Nearly £2000 fine over an expired railcard

[applepie05]

In December, I was caught travelling with a railcard that expired 6 months ago and gave the officer my details. It was a genuine oversight from me and I apologised and bought a new railcard the very next day to amend my mistake. In April, I then received a letter for £120 fine which I paid immediately and thought was the end of the case. However, I received a new letter and email (on 10/06/2025) stating that I must pay £1591 as the fine has been apparently calculated by summing up all the total prices of the tickets I bought with the expired railcard. I was confused as I thought the £120 was the out of court settlement but now they are telling me that that was only for the offence on December alone without accounting for the tickets I bought with the expired railcard.

Now I only have 3 weeks left to cough up this extortionate amount!

I have emailed back begging for some leniency but with no luck so far. Is there any advice at all in how to deal with this? I understand it was my mistake hence was eager to rectify it by apologising and buying a new railcard immediately so this feels like a disproportionate response from SWR.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[WesternLancer]

Welcome and I’m sure people here will be able to give you clear info on what you may or may not be able to do

But these sums are not fines. They will be the money they calculate you owe in incorrectly paid fares based on you claiming a discount you were not entitled to by virtue of you not actually having a valid railcard when you used the tickets.

So the issue is more one of have they calculated this correctly.

Have you asked them to give a clear breakdown of the sum they have demanded from you? Doing that might be a start.

 

[John R]

They are out of time to prosecute you for the earlier offences, as they need to do so within 6 months. But they could seek to recover the lost fares through a civil case. That then begs the question of how much they could reasonably ask for. On one hand it could simply be the difference between the discounted fare and the non- discounted fare for the ticket you purchased, but they may ask for the full Anytime single fare for each journey with no offset for what you actually paid. That could make a huge difference, and hence why the suggestion above from @WesternLancer is important to find out.

 

[Pushpit]

They have made a hash of this in more ways than one. This is the email sent out for a single offence, dated 11 December, but the keywords haven't populated the email properly, and has not clearly explained that there is a history of other fares involved. It would be tempting to simply reply you have paid off the 11 December event previously - and there is a chance this is just an administration error. However there is a general principle here of "don't poke the bear" and you can - I believe - simply ignore this email as being clearly an error. SWR has tried civil recovery in other cases in this forum, but I don't think we got enough feedback for how that went. But that's all they can do now.

 

[The Sorcerer]

In order to prosecute you or take action to recover any money the train company needs to provide evidence that you travelled on a train on those dates.

Just having a list of tickets purchased during a period that you did not have a railcard is not enforcable in law.

In any court the prosecution/claimant goes first with their evidence.The defence then asks "have you any evidence that anyone who purchased those tickets travelled on any train and if so which trains, please tell the court"

No.

Case dissmissed no case to answer.

 

[WesternLancer]

In December, I was caught travelling with a railcard that expired 6 months ago and gave the officer my details. It was a genuine oversight from me and I apologised and bought a new railcard the very next day to amend my mistake. In April, I then received a letter for £120 fine which I paid immediately and thought was the end of the case. However, I received a new letter and email (on 10/06/2025) stating that I must pay £1591 as the fine has been apparently calculated by summing up all the total prices of the tickets I bought with the expired railcard. I was confused as I thought the £120 was the out of court settlement but now they are telling me that that was only for the offence on December alone without accounting for the tickets I bought with the expired railcard.

Now I only have 3 weeks left to cough up this extortionate amount!

I have emailed back begging for some leniency but with no luck so far. Is there any advice at all in how to deal with this? I understand it was my mistake hence was eager to rectify it by apologising and buying a new railcard immediately so this feels like a disproportionate response from SWR.

Many thanks in advance.

If you choose to respond to this given the advice posted I would get any proposed wording checked here before you send it.

It may help if you could post copies of what they sent you previously along with copies of what you have sent them earlier too.

That will help people see the nature of the earlier exchanges you mention in your original post.

