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Penalty fare given to family

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Lindseyh

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My son went to a birthday brunch with his friends family, 6 of them in total. They could not get tickets at the only ticket machine at an unmanned station (low moor) the mother was paying for them and says her card wasn't accepted at the ticket machine. There was no conductor or any staff on train. When they arrived at Leeds they went straight to the internal ticket office to purchase the tickets, as they were buying the tickets some staff came up and told the staff member selling them the tickets that they couldn't sell them after the journey and that they needed to be issued with penalty fare notices that they could then appeal. On appeal its been rejected, the mum did the appeal for all 6 of them she is continuing to appeal, my worry is if fine is not paid in next 5 days now then what will happen ? I on principle feel he shouldn't be accepting a fine, I also worry if he pays there will be a black mark so to speak against him incase of any future problems. Can u appeal for 2nd and 3rd times without fine increasing and further action being taken ? He is only 16, was wearing a suit and with a multi generation family for a birthday brunch, they are being treated as though they are criminals yet they were trying to pay at earliest opportunity. Please can anyone advise ? Thankyou lindsey
 
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WesternLancer

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My son went to a birthday brunch with his friends family, 6 of them in total. They could not get tickets at the only ticket machine at an unmanned station (low moor) the mother was paying for them and says her card wasn't accepted at the ticket machine. There was no conductor or any staff on train. When they arrived at Leeds they went straight to the internal ticket office to purchase the tickets, as they were buying the tickets some staff came up and told the staff member selling them the tickets that they couldn't sell them after the journey and that they needed to be issued with penalty fare notices that they could then appeal. On appeal its been rejected, the mum did the appeal for all 6 of them she is continuing to appeal, my worry is if fine is not paid in next 5 days now then what will happen ? I on principle feel he shouldn't be accepting a fine, I also worry if he pays there will be a black mark so to speak against him incase of any future problems. Can u appeal for 2nd and 3rd times without fine increasing and further action being taken ? He is only 16, was wearing a suit and with a multi generation family for a birthday brunch, they are being treated as though they are criminals yet they were trying to pay at earliest opportunity. Please can anyone advise ? Thankyou lindsey
I think you can appeal 2nd or 3rd time (and there is evidence on here that more chance of success in subsequent rounds)

BUT - my fear is these appeals will fail because:

- on Northern if the ticket machine does not work by virtue of failing to take your card payment then you are supposed to obtain a 'permit / permission to travel' type ticket (issued free by the machine) - did any of them obtain one of these? If not they are on weak grounds I suspect

- I do not believe there would have been no staff on the train as I think all those trains have guards on board (I do believe that the staff may not have come round to check tickets or sell tickets to people who had not got them before boarding the train, but that is a different matter and would not be grounds for a successful appeal) - so the pertinent issue would be did any of them go and find the guard, knock on the door of the back cab where they might be - to try and purchase a ticket? Or did they sit tight thinking they could just pay at Leeds - and then this happened.

So I suspect the best course of action might be to pay the Penalty Fare quickly or the cost of this will go up - but probably best you wait for a few more replies as others more familiar with Northern ticket machines and Penalty fares might correct me if any of the above is wrong!
 

pemma

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I think the question is did your son have a card on him and did he attempt to pay for his own ticket?

It's fine for someone else to buy a ticket for someone else but if they are unable to pay he should have bought a ticket and the friend's mum could have given him the money back later.
 

lyndhurst25

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- on Northern if the ticket machine does not work by virtue of failing to take your card payment then you are supposed to obtain a 'permit / permission to travel' type ticket (issued free by the machine) - did any of them obtain one of these? If not they are on weak grounds I suspect

The process of obtaining a Promise to Pay ticket Northern ticket machines explicitly states that you are obtaining permission to pay your fare in CASH only. Not relevent to the OP’s situation, who wanted to pay by card, and was prevented from doing so by a machine or card fault. They may not have had enough cash on them to pay the fares.
 

Watershed

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The difficulty will be in proving that the machine was faulty. In the case of a Penalty Fare appeal, the appeals body must accept any claim made by the appellant (i.e. passenger) unless the operator can show otherwise.

