Travel Irregularity with Rail Staff Discount

[boat123]

Hi all,

We recently purchased a return journey from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh for the 18th April to the 22nd April. We'd planned to stop off for a couple of hours at Durham on the way up. Unfortunately we were actually travelling on the 19th April. We had a newborn in January so it was an uncharacteristic mistake from myself.
When the ticket didn't work correctly through the barriers I realised my mistake. I started buying the ticket on the train but by the time it went through, it had left Kings Cross, so I was only able to buy from Peterborough to Durham, so I did.
To complicate matters, we were travelling on rail staff discount - our 2022/2023 card expired in November. They sent a new one out (there's no associated cost for the scheme) but it didn't arrive and we missed the window to inform them it hadn't (again, newborn world!). So whilst we were covered by the scheme, we didn't have the up to date card.
The ticket inspector confiscated our 2022/2023 rail staff travel cards, gave us 0.00 train tickets up to Edinburgh and issued us travel irregularity notices
The fines have since come through which come to £200 for the ticket from London to Edinburgh and £150 admin - each. So £700 in total.
We've asked to dispute and LNER have replied say we would need to address the points below.
Does anyone have any experience in this and know if theres a reasonable way to dispute the fine?

• You were travelling on 19th April
• You produced a ticket from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh purchased with a Staff Travel Card, dated 18th April
• You produced a ticket from Peterborough to Durham purchased with a Staff Travel Card, dated 19th April
• The Staff Travel card you produced expired on 30/11/23

It was a silly mistake which we tried to make better, but ultimately ended up with the wrong ticket inspector for that situation unfortunately. Any help would be great.

Cheers

 

[methecooldude]

I don't think there is much you can do here, there is no dispute you can offer which makes this okay. PRIVs have VERY stringent terms, and RSTL would have sent an email to advice about the sending of the new cards.

Don't be surprised if RSTL want a word with you as well as the payment due to LNER

 

[Titfield]

I think all you can do is follow the advice which @Hadders gives in circumstances when using an expired publicly available railcard as the basic principles are the same.

Unfortunately when using a PRIV card you are held to a higher standard of compliance because you are deemed to have greater knowledge of fares rules and regulations and you are explicitly informed that you must follow the rules and regulations when issued a PRIV card.

Do you have a union rep you can discuss the matter with for their advice?

 

[Hadders]

I am not, and never have been, employed by the railway so I rarely comment on matters involving staff travel but it seems to me that the biggest risk is that misuse of the staff travel scheme could result in the withdrawal of your staff travel facilities and could also result in disciplinary action being taken by your employer.

 

[Elecman]

I am not, and never have been, employed by the railway so I rarely comment on matters involving staff travel but it seems to me that the biggest risk is that misuse of the staff travel scheme could result in the withdrawal of your staff travel facilities and could also result in disciplinary action being taken by your employer.

That is correct Hadders and RDG take a very dim view of misuse of those facilities

 

[furlong]

Realistically, the only scope you have for negotiation is getting one of the two admin fees waived and that's probably the limit of what you should focus on trying to achieve with LNER through profuse apologies.

You got the date wrong. It happens. You would have been forgiven for that if it was the only thing wrong.

What should you have done? As soon as you discovered this, taken the initiative and gone to find the guard to seek advice about how to put things right.

You only bought replacement tickets from Peterborough? That's deemed to be dishonest, albeit with a weak excuse.

You knowingly attempted to use a Staff Travel Card which expired long ago? Such behaviour is straightforward dishonesty for which there's no acceptable excuse.

So even if you had originally bought the tickets for the correct date, you would still have been in serious trouble if this was discovered.

Those actions amounted to criminal offences. You are fortunate that LNER tends not to prosecute but you should certainly be preparing yourself for disciplinary action.

A situation like this would normally lead to the loss of your travel privileges either for a defined period or indefinitely and don't be surprised if your employer decides such dishonesty amounts to gross misconduct and dismisses you.


So to prepare now, think hard about why you are in your particular job, how you contribute positively to your employer's business and all the reasons why they would be worse off if they decided to dismiss you.
If you can, try to think of examples from your work that you can use to demonstrate honesty and trustworthiness, going the extra mile etc. to try to present the behaviour you described as an aberration and think how you're going to convince them (a) that nothing like it will happen again, and (b) how they can still trust you never to behave dishonestly in your work.


In particular, I would suggest that you reflect hard on these words of yours: "ultimately ended up with the wrong ticket inspector for that situation unfortunately" which suggest that you still haven't understood the situation correctly. I would be very surprised and disappointed if any ticket inspector had acted differently in such circumstances.

(1) Browse other threads on the forum where people's 16-25 railcards had expired and they didn't realise. Look at the consequences they typically face. Your position is worse in that you knew your discount card had expired yet you still tried to use it.

(2) Then browse other threads on the forum where people buy a ticket after they've got onto the train from the next stop instead of the one where their journey began. The railway offers no sympathy and throws the book at them.

Your mitigation for (1) is you were entitled to the discount. Except you weren't because the card you didn't have is mandatory as proof of the entitlement and you knew that. Passengers who forget to bring their valid railcard may be "let off" once a year if they can present it later. Whether you can achieve anything by drawing from that analogy I don't know.

