some bloke
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If someone has committed a ticketing offence, a company might reasonably suspect them of having done it on other occasions, and/or that they will do it again, perhaps many times. The company might take this into account when threatening or undertaking prosecution. And if the passenger underpaid on many occasions, it's usually reasonable for the company or companies to say the person owes the difference for all the tickets. They may charge for another full-price ticket rather than the difference.
But if the underpayments/crimes result purely from not having a valid railcard which you were entitled to, it might be said that you've only underpaid by, say, £30 for the whole year, and not a £300 difference in fares; and that on individual occasions, charging over £30 for a full-price ticket, or over £30 for the difference, is inappropriate if the difference is less.
A complication could be that through not buying the railcard, a person might gain an additional benefit: they don't have to risk paying for the railcard during periods when their use of the card would be so low that paying occasional full fares is better value. So they may have saved more than £30, but not massively more.
Another complication might be if non-payment costs the rail industry more than the £30 for various other reasons.
Of course there is a range of circumstances, from a person forgetting to renew the day before to someone who deliberately buys railcard-discounted tickets when they don't have the railcard they're entitled to, on a large number of occasions.
How do companies - and courts - treat these cases, and how should they?
But if the underpayments/crimes result purely from not having a valid railcard which you were entitled to, it might be said that you've only underpaid by, say, £30 for the whole year, and not a £300 difference in fares; and that on individual occasions, charging over £30 for a full-price ticket, or over £30 for the difference, is inappropriate if the difference is less.
A complication could be that through not buying the railcard, a person might gain an additional benefit: they don't have to risk paying for the railcard during periods when their use of the card would be so low that paying occasional full fares is better value. So they may have saved more than £30, but not massively more.
Another complication might be if non-payment costs the rail industry more than the £30 for various other reasons.
Of course there is a range of circumstances, from a person forgetting to renew the day before to someone who deliberately buys railcard-discounted tickets when they don't have the railcard they're entitled to, on a large number of occasions.
How do companies - and courts - treat these cases, and how should they?
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