So for instance if you said "the machine wasn't accepting my card" (and you didn't have any other method of payment that the machine accepted), then the appeal would have to be allowed unless Northern could show that the machine was likely working. For example by producing logs showing that passengers 10 minutes before and after were able to successfully make a purchase using card on that machine.

Most TOCs have a habit of claiming that additional administration or late payment fees are due if a Penalty Fare isn't paid within a certain timeframe, but this has no legal basis whatsoever. In fact, once you have raised an appeal and it has been decided (even if not in your favour), the TOC can't prosecute you anymore for that incident. They can only pursue you through the County Court, as with any other civil debt - and this is something which I have never heard of any TOC doing.

Either way, I would certainly raise a further appeal as there is no harm in doing so, and there is a chance it might be accepted and make the whole thing go away quickly.

As for feeling like you were being treated like criminals - unfortunately the railway often likes to threaten its customers, and has Draconian laws which it can rely upon to extract disproportionate sums of money and criminalise customers when they don't do things the way the railway likes. But in this particular instance, the possibility of it being a criminal matter is now excluded.
 

Starmill

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on Northern if the ticket machine does not work by virtue of failing to take your card payment then you are supposed to obtain a 'permit / permission to travel' type ticket (issued free by the machine) - did any of them obtain one of these? If not they are on weak grounds I suspect
You can't obtain these unless you are paying in cash, as suggested above.

- I do not believe there would have been no staff on the train as I think all those trains have guards on board (I do believe that the staff may not have come round to check tickets or sell tickets to people who had not got them before boarding the train, but that is a different matter and would not be grounds for a successful appeal) - so the pertinent issue would be did any of them go and find the guard, knock on the door of the back cab where they might be - to try and purchase a ticket? Or did they sit tight thinking they could just pay at Leeds - and then this happened.
As they haven't been accused of trying to avoid paying the fare I don't think this is relevant. The customer should buy a ticket at the first opportunity to do so, which may be on the train or at the destination station.
 

scrapy

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Most TOCs have a habit of claiming that additional administration or late payment fees are due if a Penalty Fare isn't paid within a certain timeframe, but this has no legal basis whatsoever. In fact, once you have raised an appeal and it has been decided (even if not in your favour), the TOC can't prosecute you anymore for that incident. They can only pursue you through the County Court, as with any other civil debt - and this is something which I have never heard of any TOC doing
Can a 16 year old even be pursued through a county court for a debt?
 

Lindseyh

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The trains here often have seperate carriages so you can't walk through to find guard that said they just thought they would pay in Leeds as soon as they arrived so didn't try swapping carriages at stations on route. He didn't have his card as it was a birthday party to an unlimited brunch event with travel included and everyone had paid the mum in advance. I suspect many people have no idea of these weird train rules and fines and just think I will pay at destination station if can't pay at machine, seems mad that there all treated as criminals ! Its not like they were likely to jump the barrier and run in suits and with 60 year old mum...plus they were paying for the tickets when the jobsworths stopped them and issued fines instead. My gut tells me to keep appealing but he's worried of possible consequences and would prefer me to pay the £20 but then someone said it would be on record so they would treat him harshly if anything happens in future as he would be deemed as guilty for this so called offence..
 

30907

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I suspect many people have no idea of these weird train rules and fines and just think I will pay at destination station if can't pay at machine, seems mad that there all treated as criminals
No, they are being treated as people without tickets.
someone said it would be on record so they would treat him harshly if anything happens in future as he would be deemed as guilty for this so called offence..
Once the penalty fare is paid, that is an end to it.
 

Agent_Squash

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No, they are being treated as people without tickets.

But it’s not like they’ve not made an effort to pay the fare?

If the passenger was unable to purchase the ticket from the station, and there was no conductor available to purchase the ticket from, then the first opportunity to purchase the tickets was at Leeds station.

The National Rail website makes clear that this is valid if you weren’t able to purchase a ticket before hand: https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/187936.aspx
 

Turtle

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No, they are being treated as people without tickets.

Once the penalty fare is paid, that is an end to it.
You are no doubt technically correct but these were honest passengers attempting to pay the correct fare. Of course they feel as if they are being treated as criminals for trying to do the right thing. The Railway does itself no favours this approach; a public relations disaster.
 

