>These are a few of the many difficulties passengers might encounter:
>‘Anytime’ fares that can only be used at certain times of day depending on the type of railcard discount they have been bought with
>Tickets for a destination that are only valid if you travel via a particular station
>Train companies which let you buy tickets from an onboard conductor on some of their lines but not on others
>Some routes only allowing travel with printed, rather than digital, tickets
The last two points in particular are ridiculous and I can see no justification for on the train company’s end. Utterly bizarre. I’d refuse to pay the fine if I possibly could
Jensablefur on
As with that article the other day, when it comes to the trains they always seem to pick on the meek quiet teenagers or middle class middle aged quietly spoken passengers that have made an honest mistake…
While those guys you see swaggering up and jumping the barriers? Its tumbleweeds and staff just seem to watch them do it with a shrug.
chiefgareth on
I’ve said it so many times. It is intentionally made confusing. They want people to buy the wrong ticket, so they can fine them. It should be illegal how confusing it can be.
PoggleRebecca on
I’ve felt so confused at ticket machines that I use even daily, and often feel compelled to buy the more expensive peak ticket just in case, because it’s not at all clear at the machine or the train website what constitutes ‘off peak’. Naturally they’re closing any manned ticket booths too so you can’t actually ask a human being either.
There’s a conspiratorial part of my brain that thinks this is all intentionally vague right up until the moment you’re unwittingly ‘caught’, whereupon the legalese fine print suddenly comes out and you’re slapped with a huge fine.
And don’t get me started on the uphill ultra marathon that’s ‘Delay Repay’.
BulkyAccident on
I work in something tourism adjacent and trying to explain rail fares and processes to foreign people visiting who just want to get from A to B is absolutely *exhausting* – it really shouldn’t be this complicated and expensive with so many traps and generally needs a full overhaul from the top down.
I travel a lot by train and am so used it now but it wasn’t until I started working with visitors that the full ridiculousness of the whole thing really presented itself to me.
merryman1 on
Rail companies have probably spent more money setting up these kinds of schemes to catch out and fine well-meaning passengers than they have on actually trying to improve their service or expand capacities.
anybloodythingwilldo on
Absolutely pathetic that someone should a criminal conviction for accidentally using the wrong ticket. I remember how sanctimonious one conductor was when my friend accidentally travelled with a railcard one day out of date. ‘So what are we going to do about this ladies?’ So patronising, especially the ‘ladies’ plural, as if we’d somehow conspired 🙄
plawwell on
How do they prove it is you who bought the ticket wrongly in question? Show the evidence. Writing to people saying we think and they might respond giving details of an admission that it were them. That’s you caught. These letters should go in the bin.
sweetvioletapril on
Yes to all these points. There is nothing like being able to speak to a ticket clerk if you are uncertain about which ticket/ route is best for you. Also nothing more stressful than struggling with a user-unfriendly machine, particularly if you have poor vision ( as I do), whilst being uncomfortably aware of a queue building up behind you. I prefer to buy my ticket in advance from the helpful people at my local station whenever possible. Travelling by train in Europe is generally so much more straightforward without the mish-mash of different companies/ rules that exist here, and fares are lower. I also agree that it is easier to target the more inoffensive type of passenger, rather than to tackle those who look to be trouble.
AllAvailableLayers on
The article notes that a tap-in-tap-out payment system like the London Oyster card is being considered. I like the idea of this, except that when you don’t tap out your Oyster, it can assume that you have made the longest-possible journey in London. In peak times, this is around £15, with the absolute maximum possible of £29 to Reading.
Maximum train charges can be much, much higher, so you’d still have to have a system set up to avoid the situation where someone taking two stops on a local service isn’t being charged as much as the maximum cross-country one… while someone travelling a very long distance doesn’t bother to tap out, because they know that the penalty is less than the ticket.
TheArctopus on
So as far as I can tell, fare dodgers aren’t being prosecuted – just people who have bought the wrong kind of ticket, and, it seems, mostly via the app.
