WMR Prosecutions Investigation

[tropicalsorry]

Hi all,

My son was stopped by revenue staff at Birmingham New Street a week or so ago. It turns out he forgot to renew his railcard, so his entire journey was invalid.

I've looked at his history and it seems like he's taken a few months worth of trips with the discount of the railcard that wasn't renewed. I've pulled apart his trip history and there's other discrepancies (he would pay a child ticket for his little sister to travel, while his older sister would pay for his and her full adult ticket) which I've confirmed between them.

There's also the case of his old railcard being lost (my ex paid for his railcard on his phone and sent him a screenshot, but he doesn't have WhatsApp history in that chat that far back anymore), but a digital footprint of him taking trips for the previous year to his university with the railcard exist. There's even trips we know have been paid for but haven't been taken!

It looks much worse than the real affected trips taken are. He's very stressed out waiting for his prosecution documentation and as his mother I'm stressed out too. What's the best course of action here? We have no money right now and cannot afford to pay if the bill will extend to years of trips.

How good is WMR with understanding these issues? My son has already told me he wants to call and apologise to save his life (he suffers from mental health problems and I'm concerned about how this will get worse if he gets a criminal record). Is it better to try and provide explanations for these very complicated problems while running the risk of further aggravating the issue? We're very lost with this process and would appreciate your support.

 

[WesternLancer]

Hi all,

My son was stopped by revenue staff at Birmingham New Street a week or so ago. It turns out he forgot to renew his railcard, so his entire journey was invalid.

I've looked at his history and it seems like he's taken a few months worth of trips with the discount of the railcard that wasn't renewed. I've pulled apart his trip history and there's other discrepancies (he would pay a child ticket for his little sister to travel, while his older sister would pay for his and her full adult ticket) which I've confirmed between them.

There's also the case of his old railcard being lost (my ex paid for his railcard on his phone and sent him a screenshot, but he doesn't have WhatsApp history in that chat that far back anymore), but a digital footprint of him taking trips for the previous year to his university with the railcard exist. There's even trips we know have been paid for but haven't been taken!

It looks much worse than the real affected trips taken are. He's very stressed out waiting for his prosecution documentation and as his mother I'm stressed out too. What's the best course of action here? We have no money right now and cannot afford to pay if the bill will extend to years of trips.

How good is WMR with understanding these issues? My son has already told me he wants to call and apologise to save his life (he suffers from mental health problems and I'm concerned about how this will get worse if he gets a criminal record). Is it better to try and provide explanations for these very complicated problems while running the risk of further aggravating the issue? We're very lost with this process and would appreciate your support.

I sympathise but best not to contact WMR until they contact your son. Total waste of time trying to ring. I doubt the revenue protection team even take calls. He will just be one of hundreds of ticket irregularity cases they get every week in reality.

Engage with them and they are unlikely to prosecute. So every chance of settling the matter out of court.

I have a hunch that WMR may be one of the very few operators that might allow large settlement sums to be spread across instalments albeit not many.

Complex cases like this stretching back often involve them sending you a list of suspected travel dates with wrong tickets that you can then agree or disagree certain occasions. So your research on that will help at that stage.

When they contact (letter or email/ check spam) get advice from here on how best to word your reply.

Can your ex provide any proof of purchasing the railcard that they bought for your son? Eg e mail receipt or bank statement entry. Getting that handy would be helpful preparation if needed.

 

[tropicalsorry]

I sympathise but best not to contact WMR until they contact your son. Total waste of time trying to ring. I doubt the revenue protection team even take calls. He will just be one of hundreds of ticket irregularity cases they get every week in reality.

Engage with them and they are unlikely to prosecute. So every chance of settling the matter out of court.

I have a hunch that WMR may be one of the very few operators that might allow large settlement sums to be spread across instalments albeit not many.

Complex cases like this stretching back often involve them sending you a list of suspected travel dates with wrong tickets that you can then agree or disagree certain occasions. So your research on that will help at that stage.

When they contact (letter or email/ check spam) get advice from here on how best to word your reply.

Can your ex provide any proof of purchasing the railcard that they bought for your son? Eg e mail receipt or bank statement entry. Getting that handy would be helpful preparation if needed.

Thank you very much for the quick reply and very good advice. We were planning on spending all of next week trying to get through to the revenue protection team.

