Short fare and fare evasion on Chiltern

[tomtomtom]

Hello everyone,

I’m hoping someone can provide some advice here as I’m at a loss. This week my wife told me that she was stopped by undercover inspectors at Marylebone station last week for having a short fare ticket (Marylebone to Wembley and Beaconsfield to Princes Risborough). She was interviewed, her details taken and told she would expect a letter in a few weeks about prosecution.

However, she then broke down in tears and revealed that she had actually been short faring and avoiding paying for other journeys for the last 6 months. I was shocked as this is completely out of character for her. I’ve no idea why she has done this as we are not struggling financially (and she says she doesn’t know why herself), and whilst I am extremely angry and disappointed in her actions, I am worried about the repercussions from this as they will be auditing her travel history from her Chilterns app. And whilst she is currently an absolute wreck, she is still obviously completely at fault.

We’re still waiting for the letter to arrive, but I found this forum when looking into what happens next and have been reading similar threads that say she should prepare an itemised list of journeys she has made. Having now done this, I’ve worked out that in a worst case scenario she would owe around £2,600 (I included all the journeys she has made in the app as I don’t know which were fully paid and which were short fare as she does sometimes work in places that are on the Chiltern line and I have picked her up a few times from stations when trains have been cancelled or I'm in the area).

We’re in the thankful position that we would be able to pay this should they let us settle this out of court. I've read that Chiltern do accept OOCS but I’m worried that because of the scale of this, they would refuse a settlement and take her to court, leaving her with a criminal record that could potentially damage her career.

I guess my main question is what to do right now to try and calm my wife down? Should we wait for the letter to arrive first or should we be proactive and look into contacting a solicitor in the hope that they might be able to solve this out of court for us?

 

[notmyrealname]

Hi, welcome to the forum.

I'm sure the forum pros will be here a bit later, but to answer a couple of your questions. People here have seen out of court settlements for cases involving quite a lot more than £2,600, I'm sure I've seen five figure sums mentioned.

In terms of finding a solicitor, the usual recommendation is to wait for the first letter from Chiltern. If you post a redacted copy of that, post it here with a draft reply and people will proofread it for you and make suggestions for any amendments.

 

[Titfield]

Always wait for the letter to arrive so that your response can be tailored to the issues raised.

If your response to Chiltern Railway is subsequently rebuffed then would be the time to consider engaging a solicitor. There are a number of firms mentioned on this forum which appear to have a good success rate of resolving issues out of court albeit at a cost.

Please do try and reassure your wife that this will be resolved as reducing her anxiety and stress is the priority. Please try and avoid being angry with her. Sometimes the causes of fare evasion are obvious and sometimes there are far more complex psychological issues at work. In these cases blaming someone is not the answer. Sometimes fare evasion is a physical manifestation of a deeper seated issue that the person themselves is not aware of.

Good luck in resolving this.

 

[Pushpit]

I guess my main question is what to do right now to try and calm my wife down? Should we wait for the letter to arrive first or should we be proactive and look into contacting a solicitor in the hope that they might be able to solve this out of court for us?

Welcome to the forum.

In terms of the nuts and bolts of this, you are unfortunately in a waiting game as Chiltern will need some time to work out what is going on and this invariably takes far longer than the fare evader would like. Chiltern also seems to get backlogs of workload too. So all you can do is wait for the letter and that can take many weeks, even a few months. Past experience here has shown that with a few limited exceptions it is best to let the rail company do its work, pro-actively contacting the rail company sounds like a good idea but rarely is, since it tends to rub up against their internal systems and cause them extra work for no good purpose, at least from their perspective. They have 6 months to make a decision on this. Doughnutting is a serious matter and Chiltern also take it more seriously than most companies, but equally normally strive to reach an out of court settlement. Solicitors at this stage are of limited or zero benefit.

