Short fare dodging

[RLI63]

Hi all,

I have been stupidly short fare dodging recently

The worker said he would send my ticket to Chiltern Railways and that I could receive a letter in up to three weeks time and that a fine and court proceedings may happen. I have only done this a few times and will obviously stop doing it now! How likely is it that a letter will arrive at my address as I didn’t give the worker any personal details? I presume they can get my email or some correspondence through Trainline where I bought the ticket?

To make things clear, if I do receive the letter I will comply and pay the settlement required as I imagine they would not take me to court for such a small number of offences. If that is the case, how should I respond to such a letter and any idea of total cost of settlement?

Thanks for your help and let me know if you need any more info

 

[Fawkes Cat]

Hi all,

I have been stupidly short fare dodging recently

The worker said he would send my ticket to Chiltern Railways and that I could receive a letter in up to three weeks time and that a fine and court proceedings may happen. I have only done this a few times and will obviously stop doing it now! How likely is it that a letter will arrive at my address as I didn’t give the worker any personal details? I presume they can get my email or some correspondence through Trainline where I bought the ticket?

To make things clear, if I do receive the letter I will comply and pay the settlement required as I imagine they would not take me to court for such a small number of offences. If that is the case, how should I respond to such a letter and any idea of total cost of settlement?

Thanks for your help and let me know if you need any more info

Welcome to the forum!

To start by clearing up one misunderstanding: you need to be aware that railways have in the past prosecuted for fare dodging where the difference between what was paid and what should have been paid was a matter of pennies. And in recent years what we have seen on this forum is that Chiltern Railways can be quite firm about seeing prosecution as a route to take rather than offering an out of court settlement. When you add to that the fact that there's no obligation to get a notice of prosecution (a summons) to you - the prosecutor just has to try to get it to you, then you cannot assume that however small the amount or rarely it happened, the railway will go away and not pursue you to court.

But it's most likely that the railway will get in touch with you: your Trainline account contains enough information for them to do so, and Trainline do share this information with the railway companies.

So Chiltern will probably write to you (or it might be a company called Transport Investigations Limited who Chiltern contract this sort of work out to). The letter may threaten prosecution - but until you actually get a summons or a Single Justice Procedure Notice sent to you, they won't have decided to take you to court, so there will be room for negotiation. To get the railway to let you off with an out of court settlement, you will need to be honest with them, and you will need to persuade them that you won't offend again. @Hadders has some excellent advice on this and they may be along shortly to give you a tailored version for your situation, but look through other threads on this forum and you may well find it.

If Chiltern agree not to prosecute you, they will want the train fares that you should have paid. This is normally worked out on the basis of Anytime Single fares - so no discount for buying return tickets, or having a railcard, or for what you have already paid. They will also want the cost of their investigation, which will be a few hundreds of pounds.

 

[RLI63]

Thank you I have read up some of Hadders’ activity and have an idea of what next steps should be. Could I even preemptively email Chiltern Railways and notify them of the incident?

 

[AlterEgo]

Thank you I have read up some of Hadders’ activity and have an idea of what next steps should be. Could I even preemptively email Chiltern Railways and notify them of the incident?

Don't do this. It isn't in your interest to do this, and there is no benefit to doing so. They have up to six months to bring charges, and we have seen them come perilously close to timing out on a number of cases recently.

 

[RLI63]

Don't do this. It isn't in your interest to do this, and there is no benefit to doing so. They have up to six months to bring charges, and we have seen them come perilously close to timing out on a number of cases recently.

That’s true, thank you. I’ll just wait and see what happens

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 18 Jun 2024 ==

Out of interest how would they get my address? I don’t have a Trainline account as you can pay without creating an account.

 

[island]

That’s true, thank you. I’ll just wait and see what happens

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 18 Jun 2024 ==

Out of interest how would they get my address? I don’t have a Trainline account as you can pay without creating an account.

You will have provided your billing address at point of purchase.

 

[Hadders]

Chiltern or a company called Transport Investigations Limited who CHiltern often use to deal with cases like this will be able to get hold of your address. Just because you've checked out as a guest doesn't mean they don't have access to your details.

There's nothing to be gained by contacting Chiltern/TIL ahead of them writing to you and it could even be counter-productive. For starters you don't have the case reference number - they deal with hundreds of cases lile this at a time and it's unlikely that they will manually take time to match up your letter with the case. Also, you don't know what they're going to ask you, and you don't want to answer questions they don't plan to ask!

There's not really anything you can do until their letter arrives. When it does pop back here and post up a copy of it (with personal detauls redacted) along with your draft reply and forum members will be happy to proof read it for you.

 

[Starmill]

If they've got your real full name they can pay a company to trace your address for the purpose of serving legal letters. It's not especially difficult to do if there's some context to narrow it down among everyone in the country who might have the same name as you, and you've registered to vote, or potentially own property or a vehicle or have applied for credit etc. etc. etc.

 

[John R]

and you've registered to vote

And if you haven’t registered, you have until 2359 tonight.

Register to vote

Register to vote to take part in elections in the UK. Includes how to get on the electoral register and how to update your address on the register.

www.gov.uk

 

[RLI63]

Ah yeah that all makes sense. Just have to wait and not think about it until the letter arrives in that case. Registered to vote this afternoon! Thanks all again will come back to this post if/when I need to