Muppet Fare Dodger Caught on SWT via Twitter

CarlSilva · 28 Jan 2017

This is nearly as mad as the fella who nicked a police radio and wound up sussex old bill pretending to be Frank Spencer.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1439383/Ooh-Betty-Ive-got-a-stolen-police-radio.html

Officers have tracked down a man who stole a police radio and, for two days, bedevilled the network with catchphrases such as "Ooh Betty" and "Can I help you?"

Although the thief clearly thought he was amusing, police failed to see the joke.

When officers were called up to attend incidents, "Frank Spencer" would crackle on to the airwaves, offering his assistance. At other times he used the name Mr Blobby.

Ooh, hang on, better link here

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/3211169.stm

...Nathan Stack, 21, interrupted police frequencies in the Worthing area with catchphrases memorised from the BBC TV comedy Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em.
He pleaded guilty on 24 September to charges of theft, after finding the radio at a filling station....

RailUK Forums

Antman · 29 Jan 2017

pdeaves said:
How much does one have to steal to be a 'proper criminal'? £50? £500? £5,000? Does it make any difference whether you mug an old lady or break into a safe?

And if you left £48 left out in the street with nothing protecting it, when it was stolen would you expect any sympathy from the public?

najaB · 29 Jan 2017

dragonblyth said:
And if you left £48 left out in the street with nothing protecting it, when it was stolen would you expect any sympathy from the public?

Really not getting the point of this post.

DaleCooper · 29 Jan 2017

najaB said:
Really not getting the point of this post.

You're not the only one.

Gareth Marston · 29 Jan 2017

This blokes been caught by his own stupidity but he might still be getting away with it if he kept quite.

However there is definitely an attitude out there if the TOC's can't be bothered to collect fares/ their going to rip us off because their profiteering then why should we bother to make the effort to pay fares?

Whilst we have a manned booking office in Newtown there's no barriers and the conductors sell on board because of the unmanned stations. On weekdays I can go on the platform and see that 95% of joiners to a train have bought in office, look like their on a return leg of a journey I.e suitcase people seeing them off or I recognise them as having come off an earlier train etc. come Saturday morning a sizeable number board without purchasing maybe a third. Some expect to be issued a ticket by the conductor and if the conductor misses them then it's a bonus. They then moan about the queue at the barriers at Shrewsbury to but tickets.

ATW have been branded as profiteers by the Welsh Government Minister in charge of transport Ken Skates this could be construed as endorsing certain behaviours. Dai public in Wales have absolutely no clue on how reasonable the vast majority of fares are for travel in Wales compared to what others pay but it doesn't stop the moaning.

yorkie · 29 Jan 2017

dragonblyth said:
And if you left £48 left out in the street with nothing protecting it, when it was stolen would you expect any sympathy from the public?

Bizarre post. The topic is about services, but if you want an analogy with goods, yes there are often goods worth £48 left out in the street.:roll:

Antman · 29 Jan 2017

yorkie said:
Bizarre post. The topic is about services, but if you want an analogy with goods, yes there are often goods worth £48 left out in the street.:roll:

OK, to it in a more straightforward way.

Leave a £50 note unattended in the street; don't expect much sympathy when it is taken.

SWT 'left' £50 of train rides unattended and yet appeared to feel hard done by when they were 'taken'.

This is not to condone theft or 'victim blame' but perhaps SWT ought not simply be reacting to stupid crooks who boast on social media about their crimes, but consider how to protect their 'property'.

Liam · 29 Jan 2017

yorkie said:
Bizarre post. The topic is about services, but if you want an analogy with goods, yes there are often goods worth £48 left out in the street.:roll:

Yes, my car is out there now! :lol:

Deerfold · 29 Jan 2017

dragonblyth said:
OK, to it in a more straightforward way.

Leave a £50 note unattended in the street; don't expect much sympathy when it is taken.

SWT 'left' £50 of train rides unattended and yet appeared to feel hard done by when they were 'taken'.

This is not to condone theft or 'victim blame' but perhaps SWT ought not simply be reacting to stupid crooks who boast on social media about their crimes, but consider how to protect their 'property'.

Should we have guards all along railway lines too?

http://www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk/news/rail-thieves-steal-track-1-3005262

More than three quarters of a mile of rail track has been stolen from a railway line in Tickhill, Doncaster. ...

yorkie · 29 Jan 2017

dragonblyth said:
OK, to it in a more straightforward way.

Leave a £50 note unattended in the street; don't expect much sympathy when it is taken.

Not an appropriate analogy.

dragonblyth said:
SWT 'left' £50 of train rides unattended and yet appeared to feel hard done by when they were 'taken'.

That's a crazy way of looking at it and is flawed logic. There are many areas of life where people can get away with things, but will eventually get caught (and obviously it would happen sooner if they boast about it!)

dragonblyth said:
This is not to condone theft or 'victim blame' but perhaps SWT ought not simply be reacting to stupid crooks who boast on social media about their crimes, but consider how to protect their 'property'.

Are you saying they shouldn't have used the evidence on Twitter?

Antman · 29 Jan 2017

yorkie said:
Are you saying they shouldn't have used the evidence on Twitter?

Of course I am not saying they should not have used the evidence on Twitter.

What I am saying is they should have been doing more in the first place to stop the criminal taking something that didn't belong to them.

Why did it take public embarrassment before SWT decided to actually take some effective action to protect their property.

najaB · 29 Jan 2017

dragonblyth said:
Why did it take public embarrassment before SWT decided to actually take some effective action to protect their property.