But the reason I'm posting is about something else. I can't go too far into this since it's way out of scope for this forum, and also this thread is not about you or me. But there is one thing in this area that manages to get both over diagnosed and under diagnosed. I'll switch this to shoplifting since it's slightly better known. A small percentage of shoplifters steal for no good reason. They don't need to do it, they have the money, it's actually more work to steal rather than just pay, the items are often trivial, low cost or even irrelevant, such as men stealing sanitary pads or children's items when they have no children. Often these people would have strong adverse moral reactions to being considered a thief and yet they steal. These cases aren't actually about shoplifting, it's a symptom of a mental health condition not being signalled in conventional ways. Things like OCD, anxiety disorders, depression, deep unhappiness - very long list. "A cry for help" is the phrase often used, though technically it usually isn't. I best not go further, and you best not engage with this paragraph online / via this forum, but hopefully you see the picture.

Instead you (plural) should consider seeing either your GP or if it's a big practice perhaps another clinician with mental health skills (e.g. wellness or wellbeing nurse) and explore the issue. I would urge you to start there since there is a risk of over-diagnosis: sometimes humans do strange or unusual things and it's a bit lazy just to blame mental health for everything. Sometimes we do just do strange or unusual things and there actually isn't an explanation, and it's not worth spending significant effort on this area when it's actually not the explanation.

Good luck to both of you. It's not a good situation, but it may strangely be a case where you will be grateful to Chiltern for identifying something that needs fixing. And sometimes it's best to see this in quite technical terms - as one would with say a cough or a sore throat.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

To cut to the chase: even in the worst case scenario, where all incidents are taken to court, your wife will not be going to prison. Even without getting into the current politics around prisons, in practice it just isn't used as a sanction for fare dodging.

On the issue of which tickets may have been used for 'doughnutting' (a ticket to get you in to the railway at the beginning, another to get you out at the end, but with a hole in the middle): look for pairs of tickets on the same day.

 

[tomtomtom]

Hi, welcome to the forum.

I'm sure the forum pros will be here a bit later, but to answer a couple of your questions. People here have seen out of court settlements for cases involving quite a lot more than £2,600, I'm sure I've seen five figure sums mentioned.

In terms of finding a solicitor, the usual recommendation is to wait for the first letter from Chiltern. If you post a redacted copy of that, post it here with a draft reply and people will proofread it for you and make suggestions for any amendments.

Thank you. Once we receive the letter I'll make sure to make a copy and post it in here.

Always wait for the letter to arrive so that your response can be tailored to the issues raised.

If your response to Chiltern Railway is subsequently rebuffed then would be the time to consider engaging a solicitor. There are a number of firms mentioned on this forum which appear to have a good success rate of resolving issues out of court albeit at a cost.

Please do try and reassure your wife that this will be resolved as reducing her anxiety and stress is the priority. Please try and avoid being angry with her. Sometimes the causes of fare evasion are obvious and sometimes there are far more complex psychological issues at work. In these cases blaming someone is not the answer. Sometimes fare evasion is a physical manifestation of a deeper seated issue that the person themselves is not aware of.

Good luck in resolving this.

Thank you for your reply. The initial anger has waned since she told me, I was just blindsided by it as there was no reason to do this. My wife and I are ok, I just want her to be ok. Having shown her the replies in here and she's had time to process, her anxiety has reduced a little.

Welcome to the forum.

In terms of the nuts and bolts of this, you are unfortunately in a waiting game as Chiltern will need some time to work out what is going on and this invariably takes far longer than the fare evader would like. Chiltern also seems to get backlogs of workload too. So all you can do is wait for the letter and that can take many weeks, even a few months. Past experience here has shown that with a few limited exceptions it is best to let the rail company do its work, pro-actively contacting the rail company sounds like a good idea but rarely is, since it tends to rub up against their internal systems and cause them extra work for no good purpose, at least from their perspective. They have 6 months to make a decision on this. Doughnutting is a serious matter and Chiltern also take it more seriously than most companies, but equally normally strive to reach an out of court settlement. Solicitors at this stage are of limited or zero benefit.

