I was given a letter for a travel incident report for providing an expired railcard. I sent an email apologising for my mistake and sent any evidence I deemed to be important. The automatic email reply said there would be a potential delay of 10 days, however it has been 10 days and there has been no response.
I am anxious as it is a few days from the 21 day response limit given in the original letter, in which i fear they will increase the punishment.
Should I send a follow up email?
which rail company did this involve?
The 21 days in their initial letter was presumably the 21 days you had to reply to them - it's not a promise they would conclude the case in 21 days - and I suspect the 10 days mentioned in their auto e-mail reply is a 'hope' not a guarantee on their part.
If there were any complexities* about your case than I doubt you would have any chance of them completing their decisions in 10 days although it does tend to vary from company to company.
If you give us a bit more info about things then people will be able to give you a more informed response.
* in the case of an expired railcard used by mistake they will probably be getting your ticket buying records from another on line retailer to see if there were other instances of travel with the expired railcard on your part - so they can seek to charge you for new tickets for those trips as well - this is standard proactive now from what we see on here - so as to know what to expect have you checked your ticket buying history from the date of Railcard expiry to the date you were stopped to see if you did travel on incorrect tickets on other occasions? It's worth you doing that for your own private records as it might give you some idea as to what sum they might ask from you as part of any 'settlement' they might hopefully opt to offer you.