The social media comments just made life a little easier for SWT's revenue protection team.

AlterEgo · 29 Jan 2017

dragonblyth said:
Of course I am not saying they should not have used the evidence on Twitter.

What I am saying is they should have been doing more in the first place to stop the criminal taking something that didn't belong to them.

Why did it take public embarrassment before SWT decided to actually take some effective action to protect their property.

SWT revenue protection is really poor.

I commute on one of their most important commuter flows, West Byfleet-Waterloo, and have had my ticket manually checked less than ten times since June 2016. Only on one of these occasions was this check done by an RPI.

A dishonest person could doughnut very easily.

175mph · 29 Jan 2017

I would never evade my fare, but if I did, I'd at least make some attempt to be subtle about it and not be dumb enough to broadcast it on Twitter/Facebook/here etc! :rolleyes:

ScotTrains · 1 Feb 2017

One of his tweets reads:
"Just no when the ticket man is scoffing a cream cake on carriage 1 if you sit in carriage 4 your home and dry"

Part of his punishment should be to learn English!

Howardh · 4 Feb 2017

Suppose you regularly make a journey a - b and there's no staff or ATM at either station, and no-one comes round the train to collect the fare;

Do you keep quiet?

or

Do you contact the company/press (whatever) and state you have made the journey ten times and not once paid for it - highlighting the lost revenue due to the company's inadequacy (and helping them to make money in future) and risk being prosecuted for the lost fares?

What we need is an anonymous line where we can inform TOC's of where they are failing to collect money. If such examples exist, and they won't do anything, then it should be a legal free ride IMO!

najaB · 4 Feb 2017

Howardh said:
Suppose you regularly make a journey a - b and there's no staff or ATM at either station, and no-one comes round the train to collect the fare...

Is it a DOO service or one with a guard/ticket examiner who is never seen?

Haywain · 4 Feb 2017

Howardh said:
Suppose you regularly make a journey a - b and there's no staff or ATM at either station, and no-one comes round the train to collect the fare;

Do you keep quiet?

or

Do you contact the company/press (whatever) and state you have made the journey ten times and not once paid for it - highlighting the lost revenue due to the company's inadequacy (and helping them to make money in future) and risk being prosecuted for the lost fares?

What we need is an anonymous line where we can inform TOC's of where they are failing to collect money. If such examples exist, and they won't do anything, then it should be a legal free ride IMO!

You're not likely to be prosecuted for complaining that you are not given the opportunity to pay. However, the subject of the start of this thread was goading the train company about what he could get away with, which isn't quite the same.

yorkie · 4 Feb 2017

Howardh said:
Suppose you regularly make a journey a - b and there's no staff or ATM at either station, and no-one comes round the train to collect the fare;

Do you keep quiet?

or

Do you contact the company/press (whatever) and state you have made the journey ten times and not once paid for it - highlighting the lost revenue due to the company's inadequacy (and helping them to make money in future) and risk being prosecuted for the lost fares?

What we need is an anonymous line where we can inform TOC's of where they are failing to collect money. If such examples exist, and they won't do anything, then it should be a legal free ride IMO!

Someone did a journey between two unstaffed Northern stations and there was no opportunity to buy a ticket. He asked if Northern wanted to send an invoice. Northern declined to do so, thanked him for his honesty, and said he didn't need to pay anything.

I'm yet to hear of anyone requesting an invoice being successful in receiving one, but I guess it's rare that anyone asks!

najaB · 4 Feb 2017

Haywain said:
You're not likely to be prosecuted for complaining that you are not given the opportunity to pay.

More accurately, you cannot be successfully prosecuted if there was no opportunity to pay.

Howardh · 4 Feb 2017

yorkie said:
Someone did a journey between two unstaffed Northern stations and there was no opportunity to buy a ticket. He asked if Northern wanted to send an invoice. Northern declined to do so, thanked him for his honesty, and said he didn't need to pay anything.

I'm yet to hear of anyone requesting an invoice being successful in receiving one, but I guess it's rare that anyone asks!

Thinking hard (not my greatest point) - if you are on a firm's expenses and they have to fill in tax forms, there could be complications as the free ride could be some kind of "gift" from the company? Example, a return journey; two single tickets which would be bought on the train, you get the first one OK but no-one sells you the second (maybe a couple of days later after a business meeting)?

Trying hard to think of a situation when you would physically NEED that ticket. Maybe a two-part journey when the second part as a stand-alone is more expensive than the combination of parts one and two??

Antman · 4 Feb 2017

Howardh said:
What we need is an anonymous line where we can inform TOC's of where they are failing to collect money. If such examples exist, and they won't do anything, then it should be a legal free ride IMO!

Plenty of people complain on Twitter that first class isn't enforced, but GTR don't seem to do anything about it (as the tweets don't decrease).

09065 · 5 Feb 2017

AlterEgo said:
SWT revenue protection is really poor.

I commute on one of their most important commuter flows, West Byfleet-Waterloo, and have had my ticket manually checked less than ten times since June 2016. Only on one of these occasions was this check done by an RPI.

A dishonest person could doughnut very easily.

The problem with SWT on that 2Fxx flow though is that it is predominantly (though not exclusively) the domain of non-commercial guards.

Someone somewhere must have evaluated that the cost of "commercialising" the route, paying the additional training and wage costs for commercial guards and their equipment, be more than the money lost through far evasion.

Muppet Fare Dodger Caught on SWT via Twitter

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