 

[John R]

In particular, the email begging for leniency may have incriminated the OP.

 

[applepie05]

hello! thank you all for your responses, I really appreciate everyone’s help and advice with this.

what does incriminating the OP mean?

I have emailed and requested for a breakdown of how the nearly £2000 sum was calculated and am waiting for a response so I’ll let you know when I do get one.

To make things more complicated, I had paid the £120 and I know the money left my account but my bank may have declined the payment in the end as they are now saying that they didn’t receive it. I’ve attached some screenshots of the email trail, including the one of me asking him for leniency. The first email from Nicholas is from March when originally I was told that I will receive a letter which I did in early April and (thought I did) pay the £120. The emails after that are from this week.

 

[John R]

Incriminating the OP (ie Original Poster = you) means that you said something in your email that admitted using other tickets with an expired railcard. You don’t appear to have done that though. Indeed you say that it was the first time, although quite why you felt able to make such an assertion is not clear.

One other point is that they are saying that the payment was declined and you haven’t actually paid the original amount requested. Have you?

 

[furlong]

I have emailed and requested for a breakdown of how the nearly £2000 sum was calculated and am waiting for a response so I’ll let you know when I do get one.

It is absolutely appalling that you have to ask for this! The train company should always supply a complete breakdown of any demand like this as a matter of routine. We have seen multiple threads on here where the initial sums requested included basic errors such as double-counting journeys - and that's before you consider the correct basis for such a calculation.

 

[Pushpit]

To make things more complicated, I had paid the £120 and I know the money left my account but my bank may have declined the payment in the end as they are now saying that they didn’t receive it. I’ve attached some screenshots of the email trail, including the one of me asking him for leniency. The first email from Nicholas is from March when originally I was told that I will receive a letter which I did in early April and (thought I did) pay the £120. The emails after that are from this week.

Yes. that certainly would have been, and maybe still is, a material fact here, had Southwestern Railway been more on the ball. What they should have done is started the prosecution process if your payment bounced and you didn't resolve it swiftly. They are just over the deadline now, but it's just possible that it was set in motion, but hasn't been delivered to you yet. So that changes things a bit.

The actual loss to the railway is 6 months worth of the annual railcard's cost, given you immediately renewed your railcard. Some of the sums mentioned here by SWR are quite disproportionate. I would say it is in your best interest for this to go down the civil recovery route, but it would need you to be more careful in your communications with SWR. I suggest not answering the recent round of communications for at least another 2 weeks to ensure that SWR are out of time. On the civil recovery route, the system is a bit more participatory, you can negotiate more strongly with SWR than under the prosecution route. The bounced payment is unfortunate, it would have been better to focus on the details here since that seems to be getting you into difficulties, luckily SWR are even worse at this.

 

[applepie05]

thanks for your guidance everyone this has been really stressful. would the civil recovery route mean I’ll have to go to court? also i’m worried that if i choose to not reply for 2 weeks i will run out of of the 21 day deadline and be taken to court. i would really prefer to avoid that and would rather pay the insane amount they’re demanding.

they do have evidence that i used other tickets as i’m guessing they traced my ticket history from my account and saw that i have scanned tickets with the expired railcard applied on them. it was a genuine mistake so this feels so unfair and greedy of them!

i say that this is my first offence in the emails as when the officer stopped me he told me that he can tell on my record that this is my first time being caught in any type of fare evasion and reassured me that will help my case, which it clearly hasn’t.

 

[Pushpit]

thanks for your guidance everyone this has been really stressful. would the civil recovery route mean I’ll have to go to court? also i’m worried that if i choose to not reply for 2 weeks i will run out of of the 21 day deadline and be taken to court. i would really prefer to avoid that and would rather pay the insane amount they’re demanding.

