Help!! Expired railcard- previous incidents

[alice1233]

Hello,

Thank you for taking your time to read.

On the 2/2/25 I was travelling on a transpennine train from Newcastle to York on a discounted ticket with a 16-25 railcard. The train inspector asked to see my ticket and railcard, unknowingly it had expired. He took all my details and recorded the whole incident. Later I received a letter about the incident asking for any evidence or mitigating factors. As it was my mistake not realising it had expired they’re was not much evidence to support it. I had just apologised for the inconvenience, said that it was not my intention and that I had taken steps for it to never happen again by renewing by rail card and setting calendar reminders to continue renewing it.

I then got response that I didn’t have any substantial evidence to mitigate the matter. I paid the fine in full and I thought this meant the matter was closed.

I was wrong, recently on Tuesday 20th May I received an email from TransPennine, stating that following the incident from February they have reason to believe that I had taken previous trains at a discounted price with an expired railcard.

Again they have asked for any evidence or mitigating factors.

I’m not sure how to respond, I don’t want to be paying ridiculous amounts in fines, but I don’t want there to be further action. I wouldn’t mind paying a reasonable amount to put an end to it, but it says they can fine me up to £1000 and this is not realistic for me.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! I have pasted parts of the email below with more information.





We are writing following an incident that was reported to us on 02nd February 2025. You may recall that you presented a discounted ticket for inspection, however, could not produce a valid railcard to accompany the ticket, to show that you were entitled to the discount that you had been given. The ticket presented, therefore, was not valid for the journey being undertaken.

Having reviewed the case, and after further investigation, we that you have also purchased discounted tickets during the period 07/12/2024 – 02/02/2025, and we have reason to believe that you may not have held a valid railcard during this period. A list of journeys made during this period can be found on the next page.

This letter is giving you the chance to offer any statement or mitigation you wish to make or provide any relevant information you wish us to consider, in relation to this matter.

If you are unable to provide evidence showing that you had a valid railcard for these journeys, we may take legal action against you to recover the fares that are owed for the journeys where we have reason to believe no valid railcard was held. Further, if we write to you again, we may seek a contribution to our costs of investigating the matter and recovering the amount owed.

07/12/2024	Selby	Leeds
07/12/2024	Leeds	Selby
20/12/2024	Selby	York
20/12/2024	York	Selby
31/01/2025	Selby	York
31/01/2025	York	Newcastle
02/02/2025	Newcastle	York
02/02/2025	York	Selby

 

[jfollows]

Welcome to the forum!

When you say you paid the “fine” for the incident in February, can you please clarify, was it an out of court settlement?

Do you have any relevant documents from the time you can post here?

My initial thought is that TransPennine should have brought up any issues with previous journeys at that time. Now they’re on a fishing expedition, hoping you will incriminate yourself. For now, don’t respond in any way and wait to see what others think also.

Remember, buying tickets is not an offence. Using them when they’re not valid is. You don’t have to have a valid railcard when you buy tickets, you may be buying them for someone else or you may buy a railcard before you travel.

 

[alice1233]

Thank you for your response!

Yes this is what I originally thought because in the first incident they had evidence and caught me in the act. I think they are possibly trying to scare me and see how I respond.

It was an out of court settlement made within the first 14 days I’ll will attach screenshots from that time.

 

[WesternLancer]

Hello,

Thank you for taking your time to read.

On the 2/2/25 I was travelling on a transpennine train from Newcastle to York on a discounted ticket with a 16-25 railcard. The train inspector asked to see my ticket and railcard, unknowingly it had expired. He took all my details and recorded the whole incident. Later I received a letter about the incident asking for any evidence or mitigating factors. As it was my mistake not realising it had expired they’re was not much evidence to support it. I had just apologised for the inconvenience, said that it was not my intention and that I had taken steps for it to never happen again by renewing by rail card and setting calendar reminders to continue renewing it.

I then got response that I didn’t have any substantial evidence to mitigate the matter. I paid the fine in full and I thought this meant the matter was closed.