I will keep an eye out for the paperwork and update accordingly. Right now there's no chance of me getting in touch with my ex for the actual image but I'll be trying over the course of the next week. If it's not possible to get this, I would imagine it's a full year of discounted fares we would have to pay at full price? That could add up to well over £1000 alone...

If the amount is possible to pay, is it best if we just pay off the amount without agreeing/disagreeing on certain occasions? The last thing we would want is an opportunity to settle out of court and then poke the bees nest enough which could lead to them withdrawing the out of court offer? We're terrified of the most negative possibility here and want to do everything we can do avoid it.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

We're terrified of the most negative possibility here and want to do everything we can do avoid it

It’s worth thinking about the worst possible outcome.

That would be that your son would be taken to court and convicted (so they plead guilty or are found guilty). In that case, they would face punishment. So what would that punishment be?

It would be a fine. Your son would not go to prison, and they would not be put on probation. The maximum possible fine is £1,000, but the amount is based on income so will likely be less than this. However, there will be court costs, prosecution costs, a surcharge and compensation (i.e. the train fares that should have been paid) on top.

Your son would also have a ‘criminal record’ - that is, if someone asked ‘have you ever been convicted of a crime’ they would have to say ‘yes’. But there’s something called the ‘Rehabilitation of Offenders Act’ which says that some offences can be ignored (‘become spent’ in the jargon) after a while. My understanding is that rail ticket offences are spent after no more than a year - so for most purposes after that your son wouldn’t have to mention the conviction. This is for most purposes - there are some exceptions around jobs and so on where there is a lot of trust involved (so things involving other people’s money, healthcare or trust so things like teaching or the law and so on). But for many of the exceptions, having to declare a criminal record won’t prevent employment, although it may make recruitment a little embarrassing.

And that’s the *worst* that can happen. It may not be that bad. Of course, having to pay several hundreds of pounds won’t be easy - punishments aren’t meant to be easy, but neither are they meant to be a disaster. And as has already been said upthread, the actual outcome may be less severe. But the bottom line is that while the worst outcome won’t be good, it is not guaranteed to ruin your son’s life.

 

[SuspectUsual]

If the amount is possible to pay, is it best if we just pay off the amount without agreeing/disagreeing on certain occasions? The last thing we would want is an opportunity to settle out of court and then poke the bees nest enough which could lead to them withdrawing the out of court offer?

I totally understand where you're coming from on this, but ultimately it's a judgement call only you can make, once you've seen any data they provide. If its a small percentage then yes, probably best not to challenge anything, but if its bigger then maybe see what evidence you could cobble together to support a challenge and take it from there

 

[Haywain]

he would pay a child ticket for his little sister to travel, while his older sister would pay for his and her full adult ticket

It will be assumed that he bought and used those child tickets, and this explanation isn't going to convince anyone otherwise.

There's also the case of his old railcard being lost (my ex paid for his railcard on his phone and sent him a screenshot, but he doesn't have WhatsApp history in that chat that far back anymore), but a digital footprint of him taking trips for the previous year to his university with the railcard exist.

If the railcard was purchased online there will be a record of it in the sales history at that website. However, if he only had a screenshot of the railcard that wouldn't have been considered valid if he was checked at that time. A digital railcard would be shown through the app of the company it was bought from, and being able to log-in to that app now should still show the expired railcard.

 

[WesternLancer]

Thank you very much for the quick reply and very good advice. We were planning on spending all of next week trying to get through to the revenue protection team.

I will keep an eye out for the paperwork and update accordingly. Right now there's no chance of me getting in touch with my ex for the actual image but I'll be trying over the course of the next week. If it's not possible to get this, I would imagine it's a full year of discounted fares we would have to pay at full price? That could add up to well over £1000 alone...

If the amount is possible to pay, is it best if we just pay off the amount without agreeing/disagreeing on certain occasions? The last thing we would want is an opportunity to settle out of court and then poke the bees nest enough which could lead to them withdrawing the out of court offer? We're terrified of the most negative possibility here and want to do everything we can do avoid it.

On your specific question here. If you are engaging and in dialogue with them about questionable tickets, and they can see you are keen to sort things out / ‘do the right thing’, we do see them accept corrections to ticket use. Tho I guess it needs to look plausible for them. One last week tho not WMR got reduced by about £1,000 for example from an original £2,200 settlement assessment iirc after efforts to clarify ticketing was accepted.

