My answer to Flamingo's question; yes I did contact CS although maybe shouldn't have mentioned my intention to go to small claims if they wouldn't reimburse my Waterloo - Southampton single. Here's the tickets I got out of the machine...... don't seem to be able to paste the pdf. Well there were 3: S-ton to Waterloo; Receipt ticket; and here the interesting thing.... a receipt ticket from THE PREVIOUS CUSTOMERS TRANSACTION. Yes I know they could have just left it there but I didn't think so. One theory would have been that the printer was, at least at that time, out of sync and if so my outbound ticket could have been produced of the NEXT customer.
July 11th 2016
The Law Courts Ground floor
Easton Street
High Wycombe
HP11 1LR
Dear Sir
Claim B5QZ8N0J
Davies vs South West Trains; hearing dated July 7th 2015, 14.00h
I write as claimant following the hearing on July 7th 2016 and out of disappointment with the outcome in favour of South West Trains (SWT) represented by John Wilmot. My intention is to appeal this decision unless in the meantime I can persuade SWT to do the decent thing even now. The court got the judgement wrong and I have been let down by the judicial system I was relying on. There was no outbound ticket in the ticket machine on the Waterloo concourse on the day in question, the issue of my claim. Perversely I had the feeling throughout the hearing, before and after, that the judge and Mr Wilmot knew jolly well that I was telling the truth but it seemed there was a level of evidence required I couldnt provide. Furthermore, the SWT transaction spreadsheet offered in defence was given unquestioned sacrosanct status as evidence against me and Mr Wilmot was dutifully carrying out his job.
I feel a sense of injustice. I was astonished at the time of judgement, fully expecting the Court to find in my favour. My claim concerned the failure of the ticket machine at Waterloo Station on the 5th December 2015 to dispense the outbound ticket to Southampton Central, which I had pre-paid and the subsequent failure of the ticket office to offer a replacement. Several features of the judgement concern me, sufficiently so that each provides a level of doubt, the benefit of which I should have been given.
1. It was my belief that the small claims court required a lower level of proof and in this case I was expecting the judge to take a view therefore, based on my honest testimony. It is by the nature of my claim impossible to prove no ticket was delivered by the Waterloo machine; you cannot prove a negative. And yet the judge told me I provided insufficient evidence as claimant, to support my case; a classic paradox.
The court would naturally wish to assess witness credibility in coming to such a judgement and it might have been helpful therefore to hear the claimant, now retired, previously spent 26 years as a university lecturer, 11 as a scientific advisor in the pharmaceutical industry and 5 years working in the laboratory service of the NHS. I have been married for 42 years, have two grown up children, have no criminal record whatsoever and have had a handful of small claims supported over the years. I was in this respect however pleased that the judge during the hearing did suggest to Mr Wilmot that I didnt appear to be the sort of person to make a false claim.
2. I was unconvinced regarding the link SWT relied on, between their spreadsheet of transactions, which appeared to show no fault in the ticket delivery system, and the mechanical ticket delivery machine in a remote location out on the Waterloo concourse. This is clearly a technical issue. This link was assumed, but not proven and the defendant perhaps should have been questioned to justify this functional linkage. It was my experience that on exhaustively examining the ticket tray at the time of ticket collection the outbound ticket was not delivered, only the return from Southampton to Waterloo in spite of what the spreadsheet indicated. There is a technical disconnect here which it has been my experience, SWT are not recognising.
3. Moreover my retrieval of a ticket receipt from the previous transaction was further evidence that the machine may have been operating at that time out of synchronisation between customers and could have explained the failure of the machine to delivery my outbound ticket perhaps delivering it to the next client if this were so. The previous client, yes, may have left this ticket receipt in the tray but there are reasonable grounds for doubt on this. I maintain that it was delivered along with my tickets. This doubt can only be strengthened by the printed timings on some of the tickets not corresponding with the timings given on the transaction spreadsheet; the judge noted this during the hearing. The return Southampton - Waterloo ticket for example was printed at 12.35 whereas the spreadsheet lists this ticket having been printed at 12.36.03. Further reasonable grounds for doubt.
4. In addition and of relevance is a further timing issue from the spreadsheet, which could also explain my non-receipt of the outbound ticket. The transaction spreadsheet provided by SWT gives an identical timing, to the very second, for the issue of both outbound and return tickets at the time of 12.36.03. Such a printing would be technically impossible and suggests that the reason the outbound ticket was not printed may have been a congestion issue at the remote concourse machine; two tickets cannot be printed at one and the very same second, simultaneously. Notice there are 7 or 8 seconds between the printings of the other tickets. Further reasonable grounds for doubt.
5. There was no attempt to question the defendant on any similar previous malfunctions of the ticket machine. I did believe Mr Patel the ticket officer on the day, when he revealed that similar machine failures were a known feature to SWT but this seemed to have carried no weight in court but interestingly not denied by the defendant either. The defendant should have been questioned about this in the hearing and I regret not having done so myself. It is unreasonable that any complex multi-system machine, especially when they require co-ordination and exist physically remotely, operate totally without fault and it should be put to South West Trains exactly what the failure record has been of this particular ticket dispensing system and what other similar occurrences there have been and claims made by their customers.
I feel aggrieved because I am now by default guilty, unjustly so, of an attempted fraudulent claim, despite the judges suggestion that I didnt seem to be the sort of person to do so. I remain convinced there was no outbound ticket in the tray at the time in question. I did not miss it, nor did I lose it, nor give it to someone else to use in an attempted fraud. There had to have been a machine fault. Subject to a further appeal to SWT on the grounds above, it is my intention to appeal to the court for a more circumspect judgement and on the balance of probabilities request to be given the benefit of these doubts in order to uphold my claim. It would be nice to think the judge on re-consideration, might even now overturn his July 7th judgement but I dont think this is how it works. It would however serve justice and the truth.
Yours faithfully,
cc. South West Trains Legal Department (FAO John Wilmot (Claims Manager)), Overline House, Southampton, SO15 1GW