I was wrong, recently on Tuesday 20th May I received an email from TransPennine, stating that following the incident from February they have reason to believe that I had taken previous trains at a discounted price with an expired railcard.

Again they have asked for any evidence or mitigating factors.

I’m not sure how to respond, I don’t want to be paying ridiculous amounts in fines, but I don’t want there to be further action. I wouldn’t mind paying a reasonable amount to put an end to it, but it says they can fine me up to £1000 and this is not realistic for me.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! I have pasted parts of the email below with more information.

Alice



We are writing following an incident that was reported to us on 02nd February 2025. You may recall that you presented a discounted ticket for inspection, however, could not produce a valid railcard to accompany the ticket, to show that you were entitled to the discount that you had been given. The ticket presented, therefore, was not valid for the journey being undertaken.

Having reviewed the case, and after further investigation, we that you have also purchased discounted tickets during the period 07/12/2024 – 02/02/2025, and we have reason to believe that you may not have held a valid railcard during this period. A list of journeys made during this period can be found on the next page.

This letter is giving you the chance to offer any statement or mitigation you wish to make or provide any relevant information you wish us to consider, in relation to this matter.

If you are unable to provide evidence showing that you had a valid railcard for these journeys, we may take legal action against you to recover the fares that are owed for the journeys where we have reason to believe no valid railcard was held. Further, if we write to you again, we may seek a contribution to our costs of investigating the matter and recovering the amount owed.

07/12/2024	Selby	Leeds
07/12/2024	Leeds	Selby
20/12/2024	Selby	York
20/12/2024	York	Selby
31/01/2025	Selby	York
31/01/2025	York	Newcastle
02/02/2025	Newcastle	York
02/02/2025	York	Selby

My view is they are not seeking 'fines' from you - they are essentially seeking the fares for the correct tickets that you used that had no actual validity because you discounted them with a Railcard that you did not possesses (well you had a railcard that has expired)

The problem is they do typically charge these out at the Anytime fare (which is the highest undiscounted fare that exists for any journey) - this is because if they didn't then why would anyone buy or renew a Railcard, they would just pay the difference on the occasions they were caught without one - which in your case as you can see did not happen for 2 months / 7ish journeys.

You can calculate the fares that would involve
eg
Selby Leeds Anytime Day Rtn is £15.10 (or £14 Anytime Single if they charge it out as two singles which they might)
calculate your other fares here

Look up fares for any train journey in Britain

Full details of all British rail Single, Return & Season tickets and Travelcards. Built-in Season Ticket Calculator.

www.brfares.com

They don't typically regard 'sorry, honest mistake, I just forgot to renew' as a reasonable excuse to let you pay the difference. They expect you to be on top of expiry dates like this.

So as mentioned, they may not be able to bring a successful case for fare evasion (criminal case with a a fine of up to £1000 - but you would not get that sort of fine I suspect - and a criminal record) to court for these trips as they can't prove you actually travelled, but they might try to pursue civil court action against you for the debt they believe you owe, which it's reported on here needs a lower burden of proof. We know some train operators have commenced doing this (GWR) not sure if TPE have or not.

I guess you need to weight this up in terms of what course of action you decide to take - engage with them or ignore it and see how it plays out.

If you want to guarantee it won't escalate I suspect you have to respond and offer to pay the fares they believe you owe

EDIT - what's slightly unusual here is that TPE presumably offered you an out of court settlement before (what you say as the fine you paid - it's not a fine even though it seemed like one) BEFORE they audited your travel history and found these other trips. Often it happens that this audit happens before being offered that and they factor those sums in to what they offer - with the threat of court for the case they can prove as the incentive to pay it all as they have you over a barrel at that point.

 

[Egg Centric]

1. Remove the case no + details from that screenshot and reword that post so this thread can't be used against you
2. Ignore them. They'll probably get in a touch a few more times though. Continue to ignore (unless it starts becoming a civil action).

