Northern and prosecutions for railcard use before 10am

[Somewhere]

Agreed. If Sainsbury's find I've missed an item on self-scanning, they charge the correct price and flag me for further checks. They don’t prosecute me for the price of a can of beans.


Neither do the Twitter teams probably. The underlying issue is that railcards are fundamentally stupid. We only need a 31-59 Billy No Mates card to complete the set, at which point we can just give everyone the cheaper price and be done with it.

Yes, do away with the bloomin' things and reduce fares. Perhaps have a loyalty scheme, £1 off for every £10 spent or something.
Give everyone child fares until the end of August after they turn 18, as everyone's expected to be in education until that age now.

 

[Alex C.]

There is also a perception of ticketing being so complicated that loopholes exist - split ticketing is not intuitive to the average passenger and is often described as a loophole, I can see how people would legitimately see a cheaper price and “use at any time” any think it was in the same vein.

Whilst it is made fairly clear at points on the railcard website, any condition which could result in a criminal conviction surely deserves calling out much more prominently.

The world is full of terms and conditions but the norm is for these to be recoverable via civil action only which makes most minor breaches uneconomical to recover. The risk of a prosecution should be impossible to carelessly miss when purchasing a ticket (or removed)

 

[Howardh]

Gill Furness MP Twitter feed;

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I am deeply concerned by reports of Northern Rail fining and prosecuting passengers for innocent mistakes when using their railcard at peak times. I have written to their Managing Director to relay my concerns regarding this practice.

 

[quantinghome]

Does anyone know whether the minimum fare has been increased over the years, or has it been stuck at £12 since the card was first introduced? It looks like it's unchanged since at least 2015: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/minimum-fare-on-young-persons-railcard-july-august.118092/

Presumably the minimum fare was put in place to stop railcards being used for regular short-distance commuting. But if it's been held at the same value and not increased with fare inflation, it will apply to fewer and fewer journeys, which makes it a bit pointless.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's changed over the years, and it used to be a different minimum for singles and returns.

 

[Haywain]

It's changed over the years, and it used to be a different minimum for singles and returns.

I believe it was £8 for singles and £16 for returns before it became £12 across the board.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I believe it was £8 for singles and £16 for returns before it became £12 across the board.

I'm genuinely not sure how relevant it is now anyway. Railcard discounted Anytime Day tickets aren't substantially cheaper than a day of a monthly season, Advances are everywhere (and it doesn't apply to them) and there's no longer the motivation to want to get people to buy seasons specifically in order to reduce queues at booking offices, because most tickets aren't bought at booking offices.

Literally all this does in Northern's area is penalises users of smaller stations which aren't given the Advances (and creates that other problem prevalent on Northern, namely people getting £100 settlements because they had the temerity to take a journey shorter than that for which they paid). Is that actually benefitting anyone?

All of this appears to me to just make Northern look jobsworth and stupid over a relatively small amount of revenue.

 

[Bikeman78]

How is the average person supposed to know there is also a time restriction arising from the small print of the Railcard terms (which they agreed to, but which realistically 99% of people won't read)?

Fans of Dave Gorman will appreciate this point. There was a glaring error in the 36 pages of terms and conditions for the Boris bikes that went uncorrected, most likely for a year. When Dave pointed it out, it was corrected within days.

 

[Djgr]

Of course, one would have more sympathy for the TOCs if they donated unclaimed Delay Repay Compensation to charity.

Can somebody reassure me that they actually do this so that TOCs can claim the moral highground?

 

[Haywain]

Of course, one would have more sympathy for the TOCs if they donated unclaimed Delay Repay Compensation to charity.

Can somebody tell me that they actually do this so that TOCs can claim the moral highground?

How can they know how much is unclaimed? If a train runs from A to B carrying 100 people and arrives at B 20 minutes late, how many of the 100 people are due Delay Repay, and how much are they due?

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

Of course, one would have more sympathy for the TOCs if they donated unclaimed Delay Repay Compensation to charity.

Can somebody tell me that they actually do this so that TOCs can claim the moral highground?

How would that even work? Just because you're delayed 45 mins on one train doesn't mean your overall journey is delayed.

Delay repay doesn't apply to specific trains, it applies to the entire passenger journey.

How do you know how many people where on a specific train with a ticket/journey entitled to delay repay?