AlterEgo

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But it’s not like they’ve not made an effort to pay the fare?

If the passenger was unable to purchase the ticket from the station, and there was no conductor available to purchase the ticket from, then the first opportunity to purchase the tickets was at Leeds station.

The National Rail website makes clear that this is valid if you weren’t able to purchase a ticket before hand: https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/187936.aspx
This very much depends on why the passenger was “unable”. “The machine didn’t accept my card” is a very grey area.
 

WesternLancer

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You can't obtain these unless you are paying in cash, as suggested above.


As they haven't been accused of trying to avoid paying the fare I don't think this is relevant. The customer should buy a ticket at the first opportunity to do so, which may be on the train or at the destination station.
Thanks for clarifying these points.

So it probably comes down to the records as to whether the ticket machine was working or not, and presume the appeal has been rejected because Northern claim at the time in question the machine was in fact working (and thus by implication the bank card was at fault /not valid or some such - as AlterEgo says - a grey area...).

There can be no harm in submitting further stages of the appeal then.

The OP talks about later consequences - I would think that would only tend to be a risk if the OP's son had future ticketing irregularities eg in circs where a Penalty Fare may be denied as they were known to have had one or more before and a ticketing irregularity was then dealt with not by penalty fare but by report to revenue protection who then threaten court based enforcement action (as per many threads on this forum).
 

Watershed

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The trains here often have seperate carriages so you can't walk through to find guard that said they just thought they would pay in Leeds as soon as they arrived so didn't try swapping carriages at stations on route. He didn't have his card as it was a birthday party to an unlimited brunch event with travel included and everyone had paid the mum in advance. I suspect many people have no idea of these weird train rules and fines and just think I will pay at destination station if can't pay at machine, seems mad that there all treated as criminals ! Its not like they were likely to jump the barrier and run in suits and with 60 year old mum...plus they were paying for the tickets when the jobsworths stopped them and issued fines instead. My gut tells me to keep appealing but he's worried of possible consequences and would prefer me to pay the £20 but then someone said it would be on record so they would treat him harshly if anything happens in future as he would be deemed as guilty for this so called offence..
Ah, was he trying to pay by cash? In that case it is more complex; he has not committed any offence but he may still technically be liable to pay the Penalty Fare if he did not obtain a Promise to Pay Notice. Either way, there is no downside to appealling (other than the time spent in writing the appeal) and there is every chance it might succeed.

There won't be any direct future consequences either way - having brought an appeal, it's now purely a civil matter. If both his second and third stage appeals are unsuccessful he can either pay the Penalty Fare or allow them to pursue it through the County Court (which is very unlikely, it has to be said).

Yes, it's possible that having been issued with a Penalty Fare he might be treated more harshly if he comes to their attention again in the future.

If an offence had been committed, queueing up to pay at the excess fares window wouldn't negate that. It would just mean that there wouldn't be aggravating factors; doing what you're required to do isn't a mitigating factor.
 

WesternLancer

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Ah, was he trying to pay by cash?
No - I read it that the OPs son was not trying to pay by cash having at some previous point paid the host (the mum - an other person's mum that is) in advance by some unstated method to cover the trip out - and it was this person who was trying to buy the trains tickets for everyone in the party with her card that then would not work in the TVM machine.

So this is all quite 3rd hand because we have the mother of the son telling us this and the son was not the person using the machine with their own card, it was another person in the party. We don't even know if the son who has been issued with the PF even looked at the ticket machine. Now I am not saying any of these people are lying, but it's not really strong grounds for a robust argument with the train company about their machine not working, if they claim the machine was in fact working at that time.

Given the below quote it is possible in theory that the OP's son had no means of paying at all (unless they had cash on them but if they did they did not try it in the TVM) - or only had means of paying that is not accepted by TVMs.

When the TVM did not work it might have been possible for someone to buy tickets for the party before boarding by using a smart phone or some such - but my guess is the train was coming so they just boarded - and in any case they are not under obligation to use a smart phone to buy their train tickets.

So my view is go for the 2nd and 3rd round of appeals - but be prepared to pay the Penalty Fare to close this off if that does not work and chalk it up to experience, sadly. As per the rest of your advice @Watershed

see:

He didn't have his card as it was a birthday party to an unlimited brunch event with travel included and everyone had paid the mum in advance.
 
