At the start of March I was pulled over by a revenue protection officer working for Govia Thames-link Railway at London St Pancras station. My normal journey is St Albans City to St Pancras. He asked to see my ticket and then my railcard, as the ticket had been bought with a discount of the 16-25 railcard. I was unable to produce my railcard because it was at home, regardless the railcard had expired in September. I told the officer this and that I tried to renew it but simply forgot to do it after emailing the railcard help team, therefore I had been travelling since September 22 to March 23 (about 50 journeys, all of which were purchased with the 16-25 discount) with an expired railcard. I have now received a notice of intent to prosecute, I want to avoid going to court and am happy to pay any fee seen fit, wanted to get advice on what to include within the letter to maximise the chances of this. I have added the photos of the letter at the bottom of the thread, appreciate any advice and input
Hi and welcome - no doubt ppl will be along with advice on this - but basically you need to seek to persuade them in your response to this that this was a genuine mistake, not deliberate evasion, and request that they allow you to settle the matter out of court as opposed to prosecution route.
Obv as you have used the discount a lot without knowing, your task is going to be less easy than if this was just one occurrence. You will also need to be prepared to pay the full Anytime Single Fare for all the journey's concerned so check your own purchase records to work that out. Sadly they will be very unlikely to consider the sum already paid as part payment since they regard a ticket as purchased with a Railcard where the Railcard does not exists or is expired as a totally invalid ticket. They also don't usually calculate it with off peak fares either, even if you travelled off peak - so clearly this will cost you a fair bit, but you will appreciate that not noting your Railcard expiry date has been a costly mistake. Sadly they will note that you noticed it was expired, e-mailed someone about it, forgot, but then 'didn't forget' to buy tickets at a discount (well, this is how they might see it anyway, I do appreciate that it's genuinely possible to forget things) so in your reply probably best not to mention that aspect.
But at this stage your reply to them needs to focus on persuading them it was a genuine error, and seeking to persuade them to let you settle it without court action. So you need to engage with them with a written reply to get to that outcome. Feel free to post a draft of what you seek to say if you think feedback here will be of help.
Thameslink have a good record of settling compared with prosecuting so that is helpful to you, and you will find other cases on here where people who have engaged with Thameslink for genuine errors have found their enforcement staff reasonable to deal with (have a look over some other threads).
For a starter on content have a look at the helfpul advice
@Hadders often posts on what to include in your reply.