Penalty Fare Appeal Won, But No Refund!

Hi all,

I'm posting on here because you were all incredibly helpful in getting my penalty fare cancelled by a third appeal. Details of all of that here: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/penalty-fare-incorrect-parking-fare-at-train-station.262709/

TL;DR - I was fined for boarding a TPE express train in November 2023. The Ticket Inspector neglected to tell me I could pay within 30 days and demanded that I pay on the spot, so I did.

After three appeals, I had this penalty fare cancelled by the appeals board. I've attached the letter here, with my address and name redacted.

According to the attached decision letter (dated 27 March 2024), I should receive a refund from TPE in the post within ten working days.

Fast forward to 22 May 2024 and I have received nothing. I emailed the relevant department ([email protected]) two weeks ago, but have received no answer.

Can anyone help tell me what my options are at this point? The obvious one is small claims court, but I'm hoping to sort this in a way that doesn't take up even more time and money!

Many thanks.

I would be sending a Letter Before Claim to TPE giving them 14 days to pay you back what you are owed, failing which you can (and should) begin a court claim against them. They wouldn't be giving you any leeway if the boot were on the other foot, so there is no reason they deserve any latitude in this case.

I'm sure we can assist with the wording of your letter. TPE would be very foolish to allow this to proceed to court, and in my experience sending a LBC or initiating a claim usually results in getting paid pretty quickly, when a TOC owes you money.

I totally agree with issuing a letter before action.

You could also resend your follow up email to the Revenue Protection Team and Customer Service Department but set out from the outset you are raising a formal complaint.

You could also message the appeals service asking to them to contact TPE again.

How did you originally pay the PF? If it was by bank card I would personally raise a chargeback on the basis I have had confirmation of a refund but it has not been received.

TPE is playing with fire here. If TPE doesn't issue refunds within 10 days, then its appeals system does not conform to the regulations and therefore no Penalty Fare that TPE has issued while not complying was valid and they should all be refunded.

So there are two matters in play here. First how to get your own refund (letter before action etc.). Secondly, with the assistance of Transport Focus (the body responsible for making sure the train companies comply) or the DfT (which would appear conflicted) to challenge TPE to provide complete statistics to prove that they are routinely refunding PFs in full compliance with the regulations - and if not, to insist that they fix this immediately and refund all the other Penalty Fares they issued while they weren't complying with the regulations. They'll find excuses not to of course, but if the regulatory framework in place worked properly, that's what would happen.

If you were to publish details of what happened to you in this respect, anyone else who receives a TPE PF could cite it as a ground for appeal, namely that TPE can't pick and choose which parts of the regulations to follow and which to ignore - if it's ignoring this one then it can't issue any PFs.

furlong said:

If you were to publish details of what happened to you in this respect, anyone else who receives a TPE PF could cite it as a ground for appeal, namely that TPE can't pick and choose which parts of the regulations to follow and which to ignore - if it's ignoring this one then it can't issue any PFs.

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That is extremely far fetched.

You might as well say "Someone else saw a non-compliant sign once, here is the picture" and claim the entire TPE penalty fare regime fails based on a single failure that occurred to another passenger. We know that is not going to be a successful line of defence.

TPE are just being lazy and feckless here and I agree a letter before claim is appropriate.