What I’ve learned from these stories is that I should buy paper tickets, and should I make a mistake give them a false name+address.
That’s inconvenient for me, worse for the environment, and I find it morally distasteful. Generally speaking, if I make a mistake I believe in owning the consequences, but given the consequences are a *potential criminal record* I’ll take ‘morally distasteful’ over ‘morally repugnant’.
Real-Fortune9041 on
I used to use a train which would have a 20 minute wait halfway through the journey. During the wait it would share a platform with another train which left at a similar time but went somewhere completely different. They were both on *the same platform*.
Every day you’d get someone getting on our train when they meant to get on the other. You could usually tell them as they’d have a suitcase so most of the time it fell to the passengers to let them know. But naturally people would slip through at the last minute or without anyone noticing.
I saw penalty fares handed out a few times to people who had mistakenly got on the wrong train. Often middle aged couples who’d just returned from a holiday. They literally had tickets for the other train, but absolutely no understanding was shown to them at all. It’s disgusting.
And their mistake was going to the correct platform but not realising that there were two trains waiting there.
GreggsFan on
I spent *years* chancing it with tickets as a student (zone 1-6 into London, rail ticket from halfway to my destination etc) and every time I got caught I’d get let off with a wink or at most I’d have to pay about 1/4 of the normal ticket price. Never realised how lucky I was.
RyJ94 on
Serious serious repercussions (significant fine/criminal record(!)) for something so innocuous. It’s unbelievably disproportionate.
And it’s completely fraudulent for a ticket branded as “Anytime” to not literally mean anytime. That’s fucking bollocks.
And they want people to be using public transport instead of driving to save the planet? When passengers get shafted in a million different ways? Fuck off.
judochop1 on
nobody even knows when peak, off-peak and super off-peak times are. Any punishment ought to be proportionate as well considering the state of the rail network anyway.
CurtisInCamden on
From my experience train managers and guards are usually pretty understanding and lenient about honest mistakes, either charging an excess or at worst saying you’ll need to get off at the next station. The fines and penalties tend to be when it’s obvious to them the passengers did deliberately try to cheat and then plays ignorance to get away with being found out.
There’s good and bad people at every job, but most train managers have been doing the job a long time and know from experience various signs.
16 Comments
>These are a few of the many difficulties passengers might encounter:
>‘Anytime’ fares that can only be used at certain times of day depending on the type of railcard discount they have been bought with
>Tickets for a destination that are only valid if you travel via a particular station
>Train companies which let you buy tickets from an onboard conductor on some of their lines but not on others
>Some routes only allowing travel with printed, rather than digital, tickets
The last two points in particular are ridiculous and I can see no justification for on the train company’s end. Utterly bizarre. I’d refuse to pay the fine if I possibly could
As with that article the other day, when it comes to the trains they always seem to pick on the meek quiet teenagers or middle class middle aged quietly spoken passengers that have made an honest mistake…
While those guys you see swaggering up and jumping the barriers? Its tumbleweeds and staff just seem to watch them do it with a shrug.
I’ve said it so many times. It is intentionally made confusing. They want people to buy the wrong ticket, so they can fine them. It should be illegal how confusing it can be.
I’ve felt so confused at ticket machines that I use even daily, and often feel compelled to buy the more expensive peak ticket just in case, because it’s not at all clear at the machine or the train website what constitutes ‘off peak’. Naturally they’re closing any manned ticket booths too so you can’t actually ask a human being either.
There’s a conspiratorial part of my brain that thinks this is all intentionally vague right up until the moment you’re unwittingly ‘caught’, whereupon the legalese fine print suddenly comes out and you’re slapped with a huge fine.
And don’t get me started on the uphill ultra marathon that’s ‘Delay Repay’.
I work in something tourism adjacent and trying to explain rail fares and processes to foreign people visiting who just want to get from A to B is absolutely *exhausting* – it really shouldn’t be this complicated and expensive with so many traps and generally needs a full overhaul from the top down.
I travel a lot by train and am so used it now but it wasn’t until I started working with visitors that the full ridiculousness of the whole thing really presented itself to me.
