Trainline, Railcards, and 'Prosecutions'

[AlterEgo]

Yes, and no. If you were somehow allowed to board, and then arrive at your destination, you could still fail to negotiate passport control. And even if you can sort out a renewed passport quite quickly and return for another flight, you'll have to pay again for the privilege.

But just to clarify, you won't potentially be taken to court and asked to bend over for £500-1000 in fines, costs and surcharges, and given a criminal record.

Nobody is saying there are no consequences to failing to bring your passport, just that they don't involve the company issuing a nice fat summons for a crime because of privileges they have owing to an accident of history.

And, if you get to the border and you are turned away due to no passport, it is the airline who is responsible for returning you, usually at their own cost. In the situation you describe, the airline also gets fined for being very bad at their job, even if you lost your passport enroute - a strict liability of sorts.

The airline here enforces passport checks because it is in their interest to do so and because a third party needs to be satisfied with your right of entry. The railway enforces railcard checks for no reason other than its lack of innovation in having a more secure discount system, and because frankly, it dislikes and suspects its customers in a way most businesses do not. They are grasping, underfunded entities who go after "fare evaders" (most people are not actually *evading*) to supplement their subsidies and because they are expensive to use, and the public like to see that some other people are getting done in by the cruelty of the system because it's "fare evaders" making the trains expensive and definitely not a political choice.

I've no sympathy for the worst grifters, but the railway hypocritically operates a policy of:

- slapping people with large settlements or prosecuting avoidant or impoverished customers for misdemeanours like forgetting to renew one's railcard, and claiming the public interest test for criminalisation is met if they didn't get an obsequious letter generated from a consumer advice forum (a forum which they read lol), and
- letting credentialed and publicly trusted professionals like nurses, solicitors, and chartered accountants who evade thousands of pounds deliberately, avoid prosecution if they just pay the fares back plus £150, with no public interest test at all - just whether they can get some money back

It is totally perverse and not in any way, shape or form a way any competent prosecuting authority, or almost any other customer focused business, would run itself.

 

[Haywain]

you won't potentially be taken to court and asked to bend over for £500-1000 in fines, costs and surcharges,

No, instead you will be forfeiting a similar amount in non-refundable fares.

 

[AlterEgo]

No, instead you will be forfeiting a similar amount in non-refundable fares.

Will you be getting a criminal record for it if you turn up at check in without a valid passport?

 

[Haywain]

Will you be getting a criminal record for it if you turn up at check in without a valid passport?

Ultimately, that depends on whether you've committed a criminal offence.

 

[AlterEgo]

Ultimately, that depends on whether you've committed a criminal offence.

So that's a no, then, because it's not a crime to turn up to a flight here without a valid passport having forgotten to renew it. Glad that got cleared up.

 

[Haywain]

So that's a no, then, because it's not a crime to turn up to a flight here without a valid passport having forgotten to renew it. Glad that got cleared up.

Whereas it is a crime in many circumstances to not pay your correct rail fare.

 

[AlterEgo]

Whereas it is a crime in many circumstances to not pay your correct rail fare.

I'm learning for the first time, thanks.

 

[Benjwri]

it is the airline who is responsible for returning you, usually at their own cost

Increasingly not true these days. Airlines go after the customer for the cost of the flight back.

I also don’t think the aviation industry is the one to be showing off as the golden standard. Just on the passport issue alone many airlines have all the info they need to tell you something is wrong with your details you entered months ago, but you don’t find out till check in.

But there is also the baggage game, almost all airlines these days will fine you a bit too dissimilar amount to a penalty fare, just for your luggage being a tiny bit oversized. You have no say on the matter, besides perhaps not travelling any losing your fare, enforced by staff who are incentivised to not let you take your bag through commission.

 

[AlterEgo]

Increasingly not true these days. Airlines go after the customer for the cost of the flight back.

Not when you are inadmissible due to insufficienct documentation; it is the airline’s responsibility to check this.

I also don’t think the aviation industry is the one to be showing off as the golden standard.

Nobody is doing that here. In fact, as you point out, there are many financial pitfalls that await the unprepared traveller, but none of them come with the additional potential bonus of also being taken to court for committing a crime, and given a criminal record. So even an admittedly crappy industry is still not habitually criminalising its customers for their errors.

 

[Same_Promo3006]

As regular readers of this forum will be only too aware, a great many problems reported here are down to Trainline automatically retaining selected Railcards on users' accounts and applying discounts accordingly. Absolutely no attempt is made when accepting a booking to ensure that the user checks that any Railcard selection on their account is (still) either appropriate or valid.

Which would TOCs prefer?

a. A situation where everyone except the deliberate evader buys the correct ticket from Trainline and their fare evasion teams can then concentrating on bringing doom down on these people.

or

b. A situation where Trainline trips up anyone who fails to notice that their Railcard has expired, or who has the wrong railcard attached to their account for some other reason, so that the TOC can then catch them out and go back to Trainline and discover a bunch of other transgressions stemming from the same cause, creating a massive extra workload for their fare evasion teams?

I suggest that it would be the former. So why the **** don't TOC's put any pressure on Trainline to change the way they approach the application of Railcard discounts to ticket purchases, so as to stop making a potential 'criminal' out of anyone who doesn't pay sufficient attention to every detail when making a purchase. Surely the application of a Railcard discount should be a pre-meditated and deliberate act for every purchase, accompanied with a 'check the date' warning, the default position being that such a discount is not pre-selected or applied.

When you have purchased a ticket on Trainline with a Railcard applied it does state something like 'don't forget your Railcard'.
I would prefer that the validity of a Railcard is linked to any ticket selling sites. Including the ticket vending machines.

 

[zero]

Not when you are inadmissible due to insufficienct documentation; it is the airline’s responsibility to check this.

Many airlines require you to reimburse them for any fines and the cost of being returned to your origin as part of their conditions of carriage. This would of course be a civil claim, and perhaps may not stand up in court depending on the specific circumstances as well as local consumer rights legislation.