Subject to anything pending processing, and not yet delivered, SW has 6 months from the incident to bring Summary proceedings, where railway byelaws and Regulation of the Railways legislation are Summary. Fraud legislation provides Each-Way offences, where the 6 month rule won't apply, so that's the only vaguely obvious way they can take you to court, and I really can't see that happening for a long list of reasons already mentioned. Their 21 day deadline is just their 21 day deadline, you didn't agree to it.

Overall this is a messy and disproportionate response from SWR. You are free to pay this ridiculous sum if you wish, but it's essentially a voluntary donation by you to the railway.

 

[Trainbike46]

thanks for your guidance everyone this has been really stressful. would the civil recovery route mean I’ll have to go to court? also i’m worried that if i choose to not reply for 2 weeks i will run out of of the 21 day deadline and be taken to court. i would really prefer to avoid that and would rather pay the insane amount they’re demanding.

they do have evidence that i used other tickets as i’m guessing they traced my ticket history from my account and saw that i have scanned tickets with the expired railcard applied on them. it was a genuine mistake so this feels so unfair and greedy of them!

i say that this is my first offence in the emails as when the officer stopped me he told me that he can tell on my record that this is my first time being caught in any type of fare evasion and reassured me that will help my case, which it clearly hasn’t.

@Pushpit just covered why a criminal case that hasn't already been started against you is unlikely, bordering on impossible. So I wouldn't worry about that, and follow the advice in this thread.

The civil recovery route means that SWR would take you to a civil court to request the court order you to pay them compensation. The key thing to remember is that civil courts can't convict you of any crimes, so there is no risk of a criminal conviction. As always, if a court orders you to do something you should either comply, or appeal it through the appriopriate route.

Personally, if I was taken to Civil court in your situation, which I'm not sure is particularly likely*, I would suggest the compensation due was half the cost of the relevant railcard, as that is the only damage to the railway. There are less extreme ways to argue, e.g. you could suggest the damage is the difference between the fares you paid and the fares you would have paid had you bought the same ticket without the railcard. In any case I think it is unlikely the court would award the amount SWR is asking for in your case, based on what you said here.

When TOCs ask for settlements, they ask for punitive amounts instead of a criminal prosecution, which most people want to avoid. That doesn't mean a civil court would ever award such sums.

*Other posters are much better placed to comment on the likelihood of SWR taking you to civil court.

 

[Haywain]

*Other posters are much better placed to comment on the likelihood of SWR taking you to civil court.

We have seen cases where this appears to have happened.

 

[KirkstallOne]

they do have evidence that i used other tickets as i’m guessing they traced my ticket history from my account and saw that i have scanned tickets with the expired railcard applied on them

Yes it feels the TOCs try to have this both ways to a certain extent now. They need to charge expensive anytime single tickets and £100 penalty fares because you have to balance against all the times someone has ‘got away with it’, but equally they need to trawl through purchasing data to identify every time they have got away with it and apply the same calculations.

My only worry about not replying at all is it may encourage a civil claim in the belief they would get a default judgement. Setting out your opinion on the actual loss the railway has incurred may discourage this.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

Personally, if I was taken to Civil court in your situation, (...) I would suggest the compensation due was half the cost of the relevant railcard, as that is the only damage to the railway.

This seems to me to be a rather optimistic analysis. It would mean assuming that the defendant would have bought a railcard. But that's an assumption, and as a matter of fact the defendant didn't. So the argument isn't 'what fares should have been paid if a railcard was held - that's what was paid so it's only the value of a railcard which is owed', but 'what fares should have been paid as no railcard was held - that will be the undiscounted adult fares'. My feeling (with no personal experience to go on) is that the courts would prefer to base their compensation on what actually happened, rather than on what might have happened.

 

[jumble]

In order to prosecute you or take action to recover any money the train company needs to provide evidence that you travelled on a train on those dates.

Just having a list of tickets purchased during a period that you did not have a railcard is not enforcable in law.

In any court the prosecution/claimant goes first with their evidence.The defence then asks "have you any evidence that anyone who purchased those tickets travelled on any train and if so which trains, please tell the court"

No.

