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Based on that argument, there wouldn't be any point in anyone renewing a railcard because they would know they could continue to buy discounted tickets and the worst that would happen would be paying £30 if they happen to get caught.
Hence my cunning plan (post#22) to charge £10 for every month between expiry and interception, to backfill the discount entitlement. Two months of (forgivable?) forgetfulness would cost the holder £20. A (less acceptable) year would set them back a memorable £120.
Plus a condition of this option could be the immediate purchase of a new Railcard.
This strikes me as being proportionate, transparent, consistent, and likely to deter abuse and repeat offending.
Easiest fix to that is to have payment by Direct Debit and just automatically send out the renewal. I'm amazed they don't, almost everything else like this in life is done by Direct Debit because people don't actively consider if they need it each time so are more likely to renew.
Yes. I think that rather than making everyone buying railcard tickets with a TVM bash in their number on touch screen, it would be far more appropriate to take the view that as someone failng to renew a railcard is resulting in - at most - £30 loss of revenue, therefore large penalties and threats of prosecution are not appropriate. I do not think I will get many people in the industry to agree though.
There is a middle ground between on the one hand just asking for the £30 and on the other hand demanding thousands in anytime singles for previous journeys + hundreds in admin fees.
There may well be a middle ground, but if someone has saved hundreds of pounds in discounts while not having a railcard, £30 is not the middle ground and £30 is what you are proposing.
"Official" in the sense that, if someone who knows little about the UK railway system (say, me a few years ago) goes looking to buy tickets, it's a reasonably likely they'll end up at the NRE website, especially if they're familiar with the term "National Rail" or the double-arrows logo. After that, they may well get the memo that they can just book on the TOC website of their choice for any tickets (or discover a third-party retailer), but I suspect there's a non-zero number who stick with NRE out of habit.
Are any of the e-ticket retailers fairly up-front with the passengers that their journey history will be examined and investigated for potential fraud purposes?
There may well be a middle ground, but if someone has saved hundreds of pounds in discounts while not having a railcard, £30 is not the middle ground and £30 is what you are proposing.
I'm not sure what I said to make you think I was proposing that. I'm not.
But I do think that charging someone two Anytime singles for each return journey that they made on an expired railcard can result in a disproportionate response to something that is plausibly a genuine error.
But in any case since I think we fundamentally disagree on how much they've saved, this is probably not a fruitful discussion.
My view is that if you look at the two scenarios:
1) I renew my railcard
2) I decide not to renew it but claim discounts in the hope I'll get away with it on multiple occasions.
The difference in money I've spent between the two scenarios (and equivalently money lost to the industry) is £30.
The only way the industry would see the difference between full fare and discounted ticket prices is if I went for scenario 3) - don't renew the railcard and spend a lot more on tickets than the railcard fee. Why would anyone deliberately do that?
I appreciate that those in the industry don't look at it that way.
I'm not arguing that someone who has used an expired railcard multiple times shouldn't be retrospectively charged the difference in fares - the rules are that you need a valid railcard to get them and fair enough they - deliberately or not - don't have one so weren't entitled to them.
What I take issue with is saying that they deserve a large penalty because they've "saved" hundreds of pounds in discounts when even if it was a deliberate choice not to renew the railcard, there is no meaningful way that they have actually saved themselves that money.
If they were short-faring or re-using tickets etc. then that in my view is very different.
I don't understand the distinction you're somehow drawing between child tickets and railcard-discounted adult tickets. They're exactly the same, just with a different discount status code. Railcard-discounted tickets and child tickets are still valid tickets.
Also it's not correct to say it was sold "without any effort to ensure that the purchaser holds the railcard" - retailers make a point of reiterating the railcard must be carried on booking confirmation pages, in confirmation emails. It gets highlighted on the E-Tickets themselves and mentioned in-app.
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Also, if we want to talk about entities not doing enough before selling discounted tickets (and I'm not talking about railcard discounts) online to the public there are many TOCs I can talk about who have done (and still do) an awful job at this.
LNER is one of them.
I don't understand the distinction you're somehow drawing between child tickets and railcard-discounted adult tickets. They're exactly the same, just with a different discount status code. Railcard-discounted tickets and child tickets are still valid tickets.
Also it's not correct to say it was sold "without any effort to ensure that the purchaser holds the railcard" - retailers make a point of reiterating the railcard must be carried on booking confirmation pages, in confirmation emails. It gets highlighted on the E-Tickets themselves and mentioned in-app.
But when an app holds a railcard, it would be possible to flag when the purchaser attempts to buy a railcard ticket once it has expired and this would be quite useful.
Particularly if they default to applying a railcard when it was used on previous transactions.
But when an app holds a railcard, it would be possible to flag when the purchaser attempts to buy a railcard ticket once it has expired and this would be quite useful.
I don't disagree with this - when the app is for the retailer of the railcard this is the most straightforward case to add some useful messages/warnings without introducing any friction into the process
There may well be a middle ground, but if someone has saved hundreds of pounds in discounts while not having a railcard, £30 is not the middle ground and £30 is what you are proposing.
But the railway is clearly happy to sell those journeys for that price plus the 30 pound cost of the railcard. The reasonable principle that an injured party is entitled to be put back in the position which they would have been in, dictates that the remedy for 'someone travelled with no railcard' is 'they should pay for the railcard'.
Yes, perhaps that wouldn't apply in egregious circumstances (e.g. claimed railcard discount but never even had one, much less let it expire) but even then, this forum has already noted cases where people who aren't railway nuts don't necessarily know what a railcard is, and had assumed that it was some other form of card such as a smartcard or other identification which they did indeed have, so they didn't know that they were behaving as An Irredemable Criminal by saying that they had one.
