@Via Bank In your situation then yes you would have committed the offence of not having a valid ticket however you would have a perfectly reasonable explanation for this as any RPI or guard would see that the ticket was issued by a booking office and would know that the error was down to an employee of the railway and as such you wouldnt(or shouldnt) be prosecuted. But as you done the right thing which everyone should do and check their tickets are correct then you averted any undue stress to yourself.
I don't think you quite understand my point.
What if I'm an average person, in a hurry to get on a train, who doesn't notice the difference? Or thinks the numbers 0123 and 123 are the same (which, in other areas of society, they are)?
Or, on this theme...
If a person has a disability of any kind which prevents them for doing this task on a TVM then, if the booking office is there and open they can do that there plus the railway and its employees would show discretion to said person.
So what if I'm blind, I buy a ticket from the booking office, and they issue me with the wrong ticket? I board a train, I am committing a criminal offence - and I had no way of knowing whatsoever. This is despite having done everything right - paid
my money and asked for the correct ticket.
And yes, staff
should show discretion and understanding - but there's no guarantee they will. Especially if you fail the "attitude test" (which I find rather offensive - while abuse is never acceptable, if I am told a ticket I've forked out hundreds or thousands of pounds for is invalid, I have a right to be, at the very least, mildly cheesed off, as opposed to being meekly apologetic.)
And this is just considering outright errors made by the Railway. What about areas where ticketing is confusing enough for people to make mistakes?
Consider another example (which I believe we've seen on this forum): a person going to Manchester Airport (in Manchester) buys a ticket online to Manchester Stations. This person commits a strict liability offence by travelling to Manchester Airport (a station in Manchester, with Manchester in the name) despite the fact she has paid for a journey to Manchester Stations - the TVM or online booking system not making it clear that the ticket is not valid to
the Manchester station she requires.
Is this fair? Should the railway not bear some responsibility for not making the ticket's permitted routes and destinations clear at the point of sale? That "Manchester Stations" does not, in fact, mean every station in Manchester?
Strict liability is a sledgehammer used to crack a nut. It stacks the deck heavily in favour of the railway (I always like to say that, as in Vegas, the house always wins.)
It catches many paying customers out, making them liable to prosecution rather than giving them an opportunity to fix a mistake (which the majority will quite gladly do.)
It also discourages the railway from simplifying confusing and error-prone ticketing arrangements, and innovating its offering to make it more appropriate and understandable for its customers. (Why do you think tickets to London are still marked LONDON TERMINALS, even when they're only ever valid to a certain subset of the London terminal group - some of which aren't even terminals? And why do you think train operators still get away with issuing those bloody awful Carnet tickets on paper?)
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It would be better if the TVMs had a barcode reader - they could scan the photocard, killing two birds with one stone: getting the number right, ensuring that the purchaser has the photocard (without which, the season ticket is invalid).
So here's a radical* idea. Why not replace photocards with smartcards which have photographs on them? Or store the photographs as data on the smartcard? Or, if we absolutely must, print photographs on the season tickets themselves? Or simply print the customer's name on the ticket, and then ask to see another form of ID with the ticket? Then the customer doesn't have to carry around multiple coupons, there's less opportunity for fraud, and there's no opportunity for anyone (customer or railway employee) to screw up by entering the wrong Photocard number?
* not in fact radical - the Netherlands have had this for several years. We just choose not to implement it because… well, the words "p*ss up" and "brewery" spring to mind.