But the reason I'm posting is about something else. I can't go too far into this since it's way out of scope for this forum, and also this thread is not about you or me. But there is one thing in this area that manages to get both over diagnosed and under diagnosed. I'll switch this to shoplifting since it's slightly better known. A small percentage of shoplifters steal for no good reason. They don't need to do it, they have the money, it's actually more work to steal rather than just pay, the items are often trivial, low cost or even irrelevant, such as men stealing sanitary pads or children's items when they have no children. Often these people would have strong adverse moral reactions to being considered a thief and yet they steal. These cases aren't actually about shoplifting, it's a symptom of a mental health condition not being signalled in conventional ways. Things like OCD, anxiety disorders, depression, deep unhappiness - very long list. "A cry for help" is the phrase often used, though technically it usually isn't. I best not go further, and you best not engage with this paragraph online / via this forum, but hopefully you see the picture.

Instead you (plural) should consider seeing either your GP or if it's a big practice perhaps another clinician with mental health skills (e.g. wellness or wellbeing nurse) and explore the issue. I would urge you to start there since there is a risk of over-diagnosis: sometimes humans do strange or unusual things and it's a bit lazy just to blame mental health for everything. Sometimes we do just do strange or unusual things and there actually isn't an explanation, and it's not worth spending significant effort on this area when it's actually not the explanation.

Good luck to both of you. It's not a good situation, but it may strangely be a case where you will be grateful to Chiltern for identifying something that needs fixing. And sometimes it's best to see this in quite technical terms - as one would with say a cough or a sore throat.

Thank you for your reply. I must admit this is something that has crossed my mind. We're in a good place relationship wise, but I have thought about couple's therapy as a way to help us understand each other more. This might be the perfect time to address this.

To cut to the chase: even in the worst case scenario, where all incidents are taken to court, your wife will not be going to prison. Even without getting into the current politics around prisons, in practice it just isn't used as a sanction for fare dodging.

On the issue of which tickets may have been used for 'doughnutting' (a ticket to get you in to the railway at the beginning, another to get you out at the end, but with a hole in the middle): look for pairs of tickets on the same day.

Looking back through the list, there are a number of instances of this happening. There are also a couple of singles journeys that we can't remember if I picked her up from the station/dropped her off as it was months ago.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

On the issue of which tickets may have been used for 'doughnutting' (a ticket to get you in to the railway at the beginning, another to get you out at the end, but with a hole in the middle): look for pairs of tickets on the same day

Looking back through the list, there are a number of instances of this happening. There are also a couple of singles journeys that we can't remember if I picked her up from the station/dropped her off as it was months ago.

That's probably good enough. The railway's data won't be perfect either so it's mainly about getting figures which are fairly similar to those that the railway come up with. If an out of court settlement is ultimately offered, we generally don't advise arguing over small differences.

(Edit to correct typo: 'anyone' > 'an')

 

[tomtomtom]

That's probably good enough. The railway's data won't be perfect either so it's mainly about getting figures which are fairly similar to those that the railway come up with. If anyone out of court settlement is ultimately offered, we generally don't advise arguing over small differences.

Oh, absolutely. I was more worried that we had under estimated the figures. Would it be a case of us providing our own figures on what we think we owe, or just wait for CR to provide their evaluation?

 

[John R]

Oh, absolutely. I was more worried that we had under estimated the figures. Would it be a case of us providing our own figures on what we think we owe, or just wait for CR to provide their evaluation?

Wait for them to come up with a figure. It’s for them to offer you a settlement.

 

[enyoueffsea]

It’s always best to remember an out of court settlement is in the interest of Chiltern as they want your money, rather than a court fine following prosecution that goes to the Treasury.

Unless you respond inappropriately (do not accept fault, are unapologetic or aggressive in tone) then you’re more than likely to get a settlement at the end of this.

