dancinbird2009
Member
- Joined
- 4 Oct 2010
- Messages
- 5
Can someone advise me on this please? Myself, my partner and my 20 year old son travelled from Bedford to St Pancras on a Saturday a couple of weeks ago.
I have a network rail card so I showed this to the ticket office and asked for 3 tickets to London including tube.
We boarded the next train to St Pancras which happened to be an East Midlands fast train. When we arrived at St Pancras we showed our tickets and were instantly pulled to one side for having the wrong tickets and told to pay a £45 fine EACH or get on the next Thameslink train back to Bedford!
It transpires that I had been sold GRP-3 tickets, this was pointed out by the ticket collector at St Pancras, I had not at ANY time been advised of this at Bedford, this apparently means that you cannot travel on an East Midlands train only a Thameslink train, again something I was not advised of at Bedford.
We could not get the train back to Bedford as I am a diabetic and coeliac (so have to eat at a certain time and can only eat certain foods)and as it was 12.45pm, coming up to my lunchtime, the journey back being 1hr 10mins and so we would arrive way past the time I would need to eat by. We did not have the £135 that was being demanded so their answer was to issue us with Penalty Fare notices.
Nobody was willing to help as Bedford station is a Thameslink station and we had arrived on the East Midlands platform with East Midlands employees who cannot comment on what the ticket people are selling at Bedford in the way of tickets as they are not employed by East Midlands! On inspecting the Penalty notices I noticed that they were signed by the East Midlands manager as having verified our details via DVLA - this is not true as none of us had our driving licences - and also required our signatures, which we were not asked for so the Penalty Notices have not been signed, Does anyone know if these are valid because of these discrepancies?
Also, I intend to vigorously contest these as I was not advised of a) what tickets I had been sold and b) the restrictions on these tickets as I would have just paid an extra £2 or £3 each to get the normal tickets.
Any advice would be appreciated. HELP!!!
I have a network rail card so I showed this to the ticket office and asked for 3 tickets to London including tube.
We boarded the next train to St Pancras which happened to be an East Midlands fast train. When we arrived at St Pancras we showed our tickets and were instantly pulled to one side for having the wrong tickets and told to pay a £45 fine EACH or get on the next Thameslink train back to Bedford!
It transpires that I had been sold GRP-3 tickets, this was pointed out by the ticket collector at St Pancras, I had not at ANY time been advised of this at Bedford, this apparently means that you cannot travel on an East Midlands train only a Thameslink train, again something I was not advised of at Bedford.
We could not get the train back to Bedford as I am a diabetic and coeliac (so have to eat at a certain time and can only eat certain foods)and as it was 12.45pm, coming up to my lunchtime, the journey back being 1hr 10mins and so we would arrive way past the time I would need to eat by. We did not have the £135 that was being demanded so their answer was to issue us with Penalty Fare notices.
Nobody was willing to help as Bedford station is a Thameslink station and we had arrived on the East Midlands platform with East Midlands employees who cannot comment on what the ticket people are selling at Bedford in the way of tickets as they are not employed by East Midlands! On inspecting the Penalty notices I noticed that they were signed by the East Midlands manager as having verified our details via DVLA - this is not true as none of us had our driving licences - and also required our signatures, which we were not asked for so the Penalty Notices have not been signed, Does anyone know if these are valid because of these discrepancies?
Also, I intend to vigorously contest these as I was not advised of a) what tickets I had been sold and b) the restrictions on these tickets as I would have just paid an extra £2 or £3 each to get the normal tickets.
Any advice would be appreciated. HELP!!!