I don’t think it necessarily ‘pokes the hornets nest’ resulting in arbitrary offer withdrawals and prosecution. More likely just a ‘sorry we don’t believe this, please pay our offer or we will withdraw it’ type response.

Problem will be tickets bought for child age little sister as Jathan points out. Maybe if older sister bought sons tickets (if they were travelling together) older sister purchase records show two tickets bought which might help show what was done in a slightly more convincing way. How many child tickets are we talking about? Local low price fares for short trips or long distance trips? Ie how much money at stake?

Spend some time /effort getting the old Railcard. Or getting your son to get it off your ex if that’s easier. A proper ticket check would never have accepted a WhatsApp image of it afaik. How did your son use it, downloaded from app? Must surely be traceable? (Apols I don’t know much about that as I have an old skool physical one!)

 

[Hadders]

To add to what has been said. There is little to be gained by contacting WMT before they write to you. They will research your son's ticket purchasing account before they contact you and this does take a few weeks.

WMT are one of the more reasonable train companies to deal with. They will almost certainly offer an out of court settlement as long as you co-operate with them.. They will want payment for all of the journeys made since the railcard expired.

The best thing you can do for now is to try and get a copy of the railcard that was held as being able to show this should mean they only want reimbursement for fares purchased since it expired.
Next, think about how you can explain in a few words the tickets purchased when your daughters were travelling with your son. You want to be able to explain this in a straightforward way so that when the person at WMT reads it they can quickly understand what has happened.

When WMT's letter arrives, post a copy of it in this thread (with personal details redacted), along with a drft reply and we can help with getting the wording right.

 

[tropicalsorry]

It’s worth thinking about the worst possible outcome.

Thank you for this. I initially read this and went through a roller-coaster of emotions, but if it's possible for the conviction to be spent and no longer have to be declared then he may take it a bit easier. I've seen how bad the impact of this potential case is for him and he's not taking it very well, so I'm sure when the time comes to make an apology he would write one that expresses himself fully (though I'm not entirely sure a flowery apology would be a good idea).

I totally understand where you're coming from on this, but ultimately it's a judgement call only you can make, once you've seen any data they provide. If its a small percentage then yes, probably best not to challenge anything, but if its bigger then maybe see what evidence you could cobble together to support a challenge and take it from there

Thank you for the response. I can imagine the contested amount would be approximately 30% of journeys if I'm unable to get the previous railcard, and maybe 35 to 40% to account for other ticket errors. If all goes well, I was thinking just to forego the smaller errors in an effort to close the issue as soon as possible.

Are you aware of at what point WMR provide the data? I'm hoping it's on first notice, but we've never dealt with anything like this before so it's up in the air currently.

It will be assumed that he bought and used those child tickets, and this explanation isn't going to convince anyone otherwise.

Thank you for the response. I understand it will be very difficult to prove even after his sister provides the tickets. I can only see them having 100% confidence after checking CCTV at the station, but even then I'm not sure the department would go to that length. Is it worth a chance anyway?

being able to log-in to that app now should still show the expired railcard.

This isn't true surprisingly, as far as I know the app used only shows 2 railcards at a time. Even when I renew my own railcards, the old expired railcard always disappears.

Problem will be tickets bought for child age little sister as Jathan points out. Maybe if older sister bought sons tickets (if they were travelling together) older sister purchase records show two tickets bought which might help show what was done in a slightly more convincing way. How many child tickets are we talking about? Local low price fares for short trips or long distance trips? Ie how much money at stake?

Spend some time /effort getting the old Railcard. Or getting your son to get it off your ex if that’s easier. A proper ticket check would never have accepted a WhatsApp image of it afaik. How did your son use it, downloaded from app? Must surely be traceable? (Apols I don’t know much about that as I have an old skool physical one!)

Thank you for the incredibly in-depth response. It's reassuring to know settlement assessments do occur at that scale and the withdrawal of the offer will likely follow a process with some notice.

I also think the child age tickets will be a problem and I'm honestly unsure if it's even worth bringing it up in case it damages the settlement in any way. It's a single child ticket on his phone but his sister has the 2 adult tickets paid for at the same time/date/journey on her phone. I think it's approximately 10-20 journeys, which in the grand scheme of all journeys on his account, is fairly low and all of the purchases are limited to a specific window, to when she was staying with us. You can see the journeys return back to the railcard fare after. They're all local low price fares for short trips.