You’ll have some time of just waiting now, which isn’t helpful but you cannot do anything else at this stage. Try to put it to one side until a letter arrives and then revisit this thread for support on drafting a response.

You’ve done the right thing in auditing her history and working out what money you may need to set aside to resolve this.

 

[Hadders]

Some good advice has been given by forum members. The key to obtaining an out of court settlement is to co-operate with Chiltern, I've seen prosecutions over 10p before but out of court settlements as high as £25k!

It'll probably take several weeks for Chiltern to write to you. When their letter arrives post a redacted copy of it in this thread along with your draft response and we can proof read it for you. It's up to you whether or not to use a solicitor but personally speaking there's no need to involve one at this stage. Should Chiltern's response to your reply not be favourable then that is when I'd look to use a solicitor.

 

[tomtomtom]

Some good advice has been given by forum members. The key to obtaining an out of court settlement is to co-operate with Chiltern, I've seen prosecutions over 10p before but out of court settlements as high as £25k!

It'll probably take several weeks for Chiltern to write to you. When their letter arrives post a redacted copy of it in this thread along with your draft response and we can proof read it for you. It's up to you whether or not to use a solicitor but personally speaking there's no need to involve one at this stage. Should Chiltern's response to your reply not be favourable then that is when I'd look to use a solicitor.

Thank you and everyone else for replying. We'll wait for the letter to arrive. In other news, my wife has agreed to go with me to couples therapy so even if this does end up costing us a lot of money, this might be a step in the right direction at helping her with her mental health.

 

[tomtomtom]

Happy New Year everyone, I hope you've all a peaceful holiday whatever you've been doing.

In a nutshell - my wife was caught short faring by Chiltern staff and then broke down and admitted to me she had been doing it for over six months for no apparent reason.

First about my wife. A few people suggested seeing a professional about my her mental health. You'll be happy to know we did this, and it was determined that she was suffering from stress and depression caused by her work/life balance. Her job in London was incredibly stressful, where she was working longer and longer hours, which made her resent herself for missing out on her time with me and the kids which reached boiling point when she told me about what had happened. Since the incident, she's actually moved jobs and is now at a place that is a lot closer to home where she no longer needs to use public transport as much. She is a lot happier, working fewer hours and seems like a different person which is fantastic.

However, we've still yet to receive any correspondence from Chiltern since she was spoken to and interviewed back in early May 2025. They took pictures of her driving licence, her details on the Chiltern app and got her to sign a digital note on the scanner/computer they had with them, which confirmed our home address but we've not received one letter or email.

I've seen other topics from posters having similar experiences and I just wanted to know whether this is normal, or whether we should contact Chiltern somehow to see if we've missed a letter/email etc? The last thing we want, because of the potential prosecution/fine totals, is to have it escalate into something even more serious.

 

[WesternLancer]

See post #8 on this thread that may be pertinent as it refers to Chiltern

letter received in post, still waiting to hear back after 7 months

basically i had a santander railcard that they give out to university students for 3/4 years. i didn’t realise my had expired (since i never check the card and just bring it out to show the officers on the train and they never noticed the date expiry too). i had used the trainline app to buy...

www.railforums.co.uk

Glad to hear work related things have improved for your wife.

I suspect that if Chiltern had done anything significant by now you would have received papers from a magistrates court by now. So long as you are confident your post is secure and you open it all promptly then if you have not received anything then every probability Chiltern have not done anything.

However if mental health and stress is at stake over this you could write to Chiltern to ask what is going on but it might not be in your interests to do so. If that’s what you want to do it would probably be best to get advice from here on a draft before you contact them.

 

[AlterEgo]

Don't contact Chiltern. They've had a freeze on activity while their prosecution practices are being reviewed and this works in your wife's favour, as the case is now out of time. Do nothing. She cannot be prosecuted for any summary-only railway offence.

 

[furlong]

With Chiltern, just continue to wait. It's not in your interest to chase them! It seems that they made some procedural errors, put certain aspects of their enforcement activities on hold, and have still not decided how to move forward.

