properly but that seems hard to prove. I'd assume there to be loads of wrongful charges at that station that day, though.

Is there any way other than hoping for them to do the right thing to prove our case? 4 of us who use the tap and go every day for years without ever missing a tap supposedly missed 8 taps in a single day? It makes me question whether it's worth using tap and go from now on. Might just stick to getting paper tickets in the future.

Welcome
I'm just bumping this as I see no one has pitched in as yet - but apols I do not have any familiarity with the Metrolink ticketing system and touch ins / contactless ticketing there to be able to offer any helpful advice myself.

Presumably there is
a) an Appeals system you can use - and people here may know how to best use that
and
b) presumably you can check bank card records about whether money was taken for the travel
but if the readers make it think your card have worked when they have not it would seem there is a real problem

Hopefully someone here with relevant Metrolink knowledge can help with advice.

 

[Throwaway12764]

All four of us have filed an appeal through a form on their website now. I first called customer services but unfortunately got a very unhelpful guy who accused us of lying ("I am not accusing you of lying BUT you clearly didn't tap as there is no evidence") only to tell me after 15 minutes that he wouldn't be able to help us anyway. He also went out of his way to tell us we shouldn't have even received a refund for the original unfinished journey charge (on Sunday we were charged multiple unfinished journey charges and then an extra £60 on Monday). Flat out told us his colleagues were wrong for giving refunds and that there is no point appealing because we are lying.

 

[Paul AC]

Personal context: I'm an infrequent user of the Metrolink tram contactless payment system (I have a GM ENTCS pass with the paid-for tram+train add-on, so I only need to pay for the tram when travelling in peak periods), but when I do I always use my Android phone, with Google Pay loaded with two cards - one personal, one for business use so that I can easily charge to whichever account I wish to.

The point of the above is that I know that I can go back through my "tapping records" in Google Pay on my phone and check when and where I tapped in or out. For example I can see that I tapped at Timperley at 07:32 and again at Victoria at 08:23, both on 14 July 2025. The actual fare charged isn't shown, as that depends on any fare capping the system does. If any of the OP's party use Google Pay they should be able to get their relevant tapping information. I don't know if Apple Pay does similar. This can help match up a journey against what's on the TfGM website, which I've never had to do.

The Metrolink staff card readers don't make any live, real-time interaction with the "card" (whether physical or mobile phone), they just check against a database of blocked cards and similar. However if you haven't tapped at all with the card before they check it, you will automatically get the £60 penalty fare when the overnight "fares calculation" takes place.

If you tap in and forget to tap out (or don't tap out within 2 hours) you will get an "incomplete journey" charge of £4.60 (max single fare) which does not contribute to any fare capping that might occur.

So the £60 is a penalty fare, not an incomplete journey charge.

Something doesn't add up somewhere.

One thing that the ticket examiners are careful with is when they do an "exit" check at a tram stop, after you've got off the tram but not yet tapped out. They will cover over all the on-platform readers so you can't use them before they check your ticket. Then they will let you pass but you must remember to tap out still, on one of the readers that they haven't covered - and when this as happened to me they have carefully explained what I need to do. Even if you forget, you'll only get the £4.60 charge not the £60 penalty.

 

[Throwaway12764]

I got both the incomplete journey and the penalty charge. Like I said we all tapped in before on the same card reader but for some reason it didn't register on their system. We used that same card reader 8 times that day and not a single tap shows up on the online contactless journey, which is why we got the extra charges. When we used tap and go it did show the successful tap on the reader though, along with the sound.
I don't think Apple Pay provides a history of card verifications. My bank only keeps a record of the first card verification with tfgm every day. For that day for example I only have one at 8:30.

 

[WesternLancer]

I got both the incomplete journey and the penalty charge. Like I said we all tapped in before on the same card reader but for some reason it didn't register on their system. We used that same card reader 8 times that day and not a single tap shows up on the online contactless journey, which is why we got the extra charges. When we used tap and go it did show the successful tap on the reader though, along with the sound.
I don't think Apple Pay provides a history of card verifications. My bank only keeps a record of the first card verification with tfgm every day. For that day for example I only have one at 8:30.

I can see the attraction of the paper ticket alternative!

 

[185]

The yellow contactless reader heads are provided by Vix Technology, an Australian company who also provided the back office software. It was procured by TfGM in 2012 and installed during late 2013. They get replaced a lot (the whole top is modular). I don't doubt they've had failures, and I get why the customer doesn't want to reveal which one in case TfGM (aka Bee Network) fix it, then gaslight claiming 'there was no problem'.

 

[Paul AC]

There is a significant benefit that is available only with contactless. On a weekday if you tap in before 07:00 you will get charged at the off-peak rate for your journey, as if you had tapped in after 09:30.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Aug 2025 ==

I don't think Apple Pay provides a history of card verifications. My bank only keeps a record of the first card verification with tfgm every day. For that day for example I only have one at 8:30.

For reference, on Google Pay, from the front screen where the currently selected 'card' is displayed (which you would have visible when making any contactless transaction), if I tap on that 'card' it opens up to give a list of recent transactions. Usually of course this is a list of merchants with the date and transaction value. There's also a 'View more activity' link which opens up a long list of transactions. Scroll down to the relevant dates. On my screen I can see the individual tappings as (e.g.) "TfGM Victoria 25 Jul" and "TfGM Timperley 25 Jul". Tapping on an individual entry gives more data such as "Public transport stop" and the date and time. So, I can see the times I tapped in and out on any given date. I also see one TfGM entry with no location given, just the date and time; I recall that this was an occasion when my 'card' was read/checked by a ticket examiner.

I think you need to be trying to build up a set of tapping times from you and your travelling companions to show that you did tap in or out when you say you did, to present this as evidence.

 

[Mag_seven]

Just a gentle reminder that posts here should be confined to giving advice to the OP.

I have split some posts that were discussing the merits of contactless vs paper tickets to this thread:

The merits of paper versus contactless payment

Moderator note - split from: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/metrolink-penalty-charge.290724/ There are loads or reasons I don't use the tap in tap out on Metrolink versus paper tickets. Your case demonstrates why and I just don't see the attraction in them. - Busier times or stations...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[DeverseSam]

Iphones have the Screen Time feature showing when the phone was picked up and what app was used first. That could be potentially useful if all four people picked up their phones and used Apple Pay at the same time

 

[Haywain]

Iphones have the Screen Time feature showing when the phone was picked up and what app was used first. That could be potentially useful if all four people picked up their phones and used Apple Pay at the same time

It's not clear if the OP is still watching the thread, but the most useful thing they can do is go to https://contactless.beenetwork.com/ where the journey history for the card can be seen. If a phone has been used, this can then be compared with the records in Google Pay or Apple Pay. As the possibility has been mentioned of the reader not connecting, this could have been rectified a few days later (this is something I have experienced on railway readers). Otherwise it seems a bit of a stretch to suggest that all 4 people might have been using iPhones and that their use of an app could be proof of payment.

 

[DeverseSam]

Otherwise it seems a bit of a stretch to suggest that all 4 people might have been using iPhones and that their use of an app could be proof of payment.

I agree however @paulac has explained how to do it on google pay, and in #5 apple pay is mentioned as having been used by at least one person