Hypothetical: recognising fare dodgers

Thank you for going through the effort of booking the ticket. I should have looked for myself, I am still strongly of the opinion that the train line, and others, should advertise the facts regarding these restriction better.

In their defence, 'Standard' refers to class of travel in this case.

baz962 said:

Thought I would add to this. I am a trainee driver, and up until a few months ago worked at the above mentioned Luton airport. Until I joined this forum I too was unaware of the byelaw's and the different ticketing rules etc. I now have a season ticket from Bedford to West Hampstead , and my mother lives in Luton. I now just jump on the train to pop to Luton to visit my mother , but the gate wierdly sometime's opens on my ticket and sometime's does not. I decided one day to ask a member of staff wether I could get off at Luton/ Luton airport parkway and was told - you shouldn't but you can!. I asked the question on this forum and was told I can . If the staff on the gateline don't know , then how are the public supposed to know. As to people making a genuine mistake, as opposed to trying it on , perhap's the toc's could start a database , not hard in this day of modern technology. One chance no excuse.

Click to expand...

With a season you can board and alight at any intermediate station.

talltim said:

With a season you can board and alight at any intermediate station.

Click to expand...

As I believe , yet the staff said I could not , and that is part of the point , if staff do not know then how are the public supposed to.

pompeyfan said:

Thank you for going through the effort of booking the ticket. I should have looked for myself, I am still strongly of the opinion that the train line, and others, should advertise the facts regarding these restriction better.

Click to expand...

As far as I can see there is a clear, if small print, reference on each one of the five screen shots Gareth Marston has posted - though I suppose the red alarm clock with "limited availability" is ambiguous (It could mean, buy now or....).

You can' pick and choose who may or may not be fare dodgers. There' been please type high profile storiel where the person dodging their fare was some respectable person who you would never have thought of.

Guards on here will tell you that they come in all shapes and sizes.

The fairest way is to treat everyone the same within the rules. Simple concept

The booking sites that I have looked at (I don't claim to have usd them all) have given the impression that that all tickets are for specific services only.

baz962 said:

As I believe , yet the staff said I could not , and that is part of the point , if staff do not know then how are the public supposed to.

Click to expand...

More worryingly, I have heard staff tell people they can do something when the ticket they hold, or are about to purchase, is not valid to do that 'something'.

To give an example -
Someone boarded at an unstaffed station on the East Lancashire line and asked for a return to Manchester. They were 100% specific that they wished to travel outwards changing at Blackburn but coming back they wanted to travel via Preston. The guard categorically said they could use an 'Any Permitted' ticket to do as they wished because "any permitted means you can go any way you want" - no mention at all of the more expensive 'Via Preston' fare.

Whether that passenger had any issues going back I obviously have no idea but, interestingly, many months later I witnessed someone being taken off a train at Wigan by the police (who just happened to be there for the football) when using a similar ticket. The passenger had a ticket from the East Lancs line to somewhere in south Manchester and took umbrage when the guard checking out of Preston asked him to pay more to upgrade to a Via Preston ticket - the passenger was insistent that the person who sold him the ticket had said he could go that way. I thought at the time that if he were to come on here the usual sarcastic replies about "the man on the train/platform" would not be far away and yet, based on the example I had witnessed first hand, there was every likelihood he was telling the truth.

sheff1 said:

I thought at the time that if he were to come on here the usual sarcastic replies about "the man on the train/platform" would not be far away and yet, based on the example I had witnessed first hand, there was every likelihood he was telling the truth.

Click to expand...

I can only speak for myself but there's no sarcasm about 'the man on the platform'. The problem is, as always, proving what he said after the fact.

Just a reminder that there are obvious fare dodgers out there. Drunk with bottle of wine in hand three quarters gone got on at Banbury on Bank Holiday Monday, made nuisance of himself to other passengers. Chiltern Conductor came round "this bloke my brother will buy my ticket" says the drunk. The other passenger looking very alarmed about the claimed kinship didn't.

