Chessman89
New Member
This thread is for posting your stories about your encounters with TIL. Please, if you want to post anonymously, go to 'contact us' at the bottom of the website and ask the very friendly forum staff team to post on your behalf anonymously.
Specifically, I am interested in situations where you believe that you made an honest mistake or where TIL have taken your details and threatened to prosecute/fine you when you had a valid ticket. I'm especially interested in situations where the TIL employee did not tell you who they were or told you that they were someone else or doing something else other than what they were doing (taking details for prosecution/fine). Even more so if you went all the way to court with TIL.
My intention is not to name names but to raise the conduct of this company with my MP and the more anecdotal evidence I have, the better. It is my opinion that TIL's tactics are unacceptable and could result in wrongful prosecutions of people who have made an honest mistake.
About a year ago, I was threatened with prosecution by TIL. I will give you the highlights here but I give a full summary in one of my emails:
I have tried to put this all behind me but it is still on my mind a year later. At the time, I had decided that I would go to court, defend myself and refuse to pay any fine as I am not a criminal. I thought, the truth will ultimately win. I now imagine that I would have lost my case since I couldn't afford a lawyer. I imagine others may have thought the same and not been as lucky as I was.
Obviously, there are a wealth of stories already on other threads but for anyone who has not posted and has been through everything and would like to share, please feel welcome. A new thread is best for advice on a current case. I'm hoping that posts here can be for resolved cases which you hadn't posted about previously and hopefully this thread can help people who are currently dealing with it in seeing how TIL acts.
Thank you
Specifically, I am interested in situations where you believe that you made an honest mistake or where TIL have taken your details and threatened to prosecute/fine you when you had a valid ticket. I'm especially interested in situations where the TIL employee did not tell you who they were or told you that they were someone else or doing something else other than what they were doing (taking details for prosecution/fine). Even more so if you went all the way to court with TIL.
My intention is not to name names but to raise the conduct of this company with my MP and the more anecdotal evidence I have, the better. It is my opinion that TIL's tactics are unacceptable and could result in wrongful prosecutions of people who have made an honest mistake.
About a year ago, I was threatened with prosecution by TIL. I will give you the highlights here but I give a full summary in one of my emails:
- I had a return ticket from Pencoed (where I live) to Cardiff Central.
- While on the train home with my customer, I decided to go one extra stop to Bridgend (where he lived) to have a drink.
- I genuinely forgot that I needed to buy a ticket to cover that part of the journey (I was a little tipsy at this point).
- At Bridgend, my customer reminded me and I went on my phone to buy a ticket.
- I was approached by an RPO (Revenue Protection Officer or whatever name they're calling themselves on that particular day). I didn't know he was an RPO or that such a thing existed.
- I told him, thinking he was a member of the station staff, that I would buy a ticket on my phone.
- He told me that I didn't need to and he was carrying out a survey. If I answered the survey, I could go through for free.
- I asked how long it would take and he said 2 minutes max and I agreed.
- He joked, some of these questions sound a bit scary but don't worry, you're not under arrest. I laughed but little did I know that this was my rights being read to me.
- I did suspect foul play towards the end but I didn't want to create a scene with a customer and in the end I decided to leave it and hope nothing came of it. I actually thought he might have been a scammer stealing my details but I discarded this theory due to him being able to open the barriers.
- About a week later, I received a letter from TIL advising that they would prosecute me unless I had any mitigation.
- I became stressed, had a panic attack which I worried could have been a heart attack and went on Beta blockers as my vision had become permanently blurred until I took them. Strange how stress can hit you. I have never had this before or ever since. I stopped the beta blockers as soon as this was all over approx. a month and a half later. It felt like forever.
- I had a back and forth with TIL. Them not accepting my mitigation (or even reading it frankly) and me insisting that they respond to each point of my mitigation as I had several. I will upload letters/emails etc. with identifying details redacted. I also complained to TFW, Ombudsman, spoke to solicitors, ICO, doctors (I had to have a heart trace due to the medication), CAB, Swansea free legal clinic (good to be aware of), Bridgend train station and the CCTV controllers (they had deleted that days footage and I had to ask them to recover it, which they did so that I could use it in court). I was on the phone constantly for a month and when I wasn't on the phone, I was researching (bear in mind I was ramping up to defend myself in court vs as far as I knew, an actual barrister), this forum was a great help.
- Eventually, they dropped the case after responding specifically to one point of my four (incompetence). They knew so little about my case that they got the journeys which I took incorrect and they got the prices of various tickets the wrong way around. I don't think they have a clue where Pencoed and Bridgend are in relation to each other or to Cardiff. As you can see from the letter, I believe they thought that I'd bought a ticket to Cardiff but travelled past Cardiff to Bridgend (which admittedly would have been a very long trip all the way to Cheltenham and back past my original stop).
- They dropped the case but never told me that they had. TFW (who actually have a very helpful customer services) found that out for me. TIL had dropped the case and left me hanging for 8 days and would have left me hanging infinitely. They never responded to my complaint despite me asking twice.
I have tried to put this all behind me but it is still on my mind a year later. At the time, I had decided that I would go to court, defend myself and refuse to pay any fine as I am not a criminal. I thought, the truth will ultimately win. I now imagine that I would have lost my case since I couldn't afford a lawyer. I imagine others may have thought the same and not been as lucky as I was.
Obviously, there are a wealth of stories already on other threads but for anyone who has not posted and has been through everything and would like to share, please feel welcome. A new thread is best for advice on a current case. I'm hoping that posts here can be for resolved cases which you hadn't posted about previously and hopefully this thread can help people who are currently dealing with it in seeing how TIL acts.
Thank you