 

[WesternLancer]

1. Remove the case no + details from that screenshot and reword that post so this thread can't be used against you

I suspect Alice from Selby is probably already fairly identifiable. Alice you can ask mods to change your user name if you wish (use the report button on a post)

 

[jfollows]

EDIT - what's slightly unusual here is that TPE presumably offered you an out of court settlement before (what you say as the fine you paid - it's not a fine even though it seemed like one) BEFORE they audited your travel history and found these other trips. Often it happens that this audit happens before being offered that and they factor those sums in to what they offer - with the threat of court for the case they can prove as the incentive to pay it all as they have you over a barrel at that point.

Exactly, I have a problem with the concept of paying an agreed amout to “settle” the issue, as stated, and then TPE coming back and saying effectively “when we said ‘settle’ we didn’t actually mean it”. Yes, it could be argued that the settlement was for one specific thing whereas the fishing expedition is for something else, but TPE should have sorted out a settlement to include both. I’d ignore the latest communication, but with the caveat @Egg Centric notes.

Unlike the original settlement, TPE has no evidence for a criminal prosecution, against which the original settlement was offered and accepted.

 

[WesternLancer]

Exactly, I have a problem with the concept of paying an agreed amout to “settle” the issue, as stated, and then TPE coming back and saying effectively “when we said ‘settle’ we didn’t actually mean it”. Yes, it could be argued that the settlement was for one specific thing whereas the fishing expedition is for something else, but TPE should have sorted out a settlement to include both. I’d ignore the latest communication, but with the caveat @Egg Centric notes.

Unlike the original settlement, TPE has no evidence for a criminal prosecution, against which the original settlement was offered and accepted.

I always think @Hadders post on this are helpful for people in these situations - a recent one being

this really comes down to your appetite for risk.

If you decide to do nothing the railway company will continue to send letters threatening police involvement, prosecution, fraud conviction etc. It's not clear that they have sufficient evidence to go down that route but that won't stop them threatening to do so.

So hopefully the OP has the info from here to allow her to balance up the options and take an informed decision on their next steps

 

[Hadders]

Welcome to the forum!

This is quite a common tactic used by train companies these days. Essentiall what happens is:

• Passenger gets caught with an expired railcard, which means the underlying ticket is invalid. Legally speaking this is a criminal offence (because you don't possess a valid ticket), details are taken and the train company offers an out of court settlement costing the Anytime fare plus an admin fee. This gets paid and it's the end of the matter in respect of the journey you made when you were caught.. Note paying the out of court settlement is often referred to as paying a fine but technically it isn't as only a court can impose a fine as a punishment (paying a settlement does feel like paying a fine though!)
• The advent of online ticket purchasing and digital ticketing now means that train companies can search purchasing history so when someone comes to their attention they often check to see if someone has travelled with an expired railcard on other occasions. They then contact you about these journeys, which is what Transpennine have done here.

Some train companies will do both of the above similtaneously and deal with it all in one go. Dealing with things simultaneously is better for the train comany because they can say 'we know you've done this xx times, give us an out of court settlement covering all of the occasions we've done this or we'll prosecute you for the incident where we caught you. This hasn't happened here, they've settled the initial incident and now want another go.

An important principle here is that Transpennine are highly unlikely to be able to prosecute you for the other cases. To do so they would have to satisfy a court that you made those journerys with invalid tickets. Purchasing a ticket is not illegal but using a ticket illegally is. The easiest way to prove someone has used a ticket illegally is catching someone onboard (as happened to you). TPE haven't caught you on the other occasions. It's possible (although highly unlikely) that they have other evidence like CCTV.

Essentially you have two choices:

1. Co-operate with TPE. They will offer an out of court settlement which will make the matter go away.
2. Do nothing. Do not even acknowledge the letters from TPE. As I said above it's unlikley they can prosecute you but you will continue to get further letters for the forseeable future threatening police involvement, prosecution and a fraud conviction.

It really comes down to you appetite for risk.