 

[tomtomtom]

Thank you everyone for replying so quickly

In terms of our post, we're are absolutely sure it is secure and regularly collected, so there is no chance we've missed a letter should it have come through.

As suggested, we'll hold off contacting them and wait for them to get in touch with us. As per the post in the thread linked above from WesternLancer, whilst the fine from the incident she was caught for is now out of time, I'm guessing we'll eventually get a letter about the potential other short fares that she has taken but not originally caught for?

 

[z444z]

I'm guessing we'll eventually get a letter about the potential other short fares that she has taken but not originally caught for?

It’s possible but far from guaranteed. If they do get in touch, they’ll be looking to recover the fares via civil processes/courts, not criminal. It’s far less scary and generally just involves a bit of correspondence ending in paying them the difference between what you paid and what you should’ve paid. If you cooperate it probably won’t even reach court, but if it does, a judgement is nothing but an order to pay money and doesn’t impact your credit score if paid within 28 days.

They’ve got your address, so I’d try to put it out of your mind, and if they do get in touch then come back and we’ll help!

 

[fandroid]

It's up to you how you deal with this. I think I'd agree with the general advice to simply wait for Chiltern to write. However, the mental health issue has to be taken into consideration and your wife might wish to get this whole episode sorted out and behind you both.
You implied earlier that you were well able to afford the correct fares for the journeys taken and the fare avoidance had no logical motivation. The advice from here is normally about how to minimise the costs associated with settling an unpaid fares debt to a train company. If you've read other threads you'll see what the options for that might be. It's up to you how you approach this and worth mulling over before that letter arrives.

It would help us then to know what you have concluded about your approach to any eventual settlement.

 

[tomtomtom]

It's up to you how you deal with this. I think I'd agree with the general advice to simply wait for Chiltern to write. However, the mental health issue has to be taken into consideration and your wife might wish to get this whole episode sorted out and behind you both.
You implied earlier that you were well able to afford the correct fares for the journeys taken and the fare avoidance had no logical motivation. The advice from here is normally about how to minimise the costs associated with settling an unpaid fares debt to a train company. If you've read other threads you'll see what the options for that might be. It's up to you how you approach this and worth mulling over before that letter arrives.

It would help us then to know what you have concluded about your approach to any eventual settlement.

As I said in my post from yesterday, my wife's mental health has changed dramatically thanks to changing jobs. As well as this, once users on here first pointed out that she wouldn't be going to prison for this type of act, she calmed down a lot.

As for our approach to the settlement. There's no beating around the bush, what she did was illegal and she accepts that. Whilst our dual income is not as high as it was last year due to her change in job, we will still have the funds to pay any settlement should they give us one. My only question would be would the settlement be for money all the money missed/not paid for the short faring (e.g. £5-6 per day x however many days) or would the fine charge a full days travel per each journey (e.g. £36 per day x however many days)? We can luckily afford both but obviously the difference in costs between the two will be large.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

My only question would be would the settlement be for money all the money missed/not paid for the short faring (e.g. £5-6 per day x however many days) or would the fine charge a full days travel per each journey (e.g. £36 per day x however many days)? We can luckily afford both but obviously the difference in costs between the two will be large.

There are two views on this. One which is widely held here is that the payment should be of the difference (£5-6/day in this case). There's an alternative view that it should be the full fare (£36/day). The railway tends to take the second option (with some exceptions - there's currently a live thread showing GTR taking a more considerate approach).

In practical terms, what this means is that if settling matters quickly and without hassle is the priority, then if the railway get in touch seeking repayment you'll have to pay the higher amount. We have seen some (but by no means universal) success with negotiating amounts down, so it may be worth considering arguing the point - but I emphasise that there is no certainty that this would work. For completeness, I don't think we have yet seen a case where the railway actually takes a claim like this to court (n.b. civil court, not criminal) so we have no feel as to what level of repayment the courts would see as appropriate.

