SS4
Established Member
They would if the plane ran every twenty minutes. I was on a Manchester to London train recently and a young person had caught the train prior to the one on which they were booked. Unfortunately it was the train via Crewe and their booked ticket was for the train which runs via Stoke so I couldn't advise the obvious, to get off at the next station, pay for the journey they'd already taken and recommence on the correct train.
In the event, the conductor let them off completely, and why not - it was a quiet off-peak journey and the TOC had suffered no loss. Good on her!
That's a bonus, not the norm. The TOC would be deprived of half the revenue paid, even more in peak had the customer got away with no railcard
But doubtless some other miserable sod would have only had eyes for his commission and tried to charge him the full anytime fare.
Someone doing their job is now a miserable sod. Guards, RPIs and TMs are people too and certainly do not deserve the trouble which ensues when someone who did not adhere to the terms of their ticket conditions picks on them.
I often think that the full anytime fare, whilst being a deterrent for the wilful fare evader, is basically a scam perpetrated on the forgetful, the inexperienced traveller, and the person who doesn't have a home PC and thinks for some reason that the railway station is the obvious place to buy a train ticket.
No. The Anytime fare is a deterrent for anyone who could not be bothered to understand the terms of their ticket. Your argument is rendered moot by the fact that advance tickets can be bought from a railway station. The only loss comes from the online deals.
And if the savvy traveller with an advance gets an unavoidable delay, or has mislaid the seat reservation section (mostly a useless requirement which just provides the extra possibility of getting something wrong and being stung for it) so much the better for the TOC who can sell the same journey twice.
A delay on a previous train lets them catch the next available train. A delay on the bus/tube does not largely because it is unverifiable whether it's a legitimate delay.
I still maintain that most people on an advance ticket coming by bus leave plenty of buffer time
I have never seen someone charged for sitting in the wrong seat on the correct service. Never. TMs have asked that people remain in their reserved seat due to high volumes but I've never seen anyone done. That could well be due to a large number of people who will move if asked by the actual seatholder.
I've rarely sat in my reserved seat on Virgin and nobody cares, even station staff at BHM have told me it doesn't matter and more than once given up a four seat table for a couple/family but I digress.
When the corner store wilfully charges me twice when I've bought only one tin of value beans, and the second charge is for finest range home-smoked beans with chorizo sausage, I call them fraudsters.
You're forgetting that travelling on the wrong service/without a railcard etc is not the TOCs fault