Fair points, tho sadly I suspect many of the general public regard the rail industry, or parts of it, as 'licensed fraudsters' as a general point of view. I'd expect GA to quietly drop her case unless they have clear evidence. And I would think she is sure of her ground.
Depends on your approach - some people may wish to go to the media to try and pressure the organisation involved to ease their plight. Sometimes (usually where the organisation doesn't want to lose face) it's effective.
118/232 single journeys is basically a claim every day you travel, in one or other direction. It’s like Rob McKenna from the Douglas Adams books. https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Rob_McKenna
But as long as some of the people they write to are guilty, that's alright then?
How long do you travel/route distance? Some people's are 60/70 miles and over 90 mins travel time. 3 & 4 claims a year suggests you don't really understand the difference between your commute and long distance commuting.
There will perhaps be cases where investigation would be warranted. Any such investigation would need to be approached with an open mindset, given that suspicions of fraud could well be wrong.
GA saying the average number of claims is around 20 but have sent hundreds if not thousands of letters out saying people are claiming an abnormal number of claims.... One would suggest they're also lying. It's not Iike they're sending a few letters here and there, loads of people are getting them.
That's not been the case for others, where they provided smartcard / ticket useage statistics etc.
Getting into the realms of making a libelous statement there, if I understand you correctly. You seem to be implying that GA is lying?
We aren’t talking about criminal convictions here though, but customers who were told they were suspected of wrongdoing and offered the chance to either defend themselves or settle. I don’t see it as fundamentally different to being told I should pay a speeding fine when it wasn’t me driving the car. Perhaps some people do indeed pay, but if you didn’t do anything wrong, you’d know that!
Do you think the company are so naive to disclose all of their evidence to the suspect at this early stage?
Oh, so GA aren't threatening people with dobbing them in to the police and being convicted of fraud? Must have been imagining that part.
A speeding fine is issued on the basis of unambiguous evidence (radar detection usually). There's simply no commonality with this case; anyway, it's rarely helpful to try and make such comparisons.
There are people here who have said they don't think they did anything wrong, but that they simply paid up to make it go away.
There is nothing wrong with the railway dealing with people who break railway laws. But they should only do so where there is clear evidence they have broken the law, not based on conjecture.
And you have proof it's just conjecture?
But these people are presumed innocent and are being given a clear opportunity to simply, you know, state that!
They should just pass it onto the police and let the police decide whom to arrest and question. This is not a “railway law” they are suspected of breaching. I expect this approach would have similar detractors on this forum too.
So if you had all those resources, you’d not bother to defend yourself?
Libelous statement you saying GA are an honest company? How is 20 average when they're sending letters to 100s people?
I can only conclude you aren't able to follow sentences or have a poor command of English, sorry. Maybe re-read my post (s) and you'll see that is not what I have said at all.
Read what has been written. It's not a case of not bothering, it's about the risks of doing so. Very simply, losing their job and career is too big a risk to take even if they have been entirely honest in their DR claims.
If you only ever claimed honestly and on trains upon which you travelled there’s absolutely no chance you’d ever get convicted. You need multiple, overlapping pieces of evidence like what I outlined earlier to even come close to the criminal standard of proof.
How would you know you’d be found not guilty if someone accused you of the same thing? You mean to say, you’d pay up without question if you got one of these letters? I wouldn’t.
On the one hand you insist there is enough evidence to justify GA threatening people with prosecution, with the 'awfully convenient' alternative of a bribe*.
I don’t insist this. I’ve offered helpful advice upthread for people caught in the net who clearly should not be there. No method of finding dishonest people is going to be 100% accurate.
The level of proof required by the CPS to substantiate a fraud allegation is pretty high, and not, as you suggest, “oh you made lots of claims”.
I don’t quite understand why you think I think that when I’ve clearly told people in this thread that, if they did not make any dishonest claims, they should simply write back and say so.
Suggesting the TOC is offering a bribe is just bad faith discussion. As is so often the case in this area of the forum, there are a few hardcore users who believe train companies are wilfully dishonest or aggressive. It’s more than likely the case that they’re incompetent or simply mistaken, and it’s a lot easier to reach good advice if you assume this.
I’m glad it’s not just me that can see that claiming to be delayed, on average, every single day, might be worthy of a few questions!
I have been on numerous trains where the timings were simply unachievable. Particularly with certain connections to/from those services, you could guarantee some sort of delay every day.