Seems a very strange thing to say, especially as TOCs generally are pretty good at paying out compensation, and have taken a lot of positive steps in helping customers claim it automatically, if they opt in, wherever it is practical to do.

 

[ianBR]

It would be good if we could prosecute railway staff anytime they make a mistake about restriction codes or terms and conditions.

There are plenty of examples in these forums of well trained railway guards and ticket office staff making errors with no consequences

Perhaps TOC’s might then be less keen to take their own customers to court for piddling sums of money!

 

[trek]

The people writing the code for the apps and websites probably don't understand the rules themselves, possibly never using trains.
Hopefully Northern will have to refund all these people, and it will end up costing Northern more money than they've made from the scam.
This, and the Post Office scandal should perhaps show that private prosecutions shouldn't be allowed, as these privateers cannot be trusted to use their powers sensibly

Unlike the Post Office scandal, except in a some cases, it will be extremely difficult to separate intentional fraud vs "mistakes". You can just head into the "Disputes" section on this forum to find out how much intentional Railcard fraud occurs.

As usual the generic public will end up paying for it, both via ticket sales and taxpayers in general given Northern's ownership.

 

[35B]

Regardless of the moral side, I also have significant doubts about the legality of prosecuting people under s5(3)(a) RoRA. For a conviction under this section there needs to be evidence of intent to avoid payment of the fare. It will be tricky to prove this in most cases.

How is the average person supposed to know there is also a time restriction arising from the small print of the Railcard terms (which they agreed to, but which realistically 99% of people won't read)?

It is highly doubtful whether burying time restrictions in T&C's, without pointing them out, constitutes "[making] available".

I agree with your general views, though have limited sympathy for those who take out a contract subject to terms and conditions, then object to them when applied.

However, my understanding is that there is a substantive legal precedent that "see T&Cs" written on the back of a ticket and sold to someone illiterate constitutes being informed (my copies of Backtrack aren't readily accessible, so I stand to correction). It's an ancient precedent, precedes much more modern law (including the Consumer Rights Act 2015), but is still valid.

It might be helpful if, as well as creating new consumer rights, legislators also repealed some obsolete legislation.

 

[trek]

16-17 is a railcard, charged at £30/year. the 16+ zip oyster is a much better approach - a £20 one-off 'admin charge', essentially as photographic proof of age.

they could scrap the 16-17 'railcard' and just adopt the TFL scheme. Many 16-17 year olds have both, but obviously unnecessary bureaucracy and expense is the order of the day, so they'd be unlikely to go with that and could make their own scheme which works the same way - £20 once, valid till your 18th birthday (or a bit later).

I don't care the format: national ID, 1 admin charge for the 2 years, that's fine. The result is pretty similar though in all cases: you select a discount and have a card that shows you are entilted to said discount.

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

It's still concerning that no retailers, either third party or TOC have integrated into the RDG Railcard Validation API. It needs to be mandated as part of accreditation.

This would prevent Railcard tickets being retailed without at least confirming that:

1) That a Railcard actually exists;
2) It's valid for the date of the journey
3) Prevents a different Railcard from being selected

As well as huge fraud prevention benefits as you can connect all sales back to a particular Railcard.

One TOC is going through a formal change at the moment to integrate this into their booking experience. It's also significant for later stages of PAYG expansion.

 

[Adam Williams]

It's still concerning that no retailers, either third party or TOC have integrated into the RDG Railcard Validation API. It needs to be mandated as part of accreditation.

Retailers have offered. Perhaps before jumping to hitting retailers with the accreditation stick, a trial should be conducted?

It's not a silver bullet, and there will need to be a change in customer behaviour (as it becomes no longer acceptable to book in advance past the expiry date and/or book "in anticipation" of getting the railcard) if it's adopted across the industry.

 

[Tetchytyke]

I think the railway and those who back it up in these situations are steadily sleeping walking into quite a dangerous situation when it comes to consumer confidence.

Consumer confidence is shot to bits already. I’m not on Twitter but I am on Threads and my Threads feed is full of people saying that they no longer take the train because ticketing is too confusing and the consequences for getting it wrong are so onerous. This has only got worse with the rise of TVMs and ticketing apps, there is now no longer anyone to ask if you’re not sure.

The railway should lose its power to take criminal proceedings. I have no faith that the authoritarian Keir Starmer has the required courage to make that change, but it is urgently required. If there’s fraud then the railways can refer to the BTP, otherwise they should no longer be allowed to issue private prosecutions.