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Its not like they were likely to jump the barrier and run in suits and with 60 year old mum...
Six people in the queue who were unlikely to be aggressive? Easy pickings.

The advantage for this for all the teenagers in the group is that they now know the importance of purchasing a ticket before boarding, or at least getting a "permit to pay cash" from the machine.

Other young people in these threads haven't got off so lightly as to have a mere Penalty Fare.
 

some bloke

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Can u appeal for 2nd and 3rd times without fine increasing and further action being taken ?

Yes - see regulations 17 and 18.

A ground for appeal is "there are compelling reasons why, in the particular circumstances of the case, the appellant should not be liable to pay the penalty fare." - regulation 16(3)(d).

The Railways (Penalty Fares) Regulations 2018
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2018/366/made

Maybe a reason why the appeal should be allowed is that the mother was in charge of buying the tickets, especially if it doesn't seem reasonable to expect a 16-year-old guest to start challenging her judgement on someone's birthday outing. Of course there might be issues of tact and personal relationships relevant to how he deals with this situation - perhaps if she makes a statement taking responsibility the appeal might succeed; maybe she already has told the panel she accepts responsibility.

What did the mother say in the first appeal? That might influence what she, or he, says in the next one. (Was she allowed to appeal on someone else's behalf?)
 

Djgr

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Is there any industry that hates its customers more than the railway?
 

pemma

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I suspect many people have no idea of these weird train rules and fines and just think I will pay at destination station if can't pay at machine

Reality is many people will think if they don't encounter a ticket inspection between boarding and leaving their destination station, there's no need to pay. Some people do pay at their destination even when there's no one asking to see the tickets of people leaving the station but they seem to be the exception.

The difficulty will be in proving that the machine was faulty.

Indeed. A rejected card transaction doesn't automatically mean a fault with the machine. It could be due to a lack of funds on the card, a fault with the cardholder's bank, a damaged card etc. However, it could also be the machine doesn't like one specific type of bank card e.g. rejecting all cards issued by the Post Office or not accepting any card payments but appearing to be operational.
 

jumble

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This very much depends on why the passenger was “unable”. “The machine didn’t accept my card” is a very grey area.
Is it ?
The IKB clearly contradicts your point of view and actually goes further
To issue penalty fares in this case is disgraceful behaviour and is a pretty compelling reason for an appeal as per post 16
It would be interesting for the OP to write to the TOC customer service dept and the Rail Ombudsman and ask why this does not apply to them.

"Please note that at stations where the only functioning means for ticket purchase is a self-service machine that is not accepting cash but cards only, customers who want to pay by cash should not be forced to use their credit or debit card to buy the ticket, if they do not want to do so, nor should customers be penalised in these circumstances."
 
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Doctor Fegg

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The difficulty will be in proving that the machine was faulty. In the case of a Penalty Fare appeal, the appeals body must accept any claim made by the appellant (i.e. passenger) unless the operator can show otherwise.

So for instance if you said "the machine wasn't accepting my card" (and you didn't have any other method of payment that the machine accepted), then the appeal would have to be allowed unless Northern could show that the machine was likely working. For example by producing logs showing that passengers 10 minutes before and after were able to successfully make a purchase using card on that machine.
FWIW, on occasions when a machine isn't working, I always take a (timestamped) photo with my phone of whatever error message the machine might be showing. I've never had to use it but it seems a sensible precaution.
 

Snow1964

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FWIW, on occasions when a machine isn't working, I always take a (timestamped) photo with my phone of whatever error message the machine might be showing. I've never had to use it but it seems a sensible precaution.

This doesn’t really help if a machine is partly working (not showing out of order), but just stuck at the payments screen because it won’t accept cash or card.

I suspect the revenue investigators would say anyone can enter a destination and then take a photo or the £x to pay screen even if they had the cash or card but didn’t want to pay.

But we still have the problem of a guard that hid from passengers, at least in carriage CCTV ought to show how many times they patrolled the train (which sounds like none). But I suspect someone has not retained this even though the guard becoming available was a key part of the argument (rather smacks of destroying the evidence)
 

AlterEgo

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Yes. "The machine didn't accept my card" covers a myriad of situations, one of which is:

- the railway's machine is faulty.

