Settlement offer from Greater Anglia

[ConcernedMum]

Hello. My son has just received a letter from Greater Anglia offering an out of court settlement for a ticket irregularity in the summer. They have requested £80 "towards costs incurred", plus £6.60 for the fare difference.
My son was traveling from Liverpool Street to Stansted Airport. He bought a ticket to use with his 16-25 railcard. When his ticket was checked at Stansted, the ticket collector realised his card was out of date. This was genuinely the first time my son realised his card had expired. We have never been in this situation before and so I was wondering if anyone can help with the following questions? Thank you in advance.
Why was he not given the opportunity at the time to pay the fare difference?
Why was he not given a penalty fare of £20?
He has been given 14 days from the date of the letter to pay the fine. The letter was dated 12 October and we only received it today, three days later. Is that period standard, or should it be 21 days, which is, I believe, how long you get to pay a penalty fare?
As soon as my son was made aware of his mistake, we bought a new railcard online for him to use with subsequent rail tickets. I know this does not cover the Liverpool Street to Stansted fare, but does, I think, provide evidence that this was a genuine mistake and not an attempt to defraud.
Is there any point us disputing this (the costs, not the fare difference), given that it was "an honest mistake"? This article from 2018 (https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/5986600/train-passengers-wrong-ticket-wont-pay-fine-honest-mistake) seems to indicate there is an appeals process, but is that only applcable to penalty fares?
Thank you.

 

[marty1977]

Sadly there seems to be quite a few people who buy tickets with discount cards and when asked to present them cannot for one reason or another. I'm not suggesting your sons excuse is not genuine but the railway companies will hear countless times that excuse so I think they will deal with all cases quite robustly to deter future misuse. My advice would be to pay up and chalk it up to experience, challenging and consequently losing will cost you more.

 

[ConcernedMum]

Sadly there seems to be quite a few people who buy tickets with discount cards and when asked to present them cannot for one reason or another. I'm not suggesting your sons excuse is not genuine but the railway companies will hear countless times that excuse so I think they will deal with all cases quite robustly to deter future misuse. My advice would be to pay up and chalk it up to experience, challenging and consequently losing will cost you more.

I accept that, although in his case, he did actually have a railcard to present. However, as it had expired, he should definitely pay the fare difference or even a penalty fare, because as you say, they must get this happen a lot and it's impossible for them to know who is being genuine and who is trying it on. However, I don't understand why he was not issued with a penalty fare at the time? Are there exemptions that you know about? Also, if we went through the Appeals Service to challenge this, and were unsuccessful, can the train company then increase the current proposed settlement charge?

 

[Darandio]

Others will no doubt offer more advice. However, it's worth noting that

1, There is no divine right to a Penalty Fare.
2, If the procedure was always simply to pay the difference then potentially anyone can carry around an expired railcard and the only penalty would be to pay the full fare when challenged. If you didn't get challenged, money saved.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

Welcome to the forum

Why was he not given the opportunity at the time to pay the fare difference?

- because the railways are under no obligation to do this. The basic rule is simple - you pay the proper fare before you get on the train*. If you don't do that, then you are in the wrong - and while the railways (who aren't in the wrong) might show some discretion in your favour, they aren't obliged to do so.

Why was he not given a penalty fare of £20?

- again, because this is something that the railways can do, but aren't obliged to do.

He has been given 14 days from the date of the letter to pay the fine. The letter was dated 12 October and we only received it today, three days later. Is that period standard, or should it be 21 days, which is, I believe, how long you get to pay a penalty fare?

- I think 14 days is standard. Bear in mind as well that the railways aren't obliged to offer an out of court settlement

As soon as my son was made aware of his mistake, we bought a new railcard online for him to use with subsequent rail tickets. I know this does not cover the Liverpool Street to Stansted fare, but does, I think, provide evidence that this was a genuine mistake and not an attempt to defraud.

- it certainly supports the view that it was a genuine mistake, but to my mind doesn't evidence it. I am certainly not suggesting that the traveller had done anything other than make a genuine mistake, but someone who had intentionally bought a reduced ticket with an expired railcard might also - having been caught - buy a new railcard to suggest that their behaviour was mistaken rather than malicious. Bear in mind that as @marty1977 has commented above the railways will have heard all plausible explanations (as well as a number of implausible ones) before and will need compelling evidence as to why they should listen this time.

Is there any point us disputing this (the costs, not the fare difference), given that it was "an honest mistake"? This article from 2018 (https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/5986600/train-passengers-wrong-ticket-wont-pay-fine-honest-mistake) seems to indicate there is an appeals process, but is that only applcable to penalty fares?

- no. The railway doesn't have to offer an out of court settlement, so there is no appeal process. If the traveller doesn't want to accept the out of court settlement then it is open to them to wait for the railway to take the matter to court. But in this case, on what the OP has told us, a byelaw 18(1) prosecution would be successful: the byelaw at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/railway-byelaws/railway-byelaws reads

18. Ticketless travel in non-compulsory ticket areas

1. in any area not designated as a compulsory ticket area, no person shall enter any train for the purpose of travelling on the railway unless he has with him a valid ticket entitling him to travel

(and for completeness, byelaw 17 which is for compulsory ticket areas has much the same effect)

The byelaw talks only about the person having a valid ticket, not about any reason they might have for not having a valid ticket (in the jargon, there's no test of their intent to travel without a valid ticket). The traveller didn't have a valid railcard, so their railcard-reduced ticket wasn't valid. So they are in breach of byelaw 18(1) and will be convicted by the magistrates. And in all likelihood, after allowing for the fine, prosecution costs and court costs they will have to pay a lot more than £86.60.