I'm hoping it's traceable, from what I understand it was just a screenshot taken and sent via WhatsApp. I don't think it was ever formally checked. I'm still working on getting the railcard so we can have all of our ducks in a row before the papers arrive.

To add to what has been said. There is little to be gained by contacting WMT before they write to you. They will research your son's ticket purchasing account before they contact you and this does take a few weeks.

WMT are one of the more reasonable train companies to deal with. They will almost certainly offer an out of court settlement as long as you co-operate with them.. They will want payment for all of the journeys made since the railcard expired.

The best thing you can do for now is to try and get a copy of the railcard that was held as being able to show this should mean they only want reimbursement for fares purchased since it expired.
Next, think about how you can explain in a few words the tickets purchased when your daughters were travelling with your son. You want to be able to explain this in a straightforward way so that when the person at WMT reads it they can quickly understand what has happened.

When WMT's letter arrives, post a copy of it in this thread (with personal details redacted), along with a drft reply and we can help with getting the wording right.

Thanks for the response. I'm glad the consensus seems to be WMT being a reasonable company to deal with, knowing this provides a lot of reassurance. It's what I would imagine to be a complicated case, so even if they are lovely, I'm very scared of pressing for reductions in prices.

My son is working on putting an apology together now. We will post it when we receive the letter from WMT and ask for corrections. Thanks all for your reassurance and help, it's incredible knowing forums still exist in this day and age that are still happy to respond with so much information.

 

[WesternLancer]

Thank you for this. I initially read this and went through a roller-coaster of emotions, but if it's possible for the conviction to be spent and no longer have to be declared then he may take it a bit easier. I've seen how bad the impact of this potential case is for him and he's not taking it very well, so I'm sure when the time comes to make an apology he would write one that expresses himself fully (though I'm not entirely sure a flowery apology would be a good idea).


Thank you for the response. I can imagine the contested amount would be approximately 30% of journeys if I'm unable to get the previous railcard, and maybe 35 to 40% to account for other ticket errors. If all goes well, I was thinking just to forego the smaller errors in an effort to close the issue as soon as possible.

Are you aware of at what point WMR provide the data? I'm hoping it's on first notice, but we've never dealt with anything like this before so it's up in the air currently.


Thank you for the response. I understand it will be very difficult to prove even after his sister provides the tickets. I can only see them having 100% confidence after checking CCTV at the station, but even then I'm not sure the department would go to that length. Is it worth a chance anyway?


This isn't true surprisingly, as far as I know the app used only shows 2 railcards at a time. Even when I renew my own railcards, the old expired railcard always disappears.


Thank you for the incredibly in-depth response. It's reassuring to know settlement assessments do occur at that scale and the withdrawal of the offer will likely follow a process with some notice.

I also think the child age tickets will be a problem and I'm honestly unsure if it's even worth bringing it up in case it damages the settlement in any way. It's a single child ticket on his phone but his sister has the 2 adult tickets paid for at the same time/date/journey on her phone. I think it's approximately 10-20 journeys, which in the grand scheme of all journeys on his account, is fairly low and all of the purchases are limited to a specific window, to when she was staying with us. You can see the journeys return back to the railcard fare after. They're all local low price fares for short trips.

I'm hoping it's traceable, from what I understand it was just a screenshot taken and sent via WhatsApp. I don't think it was ever formally checked. I'm still working on getting the railcard so we can have all of our ducks in a row before the papers arrive.


Thanks for the response. I'm glad the consensus seems to be WMT being a reasonable company to deal with, knowing this provides a lot of reassurance. It's what I would imagine to be a complicated case, so even if they are lovely, I'm very scared of pressing for reductions in prices.

My son is working on putting an apology together now. We will post it when we receive the letter from WMT and ask for corrections. Thanks all for your reassurance and help, it's incredible knowing forums still exist in this day and age that are still happy to respond with so much information.

Apology does not need to be lengthy or ott. They mainly want to know it won’t happen again, was not deliberate evasion, and what your son will do to prevent it happening again (eg already bought new railcard, will use diary to alert expiry date etc). Obv your son will want to apologise though.

I’d be surprised if you don’t get a settlement, and there is more than one chance to ask if needed.

But do make use of the offer for drafts to be checked here before sending any replies.