Other reasons:

- Passenger's card is faulty
- Passenger's bank has a fault
- Passenger actually doesn't have the funds available to make payment
- Passenger error in using the machine
- Passenger is trying to pay using a type of card which is not accepted at the machine

We don't actually know exactly what happened or if the railway is culpable of not providing a means to pay the fare. Still worth the appeal though, certainly.

Unfortunately, the excuse that "someone else said they'd pay for my ticket" doesn't absolve an individual of their responsibilities to pay the fare, which is problematic in this case too.

"Please note that at stations where the only functioning means for ticket purchase is a self-service machine that is not accepting cash but cards only, customers who want to pay by cash should not be forced to use their credit or debit card to buy the ticket, if they do not want to do so, nor should customers be penalised in these circumstances."
That's not what was happening here. The machine apparently "didn't accept" the card. The passengers weren't paying by cash at the station.

Unfortunately, as @Watershed has needled out upthread, when they got to Leeds, payment was attempted in cash, and the failure to obtain a Promise to Pay notice is again problematic.

We don't have to like the rules, they suck, but they are the rules.
 

Watershed

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This doesn’t really help if a machine is partly working (not showing out of order), but just stuck at the payments screen because it won’t accept cash or card.

I suspect the revenue investigators would say anyone can enter a destination and then take a photo or the £x to pay screen even if they had the cash or card but didn’t want to pay.
Of course you would take a video in that case. Hardly rocket science!

But we still have the problem of a guard that hid from passengers, at least in carriage CCTV ought to show how many times they patrolled the train (which sounds like none). But I suspect someone has not retained this even though the guard becoming available was a key part of the argument (rather smacks of destroying the evidence)
I don't think it's really relevant at all, unless Northern try to claim that the guard came through the train and checked or offered to sell tickets to anybody requiring them.
 

AlterEgo

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I don't think it's really relevant at all, unless Northern try to claim that the guard came through the train and checked or offered to sell tickets to anybody requiring them.
Op mentions "different carriages", when I think they mean two different (195?) units - so entirely plausible the guard was in one unit and the passengers were in another. In any case, there is no requirement to seek out the guard or go banging on the back cab door.
 

Snow1964

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I don't think it's really relevant at all, unless Northern try to claim that the guard came through the train and checked or offered to sell tickets to anybody requiring them.

It is highly relevant because of the rule that in the event you cannot buy a ticket at the station, you try to buy at first opportunity. Having not been able to find someone on the train, the next opportunity was trying to pay when got off, which got rejected because a member of train staff was deemed available to passengers.

If the customer walked the train and got as far as a locked door (which the in carriage cctv might have shown), what level of reasonableness beyond that is seeking a member of staff on the train
 

pemma

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This doesn’t really help if a machine is partly working (not showing out of order), but just stuck at the payments screen because it won’t accept cash or card.

I suspect the revenue investigators would say anyone can enter a destination and then take a photo or the £x to pay screen even if they had the cash or card but didn’t want to pay.

But we still have the problem of a guard that hid from passengers, at least in carriage CCTV ought to show how many times they patrolled the train (which sounds like none). But I suspect someone has not retained this even though the guard becoming available was a key part of the argument (rather smacks of destroying the evidence)

While it won't help the original poster now, perhaps the solution is for machines to print a receipt with an error code when a card transaction fails. Then ideally the error code could identify why the transaction failed e.g. unable to communicate with bank, insufficient funds on the card or bank card has been cancelled.
 

Watershed

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It is highly relevant because of the rule that in the event you cannot buy a ticket at the station, you try to buy at first opportunity. Having not been able to find someone on the train, the next opportunity was trying to pay when got off, which got rejected because a member of train staff was deemed available to passengers.

If the customer walked the train and got as far as a locked door (which the in carriage cctv might have shown), what level of reasonableness beyond that is seeking a member of staff on the train
There is no obligation to actively seek out anyone onboard the train. If a member of staff comes through checking tickets (or offering to sell them), then obviously you have to pipe up. But you don't need to walk through the train. So CCTV would be irrelevant.
 
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