For even more completeness, it's also worth thinking about where the £80 costs amount comes from. On the one hand, obviously it's a round number, not precisely calculated for this case. On the other hand, if whoever is dealing with the case is on the London living wage of £10.75 per hour, the £80 accounts for rather less than 8 hours work. And if whoever is paid more than the London living wage, and they have an office to work from, and their employer is paying their National Insurance Contributions... it's not too difficult to come up with an actual cost which isn't too far off £80.

In short, the best (and probably cheapest option) is to pay the £86.60. An expensive lesson, but all other options are worse.

*For the benefit of regular readers and contributors, yes, I know that this isn't universally true. But it's good enough as a first approximation, and as the journey in this case started at Liverpool Street then it's almost certainly true. Also the traveller had managed to acquire a ticket, albeit the wrong one, so arguments about lack of ticketing facilities won't wash.

 

[skyhigh]

I accept that, although in his case, he did actually have a railcard to present. However, as it had expired, he should definitely pay the fare difference or even a penalty fare, because as you say, they must get this happen a lot and it's impossible for them to know who is being genuine and who is trying it on. However, I don't understand why he was not issued with a penalty fare at the time? Are there exemptions that you know about? Also, if we went through the Appeals Service to challenge this, and were unsuccessful, can the train company then increase the current proposed settlement charge?

You can't be issued with a penalty fare retrospectively, and you can't appeal an out of court settlement. Your options are pretty much pay up or have a day in court (which you're very unlikely to win and will probably cost more than the settlement offer). I agree that it's best just to pay the settlement they're offering.

 

[ConcernedMum]

Thank you very much to all of you for your advice. As you will have been able to tell from my questions, this is uncharted water for us, being a law-abiding bunch. Please excuse my ignorance - of course I was looking at this from our perspective (a genuine mistake was made and we would never have the intent to defraud) rather than from the bigger picture of this happening all the time on the railways.
I will accept the offer to settle out of court - and make sure we all check our railcards more carefully in future.

 

[madjack]

Going on other posts on this forum, the team at Stansted appear to be particularly strict on out-of-date railcards.

Sorry that none of us can offer anything more positive (except that people have been prosecuted for similarly innocent mistakes).

 

[WesternLancer]

Thank you very much to all of you for your advice. As you will have been able to tell from my questions, this is uncharted water for us, being a law-abiding bunch. Please excuse my ignorance - of course I was looking at this from our perspective (a genuine mistake was made and we would never have the intent to defraud) rather than from the bigger picture of this happening all the time on the railways.
I will accept the offer to settle out of court - and make sure we all check our railcards more carefully in future.

Worth you also perusing this recent similar scenario

Northern Fixed Penalty Notice

Hi. I was travelling for work from Manchester Airport to Manchester piccadilly. I prebooked my tickets and used my 16-25 railcard for the discount (automatically applied on the trainline app). Once i arrived at Piccadilly, i was stopped by an employee which checked my ticket and railcard. They...

www.railforums.co.uk

One of the probs of course is that 'back in the day' you typically went to a ticket window to buy a ticket and in that scenario are required to show the railcard to the staff selling the tickets - the staff then note it is out of date and you realize when they tell you, and then buy a new one. No risk of things going wrong. Indeed staff will usually refuse to sell you a ticket over the counter even now unless you show the railcard that you claim to have - no doubt a rule going back to those days.
With the transfer to ticket buying on line or at vending machines it is easy to forget your railcard is expired, and unwittingly then travel without a valid ticket, for which the penalty can be harsh.

I suspect an integrated national railway would develop their on line ticket purchasing system where the railcards were registered back to a single database integrated with your ticket sales software, so that if you set it up properly would know that your railcard was invalid and help prevent such errors occurring, but we don't seem to have that sort of approach in UK sadly for reasons no doubt outside the scope of this thread!

Also may be worth considering buying the 3 year version of the railcard on renewal - esp if coming up to the end of the period of age validity.

 

[njr001]

I'm no expert but maybe send two cheques one for £26.60 and one for £60 with an apology and suggesting that under the circumstances for the genuine mistake you feel it might have been more appropriate to charge a £20 penalty fare plus the additional cost of the ticket. Whatever you do do not let it go forward for prosecution it will cost much more.

 

[crablab]

I suspect an integrated national railway would develop their on line ticket purchasing system where the railcards were registered back to a single database integrated with your ticket sales software, so that if you set it up properly would know that your railcard was invalid and help prevent such errors occurring, but we don't seem to have that sort of approach in UK sadly for reasons no doubt outside the scope of this thread!

Over here

 

[Hadders]

Welcome to the forum.

This is an unfortunate incident. As others have said there is no automatic right to be issued with a Penalty Fare and legally the rail company are able to prosecute.

How far out of date was the railcard? Was your son offered the chance to pay a penalty fare?

Had a Penalty Fare been charged it would have cost £38.80 (twice the appropriate single fare). Personally, given that the railcard was out of date, which means your son did not have a valid ticket I would pay what they're asking to make the matter go away. The last thing you want is the matter ending up in court because you would not win - it is what is called a strict liability offence, no ticket means you're guilty. You might then want to make a separate complaint to customer relations about how the matter has been handled.