 

[Olivine]

Surely as this is out of time I.e 6 months, Chiltern have no redress?

 

[SuspectUsual]

Surely as this is out of time I.e 6 months, Chiltern have no redress?

They have the civil courts

 

[WesternLancer]

As I said in my post from yesterday, my wife's mental health has changed dramatically thanks to changing jobs. As well as this, once users on here first pointed out that she wouldn't be going to prison for this type of act, she calmed down a lot.

As for our approach to the settlement. There's no beating around the bush, what she did was illegal and she accepts that. Whilst our dual income is not as high as it was last year due to her change in job, we will still have the funds to pay any settlement should they give us one. My only question would be would the settlement be for money all the money missed/not paid for the short faring (e.g. £5-6 per day x however many days) or would the fine charge a full days travel per each journey (e.g. £36 per day x however many days)? We can luckily afford both but obviously the difference in costs between the two will be large.

To add to the responses already given I think the following applies

If within 6 months of the detected offence the railway 'have you over a barrel' with regards to settlements because they can bring a criminal prosecution if you don't pay what they ask - so they are often (but not always - it various by train company) minded to ask for the full Anytime fare with no credit given for sums paid for part of the travel. If you don't like it then they will 'see you in court'. Chiltern used to use a subcontractor for enforcement called ITAL/IRCAS who very much took this line on Chiltern's behalf as illustrated in old threads.

Chiltern then seemed to take the work in house and their approach became less 'hard line' - but as reported in the link above it seems that Chiltern have paused elements of their fare evasion follow up work and it looks like in your case the 6 month time period has passed, so the criminal prosecution threat is presumably removed (unless something got lost in the post and I note your comments about your post above). We've certainly seen far fewer chiltern cases on here in recent (eg 6?) months and some of the ones we have seen are all a bit like yours (ie 'they stopped me and some months have gone by and I've not heard anything, what does this mean?')

That then means the railways companies potential for redress is to pursue the case in the civil court for the sum owed. From what I have read on here (there are a couple of detailed threads from before xmas with GWR who are actively now using this approach it seems) this is different - the court has to be convinced on the balance of probabilities that you owe the money (so not 'beyond reasonable doubt'), it's not a criminal action, and it's said on here that the court would tend to award a sum commensurate with the railway's actual losses. I also understand the court might expect to see the railway to have engaged with you on reasonable offers before it goes to court, should you have made them in response to their demand - so I take that to mean there is scope for responding to the railway to offer a sum in line with that even if they start out by requesting full Anytime fares for the whole journey. But as mentioned we have not actually seen on here any cases get to court - we did see a few large claims from GWR being pursued robustly and the passengers concerned did mange to negotiate the sums down a bit but in the end opted to pay rather than let it go to the civil court.

I would therefore be tempted to suggest you should keep savings in hand to meet the highest possible sum in the event that is needed, but if contacted by the railway head here to ask how best to engage with them in order to try to seek a lower sum that reflects more accurately the sum the railway actually lost by your wife's actions.

Of course none of this might happen, and you may simply not hear from Chiltern again about all this. I suspect the prospects of that will be somewhat determined by how much pressure HM Treasury put on Dept for Transport to get train operators and the new GBR to pursue fare evaders and fare evaders debts over the coming period of months and years. For example if GWR's approach proves successful in securing long past debts then you might expect the govt (who ultimately control all the railway companies) to encourage other train operators to adopt the same approach. But that's just my hunch.

Hope this helps - it's just a summary in my own words of what I have seen on here in other cases by people who I regard as well informed commentators. I'm not an expert in court process over stuff like this.

 

[z444z]

Just a little addition to the excellent post above - as far as I know Chiltern would have 6 years to bring a civil claim.

 

[WesternLancer]

Just a little addition to the excellent post above - as far as I know Chiltern would have 6 years to bring a civil claim.

Thanks! I did wonder if there was a time limit but wasn't sure so did not mention it - helpful to clarify this I would think.