"Your getting off at Leamington" says the conductor. We arrive at Leamington the Conductor operates the doors nearest our friend who gets off without putting up much of a fuss thankfully.

Returning to the original question - in theory, I think that the right Penalty Fare scheme could if not quite deal with this, at least deal with a large proportion of it. After all, that was sort of its original intention - a lowish amount to pay, details recorded, future 'mistakes' can be taken to prosecution.

At the moment, Penalty Fares don't achieve this particularly well for several reasons but in principle the right scheme could do a better job.

First in posting this message I must confess not to having travelled on a scheduled long distance service since I passed my driving test in 1982! Whilst I still travel a lot on heritage railways, the occasional West Country branch line, nearly always ticket from the guard, and the odd charter train long distance ticketing appears confusing. I accept there are many people out there "trying it on" and that is unacceptable and needs punishing. However, I think on reading this thread I now must make a comment.

Could not the railways become a slightly more friendly place for passengers in terms of ticketing and rules? For example my other interest is travelling by sea often on scheduled ferry sailings. If for instance you book a special offer and turn up for an earlier or later sailing and there is an amendment fee or higher fare in almost all cases I have come across you just pay the difference from what you have already paid to what the new fare is. The operators do not turn around and say your ticket is completely invalid as it appears is the case with rail tickets if not presented on the train for which they are intended. Also some operators, I know Red Funnel did this a few years ago when I last used them will let you travel on an earlier sailing if you turn up early without a surcharge - not sure if it is still the case.

I just feel that to be told that a ticket is completely invalid just seems unreasonable if you have already paid part of the fare, surely all you should owe is the difference between the fare paid and the standard fare plus an admin fee?

I have no axe to grind but I sometimes feel that some of the cries of angst on this section, might be avoided if a more friendly attitude was operated. However, do not interpret that deliberate transgressors should not be punished.

Likewise passengers travelling in first on standard tickets. When I was a regular traveller up to 1982 much of my travel was in first class. Usual routine was for ticket collector to either chase intruders who didn't want to pay or accepted payment from a passenger who wanted to upgrade. Again it seems a much more reasonable way of dealing with the situation.

I travel often with a particular ferry company who offer a premium (1st Class) lounge and a members' lounge. People wanting to upgrade just pay on board if they have not done so in advance to first. If "infiltrators" are discovered in the members lounge or first without having the right to be there the crew just move them on. No running to law.

Interested to see what peoples' opinions are on this and any reasons why say the shipping model can't be transferred to the railways.

John

Generally speaking you can just pay the difference in fare, for example travelling at a time when an Off Peak ticket isn't valid the correct course of action is to pay an excess of the difference between what you have paid and the Anytime fare.

The problem comes with Advance tickets. These are 'booked train only' and are often much cheaper than 'normal' tickets. You can amend these to a different date and time on payment of the difference in fare and a £10 admin fee if it's done before the train departs. If these tickets were allowed to be excessed on board with no penalty then passengers would only ever buy a cheap Advance and pay when challenged.

It's far easier to control passengers boarding ferries and planes than it is trains. On a ferry or plane there's generally only one door through which you can board making ticket checking and identification of people with an incorrect ticket simple. Trains can have more than 20 doors, make numerous intermediate stops where they only call for a matter of seconds. This makes checking that passengers have the correct ticket far more difficult than on other modes of transport.

Rtyrpics said:

Most guards and RPI can spot a chancer and a dodger at ten paces. And will deal them accordingly.

Click to expand...

Or at least they think they can... Sure, in a small minority of cases it's blatently obvious, such as when they're actively hiding, etc., but from what I've seen (so take this with the obvious caveats), the way someone without a correct ticket is dealt with seems to be more based on their socio-economic status than anything else. A well-dressed businessman who claims to have caught the wrong train by mistake is far more likely to be "let off" than a youth with an apparent "lower status" appearance who states the same thing... The so-called "attitude test" is (in my personal opinion, based on my own personal observations) generally somewhat biased against younger people who have less experience dealing with authority figures as well as those who suffer from social anxiety or disorders on the autistic spectrum (people who are often interpreted as being evasive when they are not).