 

[NARobertson]

I read about this case in the Times today. I bet the RPO had some personal interest in reporting such a case even if it was just getting a better appraisal. Going back to the 1889 Act the ticketing situation was probably much simpler then and if you had a ticket it was likely to be valid. I wonder if the £12 threshold applies to the undiscounted fare or the discounted one. Details like this can be important. Some railways such as Northern appear to be gaming this archaic law. It should be rescinded. As it is Railcards can be more of a liability than an asset to the people who have them.

 

[Hadders]

In the days before digital ticketing it would be difficult to buy a railcard discounted ticket to travel at an invalid time, whether at a ticket office at a TVM. If you did manage to buy a discounted ticket and use it at an invalid time the chances of a guard noticing that the price was less than £12 would be relatively small. Now buying tickets through apps means purchasing an invalid ticket is much easier and scanning of barcoded tickets means an invalid ticket is indefified in an instant.

The railway does not help itself here. There's been no attempt to make these restrictions easier to understand. There's plenty of announcements and notices telling us to 'see it, say it, sorted' etc but nothing about railcard restrictions where young and therefore less experienced people are liable to be caught out. There really should be something on tickets themselves saying 'not valid before 10am' but the railway will say it's not possible to do that.

The legislation around ticketless travel, Penalty Fares, ticket irregularities and how they're investigated isn't fit for purpose. It's not been updated to reflect the different ways in which tickets can be purchased and until it is we will continue to see cases like this.

I fear an outcome might be a blanket 'not valid before 10am' restriction on 16-25 and 26-30 railcards which would be massive shame. RDG/DfT will call it a simplification and what people are asking for but these railcards allow a discount in the peak period to help make commuting to work more affordable for younder people, who at the start of their working lives are generally earning lower salaries. Fares from Stevenage to London Terminals demonstrate this:

Anytime Day Return £27.30
Anytime Day Return with 16-25 Railcard £18.35
7-Day Season £117.30

 

[Kite159]

I fear an outcome might be a blanket 'not valid before 10am' restriction on 16-25 and 26-30 railcards which would be massive shame

Agreed, something bad is bound to happen to make things simpler for customers to understand, either a blanket ban for use before say 09:00 or an all-day minimum fare [like how you get with a Network railcard].

Unlikely outcome is the minimum fare to get dropped outright, but that will probably cost the DfT too much money (unless they decide to increase the cost of the railcard to say £40 a year with the spin saying "hey look, no minimum fare now".

 

[Sonic1234]

Consumer confidence is shot to bits already. I’m not on Twitter but I am on Threads and my Threads feed is full of people saying that they no longer take the train because ticketing is too confusing and the consequences for getting it wrong are so onerous.

Price off a lot of potential passengers, scare off those who do give the train a go with bad experiences, who then scare off a lot more people through the megaphone that is social media.

TOCs probably believe that demand for rail travel is so high that these customers will be replaced with new ones, or those yet to have a negative experience.

The Disputes forum is a good advert for not taking the train.

 

[nanstallon]

Wouldn't it be simpler to abolish the peak hours surcharge? If people have to use a train in peak hours to earn a living, why should they be exploited in this way? All very British and heavy handed.

 

[furlong]

There are two problems here.

First is accreditation. None of the retail sites involved should have passed accreditation as they are plainly in breach of consumer law and the NRCoT. The railway needs to include the consumer perspective when defining what it means to be accredited and fix the way tickets are sold, displayed and printed so that unless restrictions such as these are crystal clear retailers cannot sell tickets. The effect is that some of the current contractual terms the railway would like to impose are effectively unenforceable.

Second is the "passenger is wrong" attitude. These tickets should have been accepted without the passenger bearing any penalty. Any penalty the train company wants to impose should be directed towards the retailers for failing to make the restrictions clear to the passenger as mandated by the NRCoT and consumer law. Such penalties would provide financial incentives for the retailers to up their game. If the ticket itself had said on it something like "If you use this ticket on a train before 10am, a minimum fare of £12 applies so you will be required to pay an additional £<amount>" then the train company might at least have found it easy to justify charging the passenger the excess in line with the NRCoT. Specific clarification needs to appear wherever the misleading term "Anytime" appears in this context to explain that it does not mean what it says.

The problem is certainly fixable without changing minimum fares.

I wonder if the £12 threshold applies to the undiscounted fare or the discounted one.