Rail companies have probably spent more money setting up these kinds of schemes to catch out and fine well-meaning passengers than they have on actually trying to improve their service or expand capacities.
Absolutely pathetic that someone should a criminal conviction for accidentally using the wrong ticket. I remember how sanctimonious one conductor was when my friend accidentally travelled with a railcard one day out of date. ‘So what are we going to do about this ladies?’ So patronising, especially the ‘ladies’ plural, as if we’d somehow conspired 🙄
How do they prove it is you who bought the ticket wrongly in question? Show the evidence. Writing to people saying we think and they might respond giving details of an admission that it were them. That’s you caught. These letters should go in the bin.
Yes to all these points. There is nothing like being able to speak to a ticket clerk if you are uncertain about which ticket/ route is best for you. Also nothing more stressful than struggling with a user-unfriendly machine, particularly if you have poor vision ( as I do), whilst being uncomfortably aware of a queue building up behind you. I prefer to buy my ticket in advance from the helpful people at my local station whenever possible. Travelling by train in Europe is generally so much more straightforward without the mish-mash of different companies/ rules that exist here, and fares are lower. I also agree that it is easier to target the more inoffensive type of passenger, rather than to tackle those who look to be trouble.
The article notes that a tap-in-tap-out payment system like the London Oyster card is being considered. I like the idea of this, except that when you don’t tap out your Oyster, it can assume that you have made the longest-possible journey in London. In peak times, this is around £15, with the absolute maximum possible of £29 to Reading.
Maximum train charges can be much, much higher, so you’d still have to have a system set up to avoid the situation where someone taking two stops on a local service isn’t being charged as much as the maximum cross-country one… while someone travelling a very long distance doesn’t bother to tap out, because they know that the penalty is less than the ticket.
So as far as I can tell, fare dodgers aren’t being prosecuted – just people who have bought the wrong kind of ticket, and, it seems, mostly via the app.
What I’ve learned from these stories is that I should buy paper tickets, and should I make a mistake give them a false name+address.
That’s inconvenient for me, worse for the environment, and I find it morally distasteful. Generally speaking, if I make a mistake I believe in owning the consequences, but given the consequences are a *potential criminal record* I’ll take ‘morally distasteful’ over ‘morally repugnant’.
I used to use a train which would have a 20 minute wait halfway through the journey. During the wait it would share a platform with another train which left at a similar time but went somewhere completely different. They were both on *the same platform*.
Every day you’d get someone getting on our train when they meant to get on the other. You could usually tell them as they’d have a suitcase so most of the time it fell to the passengers to let them know. But naturally people would slip through at the last minute or without anyone noticing.
I saw penalty fares handed out a few times to people who had mistakenly got on the wrong train. Often middle aged couples who’d just returned from a holiday. They literally had tickets for the other train, but absolutely no understanding was shown to them at all. It’s disgusting.
And their mistake was going to the correct platform but not realising that there were two trains waiting there.
I spent *years* chancing it with tickets as a student (zone 1-6 into London, rail ticket from halfway to my destination etc) and every time I got caught I’d get let off with a wink or at most I’d have to pay about 1/4 of the normal ticket price. Never realised how lucky I was.
Serious serious repercussions (significant fine/criminal record(!)) for something so innocuous. It’s unbelievably disproportionate.
And it’s completely fraudulent for a ticket branded as “Anytime” to not literally mean anytime. That’s fucking bollocks.
And they want people to be using public transport instead of driving to save the planet? When passengers get shafted in a million different ways? Fuck off.
nobody even knows when peak, off-peak and super off-peak times are. Any punishment ought to be proportionate as well considering the state of the rail network anyway.
From my experience train managers and guards are usually pretty understanding and lenient about honest mistakes, either charging an excess or at worst saying you’ll need to get off at the next station. The fines and penalties tend to be when it’s obvious to them the passengers did deliberately try to cheat and then plays ignorance to get away with being found out.
There’s good and bad people at every job, but most train managers have been doing the job a long time and know from experience various signs.