Case dissmissed no case to answer.

I can't find it now but I have it at the back of my mind that a while back on here there were posters suggesting that all a magistrate had to do was to ask the defendant
"Did you travel on those tickets as the prosecution suggests?"
Does anyone else recall this thread?
Has anyone any idea if this is a realistic possibility?

 

[Pushpit]

This seems to me to be a rather optimistic analysis. It would mean assuming that the defendant would have bought a railcard. But that's an assumption, and as a matter of fact the defendant didn't. So the argument isn't 'what fares should have been paid if a railcard was held - that's what was paid so it's only the value of a railcard which is owed', but 'what fares should have been paid as no railcard was held - that will be the undiscounted adult fares'. My feeling (with no personal experience to go on) is that the courts would prefer to base their compensation on what actually happened, rather than on what might have happened.

This scenario relates, almost certainly, to just the Small Claims track of civil procedure, where there are multiple stages before it gets to District Judge, and in those stages both sides are expected to negotiate. It does not set precedent, so the DJ is entitled to take all factors into account, and any judgement will respect the law, but won't necessarily be consistent with another case. Therefore it's quite difficult to say one particular outcome is going to happen.

The options I am seeing on the table, potentially, are
a) The original £120 only, since the Original Poster (OP) did commit to pay that, but the payment bounced
b) Half rate of the railcard, so typically under £20
c) The gap between the amount paid and the same undiscounted fare for the trips in question
d) Anytime single with no account of payment made already, presumably the £1591 figure
e) Admin costs
f) The cheapest fare without railcard (e.g. a season ticket)

And my speculation is that along the road it could work out to be (a) plus (b). Or (a) plus (c). With (e) being up for negotiation, particularly if the OP has made an early counter-offer. I can't see (d) plus (e) working, except as a default judgement, in other words if there is zero input from the OP.

 

[jumble]

This seems to me to be a rather optimistic analysis. It would mean assuming that the defendant would have bought a railcard. But that's an assumption, and as a matter of fact the defendant didn't. So the argument isn't 'what fares should have been paid if a railcard was held - that's what was paid so it's only the value of a railcard which is owed', but 'what fares should have been paid as no railcard was held - that will be the undiscounted adult fares'. My feeling (with no personal experience to go on) is that the courts would prefer to base their compensation on what actually happened, rather than on what might have happened.

Your suggestion that a court might agree that the railway has lost thousands of pounds reminds me of the chap who came home puffing and panting telling his wife
I ran behind the bus and saved a pound
She replied
You stupid fool you should have run behind a taxi and saved a tenner.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

Your suggestion that a court might agree that the railway has lost thousands of pounds reminds me of the chap who came home puffing and panting telling his wife
I ran behind the bus and saved a pound
She replied
You stupid fool you should have run behind a taxi and saved a tenner.

Indeed: I argue for what actually happened ('I ran behind a bus') rather than what might have happened ('You should have run behind a taxi').

 

[Trainbike46]

This scenario relates, almost certainly, to just the Small Claims track of civil procedure, where there are multiple stages before it gets to District Judge, and in those stages both sides are expected to negotiate. It does not set precedent, so the DJ is entitled to take all factors into account, and any judgement will respect the law, but won't necessarily be consistent with another case. Therefore it's quite difficult to say one particular outcome is going to happen.

The options I am seeing on the table, potentially, are
a) The original £120 only, since the Original Poster (OP) did commit to pay that, but the payment bounced
b) Half rate of the railcard, so typically under £20
c) The gap between the amount paid and the same undiscounted fare for the trips in question
d) Anytime single with no account of payment made already, presumably the £1591 figure
e) Admin costs
f) The cheapest fare without railcard (e.g. a season ticket)

And my speculation is that along the road it could work out to be (a) plus (b). Or (a) plus (c). With (e) being up for negotiation, particularly if the OP has made an early counter-offer. I can't see (d) plus (e) working, except as a default judgement, in other words if there is zero input from the OP.