It doesn't seem that the belief that the railway loses thousands of pounds every year if someone travels on an expired railcard which they sell for thirty pounds, is an especially solid one. The whole "we're going to treat you like you had NO TICKET AT ALL and so now you have to buy a ticket, but you can't have the best ticket that would have suited your journey, no, we're going to sell you the MOST EXPENSIVE ONE WE CAN FIND, in EACH direction, and there's NOTHING you can do about it."
This is not quite the "have a lovely day out by Train, you love the railway and the railway loves you, let's all sing a song together" image that it projects.
Maybe there shouldn't even be railcards and discounted tickets - maybe it should just be some kind of discount entitlement that you redeem in some way at the point of payment for your tickets. No proof of entitlement means no discount added to your basket, so it's not possible to buy a ticket that's not suitable for your journey. Something like that. There just HAS to be a better way.
But the railway is clearly happy to sell those journeys for that price plus the 30 pound cost of the railcard. The reasonable principle that an injured party is entitled to be put back in the position which they would have been in, dictates that the remedy for 'someone travelled with no railcard' is 'they should pay for the railcard'.
To be honest I'd say this is the perfect application for a Penalty Fare. Provided the person is entitled to the relevant Railcard and has had one before (in which case it is most likely omission), £50 plus a new ticket* seems fair.
I cannot see any justification for prosecuting or settlements in hundreds of pounds for this.
* I don't agree with it being an Anytime; it should be the cheapest applicable walk-up ticket for the journey made. The £50 is the penalty, the ticket is just paying for the journey.
To be honest I'd say this is the perfect application for a Penalty Fare. Provided the person is entitled to the relevant Railcard and has had one before (in which case it is most likely omission), £50 plus a new ticket seems fair.
I am against having to validate a railcard by entering a railcard number or expiry date when purchasing a ticket.
I purchase tickets online for my mum applying a Senior Railcard discount. I don’t personally possess a Senior railcard so would that mean I couldn’t purchase tickets for her in future. On the other hand I suppose I could be the recipient of a letter from a fraud department claiming I’ve purchased discounted tickets I’m not entitled to use….
I am against having to validate a railcard by entering a railcard number or expiry date when purchasing a ticket.
I purchase tickets online for my mum applying a Senior Railcard discount. I don’t personally possess a Senior railcard so would that mean I couldn’t purchase tickets for her in future. On the other hand I suppose I could be the recipient of a letter from a fraud department claiming I’ve purchased discounted tickets I’m not entitled to use….
Are any of the e-ticket retailers fairly up-front with the passengers that their journey history will be examined and investigated for potential fraud purposes?
I think there's a broader point here about how e-tickets enable those with appropriate access access to follow trail of digital breadcrumbs in our modern world. I recall a previous thread on here about the potential privacy implications thereof, and I remember feeling that I wasn't particularly convinced the industry had put in appropriate safeguards.
(Contrast with TfL, which I do feel has strong privacy safeguards in terms of Oyster and contactless usage data.)
One PF (for the occasion caught) plus all the avoided fares (at cheapest valid walk-up rate, not Anytime*) provided the Railcard is renewed immediately would seem reasonable. Most instances of this are people who have simply forgotten, so £100+ settlements and prosecutions are grossly disproportionate.
* I am very disappointed Anytime fares are being used for the "plus" on the new fare. The whole idea of it was that the penalty was a fixed £50/£100 plus the fare not paid, to avoid penalties being massively higher on InterCity routes where Anytimes are outrageously expensive and barely sold. It utterly misses the point of the change to PFs to interpret the intention of it this way.
Sharing copies of railcard details is not a behaviour the rail industry would be likely to want to encourage! For every genuine case like the one you mention, think how much new fraud it might encourage!
Sharing copies of railcard details is not a behaviour the rail industry would be likely to want to encourage! For every genuine case like the one you mention, think how much new fraud it might encourage!
Wha? If you're purchasing them on behalf of another person at a station ticket office, you have to take the physical card with you. It's only the equivalent to that.
For the apps it'd be handy to have a flag "this is on behalf of someone else, don't store the Railcard" to prevent mistakes.
Penalty fares are not automatically based on Anytime fares and never have been. That doesn't stop train companies getting away with overcharging like this but when it happens and a lower fare should have been used it would provide valid grounds for appeal.
We've been investigating similar at GWR for years with regards to digital fraud. Recently a new grade of "Revenue Investigator" was created too. I've only skim read this thread, but certainly we are not allowed to go on "fishing" trip without reasonable suspicion.
Buying a ticket for someone else, with their Railcard [or its details], is not a fraudulent or prohibited activity, so not something for the fraud team to be bothered by.
Buying a ticket for someone else, with their Railcard [or its details], is not a fraudulent or prohibited activity, so not something for the fraud team to be bothered by.
Also, if we want to talk about entities not doing enough before selling discounted tickets (and I'm not talking about railcard discounts) online to the public there are many TOCs I can talk about who have done (and still do) an awful job at this.
I am against having to validate a railcard by entering a railcard number or expiry date when purchasing a ticket.
I purchase tickets online for my mum applying a Senior Railcard discount. I don’t personally possess a Senior railcard so would that mean I couldn’t purchase tickets for her in future. On the other hand I suppose I could be the recipient of a letter from a fraud department claiming I’ve purchased discounted tickets I’m not entitled to use….
For one I can think of TVM's which will happily sell you a single discounted group ticket without any warning that this is probably not what you should be doing.
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