ForTheLoveOf said:

As an example of the kind of 'mistake' that would be very easy to make but for which you could potentially face a penalty fare or prosecution - today I've travelled on an Advance from my home station to Luton Airport. The only reservation was from home to the London Terminal my first train went to. I had no reservation from St Pancras to Luton Airport.

A reasonable person would presume (if they can understand what an Advance even means and lets you do) that, since you have no reservation from St Pancras to Luton Airport, you may take any train. Yet this isn't the case - theoretically you couldn't take the quickest option of the East Midlands Trains service as this is a reservable train and you don't have a reservation for it. You are supposed to take the Thameslink services which are non-reservable.

How is a normal person supposed to know this? It's something I only found out fairly recently too. The way I made it onto the EMT service was by explicitly asking at the gateline whether I was authorised to take the EMT train without a reservation and of course they said yes, and equally the train manager didn't even ask to see a reservation but they could have kicked up a right stink if they wanted to go on technicalities.

All of which is to say that I don't think that rules which are unpublished or unclear should be enforced. If you want to enforce rules then you should make it amply clear. Mobile apps are not very clear that they usually storing your last-used Railcard, but they do advertise that 'Railcard discount has been applied' before buying, so if OP of the other thread didn't read this then I do think it's on him TBH.

Whereas in my case if they theoretically only want you to use non-reservable services then they should make this clear at the time of buying, or at the very least print out a 'reservation' which says that it's valid on any Thameslink train but not EMT.

Click to expand...

I had a similar experience when travelling from Havant (Hants) to Nottingham via London on business. I purchased a ticket at Havant on the day (ticket said off peak) and boarded the next train, ticket checked on train, no problem. When I got to St Pancras I just boarded the next Nottingham train. No problem at the platform ticket check. Next time I made the same journey, a week later, I got to St Pancras having used the same train from Havant and went for the same onward train as before. This time I was denied boarding being told my off peak ticket wasn't valid from St Pancras on that train. I checked and both tickets were identical fares and said off peak. In a touch of supreme irony as I sat in St Pancras on the next scheduled Nottingham train I noticed the other one hadn't departed. It had failed and all the passengers rapidly detrained to mine... Anyway apart from that I just wonder how a passenger is supposed to know that you can buy a through ticket from south of London that's valid up to the city early morning but then face a restriction for onward travel that's not explained or even obvious as I had no reason to seek a cheap ticket or try and fool the operator as it was a business trip and accepted the fare charged at Havant as I was going to be paid back regardless of the fare. It seemed odd to me that there was an 'off peak' restriction going out of St Pancras at around 9am as most restrictions are to London in the morning, not out of it.

pompeyfan said:

What I’m asking though, is how well are the rules advertised. ‘You must travel on the service specified, click okay to continue’ - ‘warning, you must travel on the service you have selected, if you do not, you will be subject to (condition 2)...’

Click to expand...

To a lot of people, travelling on the 'service selected' is akin to catching a bus: The number 6 is a service but it runs all day for example.

boxy321 said:

To a lot of people, travelling on the 'service selected' is akin to catching a bus: The number 6 is a service but it runs all day for example.

Click to expand...

I can see that in a metro, train-every-five-minutes scenario but not with (for example) a London to Edinburgh train.

najaB said:

I can see that in a metro, train-every-five-minutes scenario but not with (for example) a London to Edinburgh train.

Click to expand...

Not London to Edinburgh but on any line with 2tph or more which includes some major inter-city flows it is a perfectly reasonable viewpoint.

Coming to the main point of the thread, in my younger days I worked occasionally on door security at music venues. The chancers were usually quite easy to spot but certainly didn't fit any particular demographic. The punk types would try it on as a matter of form and pay up with good grace when stopped but the well dressed city types would argue. One very well dressed woman marched straight past the ticket check and screamed that I was a "facist" for daring to suggest that she might pay to go it.

If someone hides in the toilet it's pretty obvious