If you read the terms and conditions, it's actually the former. If you look anywhere else and observe how the railway companies actually implement it, it's the latter.
You couldn't make up this level of incompetence! (The people who wrote and signed off the railcard terms and conditions must not have actually understood how the minimum fare is actually implemented.)

 

[thejuggler]

Fans of Dave Gorman will appreciate this point. There was a glaring error in the 36 pages of terms and conditions for the Boris bikes that went uncorrected, most likely for a year. When Dave pointed it out, it was corrected within days.

Similar to a blogger who put in the pages and pages of the Ts and Cs of his sign up there was a free bottle of wine for anyone quoting the paragraph in the Ts anc Cs the offer was stated. Took a few years before anyone claimed it.

 

[35B]

It's still concerning that no retailers, either third party or TOC have integrated into the RDG Railcard Validation API. It needs to be mandated as part of accreditation.

This would prevent Railcard tickets being retailed without at least confirming that:

1) That a Railcard actually exists;
2) It's valid for the date of the journey
3) Prevents a different Railcard from being selected

As well as huge fraud prevention benefits as you can connect all sales back to a particular Railcard.

One TOC is going through a formal change at the moment to integrate this into their booking experience. It's also significant for later stages of PAYG expansion.

I can think of a number of transactions where that policy would have caused real hassle, and in some cases made journeys effectively impossible. I find it interesting that PAYG is being cited; that model is poorly applicable to long distance travel.

 

[Howardh]

I know it's not Northern, but a while ago I explained on here how bamboozled I was by the sheer volume and variety of tickets fromilton Keynes to London. Even a super-off peak which I'd never heard of? If I hadn't had everything explained to me on here I might just have bought the most expensive ticket and hope I was on the right train at the right time. Having different TOCs on the same route doesn't help.

It should not be the case where you need an honours degree in ticketing to avoid a criminal record.

Let's hope this is a turning point and we end up with a much simpler system.

 

[Kite159]

..

I know it's not Northern, but a while ago I explained on here how bamboozled I was by the sheer volume and variety of tickets fromilton Keynes to London. Even a super-off peak which I'd never heard of? If I hadn't had everything explained to me on here I might just have bought the most expensive ticket and hope I was on the right train at the right time. Having different TOCs on the same route doesn't help.

It should not be the case where you need an honours degree in ticketing to avoid a criminal record.

Let's hope this is a turning point and we end up with a much simpler system.

However a simpler system won't always work for the benefit of passengers. Just look at the simpler fares on LNER which did away with super off-peak singles.

 

[_toommm_]

There is a related thread here

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tl;dr is that:
1) passenger had a valid 16-25 railcard and lived in Northern Rail area.
2) passenger clicked link to 'renew' said railcard
3) passenger was thereby sold a network railcard, where the word 'network' has no meaning at all to normal people.
4) passenger had a railcard-discounted £1.90 fare but the wrong railcard, was issued a penalty fare over 90p.
5) passenger appealed against the penalty fare explaining her misunderstanding.
6) Northern ignored the penalty fare and prosecuted her, demanding £1000
7) terms and conditions on the network railcard website provide a link to a map, but the map has been dead for many months and they have done nothing to fix it, despite the lawyer helping the passenger informing Northern's solicitor of this fact

also noteworthy:

* she bought a second 16-25 railcard, aged 25 1/2
* the lawyer helping her wrongly advised her she would have to stop using this on her 26th birthday.

I would also note that the 16-17 railcard, 16-25 railcard, 26-30 railcard distinction is just idiotic. Just give 16-17 year olds child fares, and make it one 18-30 railcard without stupid distinctions. Or perhaps just merge all (family + friends, two together, 16-25, 26-30, network) into one. Ridiculous stuff tbh.

I'm doubtful of this one. Unless there's a way for booking office staff to override and manually make a fare (if that's even possible), there shouldn't be fares that exist outside the Network Railcard area. So how did the passenger, who presumably lives near Manchester as they were due to appear in Manchester Court, used a Network Railcard in the north.

 

[soil]

I'm doubtful of this one. Unless there's a way for booking office staff to override and manually make a fare (if that's even possible), there shouldn't be fares that exist outside the Network Railcard area. So how did the passenger, who presumably lives near Manchester as they were due to appear in Manchester Court, used a Network Railcard in the north.

clearly they bought fares with a '16-25 railcard' discount, while holding a completely useless to them network railcard