I agree with your assessment here.

Indeed: I argue for what actually happened ('I ran behind a bus') rather than what might have happened ('You should have run behind a taxi').

The equivalent of 'I ran behind the bus' is option C here, whereas the equivalent of 'I ran behind a taxi' is option D.

I agree that a+c is more likely than a+b, but I see no harm in suggesting a+b, and I would do that if I were in this situation.

 

[jumble]

Indeed: I argue for what actually happened ('I ran behind a bus') rather than what might have happened ('You should have run behind a taxi').

In the real world it is all pointless speculation about what a district judge might do on a particular day depending on which side of bed they got out of in any case.

 

[enyoueffsea]

This seems to me to be a rather optimistic analysis. It would mean assuming that the defendant would have bought a railcard. But that's an assumption, and as a matter of fact the defendant didn't. So the argument isn't 'what fares should have been paid if a railcard was held - that's what was paid so it's only the value of a railcard which is owed', but 'what fares should have been paid as no railcard was held - that will be the undiscounted adult fares'. My feeling (with no personal experience to go on) is that the courts would prefer to base their compensation on what actually happened, rather than on what might have happened.

I share this view.

The loss to the railway is the difference between the discounted and not discounted ticket fares. The OP wasn’t entitled to a discounted ticket as they did not purchase the relevant railcard. Anything else is just ifs, buts and maybes.

Did the OP incriminate themselves at any stage during the conversation with the RPI? They would have likely asked a question of something like, “have you travelled any other time during this six month period?”

Personally I’d ask for a breakdown, if the tickets are accurate I’d try to negotiate the difference in fares and if they agree, I’d pay it.

 

[Starmill]

I then received a letter for £120 fine which I paid immediately and thought was the end of the case

The letter from SWR says you never actually paid them £120 - is that the case?

 

[The Sorcerer]

I can't find it now but I have it at the back of my mind that a while back on here there were posters suggesting that all a magistrate had to do was to ask the defendant
"Did you travel on those tickets as the prosecution suggests?"
Does anyone else recall this thread?
Has anyone any idea if this is a realistic possibility?

The defendant does not have to give evidence, so they cannot be asked "Did you travel on those tickets as the prosecution Sugggests" !

It is only a possibility if the defendant elects to give evidence.

 

[tomtomtom]

Could SWR not just use CCTV footage to prove they took those trains as evidence?

 

[AlterEgo]

Could SWR not just use CCTV footage to prove they took those trains as evidence?

They won’t have the CCTV. This happened over six months ago.

 

[talldave]

The options I am seeing on the table, potentially, are
a) The original £120 only, since the Original Poster (OP) did commit to pay that, but the payment bounced
b) Half rate of the railcard, so typically under £20
c) The gap between the amount paid and the same undiscounted fare for the trips in question
d) Anytime single with no account of payment made already, presumably the £1591 figure
e) Admin costs
f) The cheapest fare without railcard (e.g. a season ticket)

The issue with (b) is that that money (£17.50?) was owed to RDG not SWR.

If I was the OP, I'd pay SWR £120 and RDG £17.50.

Yes I can predict the incoming barrage of "pay when challenged" arguments but SWR were never out of pocket. RDG could spend the £17.50 trying to figure out how to fix the preposterously stupid situation they've created that allows discounted purchases without proof of discount entitlement. A quick visit to a supermarket would suffice - Nectar/Clubcard work brilliantly.

 

[island]

I can't find it now but I have it at the back of my mind that a while back on here there were posters suggesting that all a magistrate had to do was to ask the defendant
"Did you travel on those tickets as the prosecution suggests?"
Does anyone else recall this thread?
Has anyone any idea if this is a realistic possibility?

Magistrates are not entitled to do that. They can only ask clarificatory questions regarding matters which one of the advocates already raised.

Note: This assumes a criminal case. If a civil case is taken forward, it is all different,