Doesn't the 'contra proferentem' legal doctrine in contract law apply here?
This essentially states that any clause considered to be ambiguous should be interpreted against the interests of the party that created, introduced, or requested that such a clause be included.
Yes, in theory it does. However I fail to see that there is any ambiguity here. The terms require that the date of travel is entered; there are two separate boxes on return tickets and there is nothing stating that the return date must be entered before making the outward journey. The conductor simply made this up.
Indeed, when assessing contested terms, a court will usually look at the intent or purpose of a term as a guide - and here there would be no commercial purpose to requiring people to enter a return date when making the outward journey. If Northern wanted to limit the validity to a month, for example, they would be perfectly capable of doing so, but they have chosen not to do that.
How can that apply before the matter comes to court?
You could say that about virtually any legal principle. Ultimately when there is a civil dispute, there is nothing forcing either side to pay/give way until the matter goes to court.
But it is established practice, and indeed mandated by the Civil Procedure Rules and the Practice Direction, that parties avoid court wherever possible. And so in the course of out of court discussions/negotiations, it would be perfectly normal to cite and rely on a given legal principle.
Since complaining to customer service have achieved little, would filming the encounter and using the same evidence forwarded to customer service be more effective ?
If they fail to resolve it, using social meda would embarrass and bounce the company into taking action.
In my experience customer service only serves to bury and hide complaint while offering meaningless platitudes hoping you will go away and be somebody else's problem.
I think that would be likely to significantly escalate the situation, and it is ultimately unlikely to help resolve it. I certainly would not recommend it as a course of action. If anyone feels the need to have evidence of what was said, a covert or overt audio recording is much less likely to cause issues.
Interestingly I had a similar incident where the conductor insisted I write the return date otherwise the ticket would be invalid. I could not confirm the date as I was being admitted to hospital. Eventually the conductor moved on.
It did lead me to email Northern Customer Services to clarify the situation. They responded to say that the “return date does not need to be filled in when using for an outward journey”. I have a screenshot of this email for production if I am challenged again. To be honest, I imagine they would say that their own customer service team are incorrect (which they could be) and accuse me of travelling with an invalid ticket.
Would the Northern CS email stand up in terms of “instructed to do so by a railway employee”?
Indeed it would. Ultimately there are just some staff who cannot bear being wrong and will make up anything, and ignore any evidence to the contrary, to justify their view.