And "Does anyone have any experience in this and know if theres a reasonable way to dispute the fine?" is the wrong question to be asking.

I'd suggest a series of apologies for each of the mistakes involved.

Accept that you're in the wrong and should have paid the public fare for the journey before boarding the train, and if need be, waited for the next train and reduced your time in Durham.

If you want to try to reduce the amount - you might very delicately suggest that the amount feels to be rather on the high side given the circumstances, particularly as you may also now be facing consequences with your employer and for your future use of travel facilities, and see if they might reduce it by what you already paid for the wasted unused tickets, or treat it as a single incident and waive one of the admin fees etc.

 

[AlterEgo]

Hi all,

We recently purchased a return journey from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh for the 18th April to the 22nd April. We'd planned to stop off for a couple of hours at Durham on the way up. Unfortunately we were actually travelling on the 19th April. We had a newborn in January so it was an uncharacteristic mistake from myself.
When the ticket didn't work correctly through the barriers I realised my mistake. I started buying the ticket on the train but by the time it went through, it had left Kings Cross, so I was only able to buy from Peterborough to Durham, so I did.
To complicate matters, we were travelling on rail staff discount - our 2022/2023 card expired in November. They sent a new one out (there's no associated cost for the scheme) but it didn't arrive and we missed the window to inform them it hadn't (again, newborn world!). So whilst we were covered by the scheme, we didn't have the up to date card.
The ticket inspector confiscated our 2022/2023 rail staff travel cards, gave us 0.00 train tickets up to Edinburgh and issued us travel irregularity notices
The fines have since come through which come to £200 for the ticket from London to Edinburgh and £150 admin - each. So £700 in total.
We've asked to dispute and LNER have replied say we would need to address the points below.
Does anyone have any experience in this and know if theres a reasonable way to dispute the fine?

• You were travelling on 19th April
• You produced a ticket from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh purchased with a Staff Travel Card, dated 18th April
• You produced a ticket from Peterborough to Durham purchased with a Staff Travel Card, dated 19th April
• The Staff Travel card you produced expired on 30/11/23

It was a silly mistake which we tried to make better, but ultimately ended up with the wrong ticket inspector for that situation unfortunately. Any help would be great.

Cheers

I don’t think the inspector has done anything wrong.

Once you realised, at King’s Cross, that your tickets were for the wrong date you should have regularised the situation there and then, and not got on board without a valid ticket.

It also seems you knew you were claiming your staff travel card discount knowing you had not got your card to validate that discount. It is up to you to regularise that situation before you get on board a train.

Finally, having boarded the train you attempted to buy a ticket which didn’t cover your full journey, which you also knew to be invalid as you claimed a discount without having your card, and which you knew did not satisfy your duty to pay the fare due for the whole journey. This is short ticketing and probably the most serious of the offences.

If this matter hasn’t reached your employer yet you should count yourself very lucky, as this sort of travel irregularity is one of the quickest ways to throw your career in the bin.

I recommend paying the amount without quibble and speaking to your union rep. Disputing this is unwise and you appear to have no idea how serious this is.

 

[bramling]

Hi all,

We recently purchased a return journey from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh for the 18th April to the 22nd April. We'd planned to stop off for a couple of hours at Durham on the way up. Unfortunately we were actually travelling on the 19th April. We had a newborn in January so it was an uncharacteristic mistake from myself.
When the ticket didn't work correctly through the barriers I realised my mistake. I started buying the ticket on the train but by the time it went through, it had left Kings Cross, so I was only able to buy from Peterborough to Durham, so I did.
To complicate matters, we were travelling on rail staff discount - our 2022/2023 card expired in November. They sent a new one out (there's no associated cost for the scheme) but it didn't arrive and we missed the window to inform them it hadn't (again, newborn world!). So whilst we were covered by the scheme, we didn't have the up to date card.
The ticket inspector confiscated our 2022/2023 rail staff travel cards, gave us 0.00 train tickets up to Edinburgh and issued us travel irregularity notices
The fines have since come through which come to £200 for the ticket from London to Edinburgh and £150 admin - each. So £700 in total.
We've asked to dispute and LNER have replied say we would need to address the points below.
Does anyone have any experience in this and know if theres a reasonable way to dispute the fine?

• You were travelling on 19th April
• You produced a ticket from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh purchased with a Staff Travel Card, dated 18th April
• You produced a ticket from Peterborough to Durham purchased with a Staff Travel Card, dated 19th April
• The Staff Travel card you produced expired on 30/11/23

It was a silly mistake which we tried to make better, but ultimately ended up with the wrong ticket inspector for that situation unfortunately. Any help would be great.

Cheers

Realistically I don’t think you have much option but to pay up.

Whilst there might have been a case to argue for leniency in respect of either the out of date staff travel card or the wrong ticket date, it’s a stretch trying to make a case for leniency with both issues combining - even if both were genuine mistakes.

The only thing I can suggest is seeing if they will deduct the value of the tickets you didn’t use. However that would be at LNER’s discretion, and the risk is that if they don’t wish to apply that then the situation may well escalate.

Given the risk of the situation escalating in respect of the staff travel card (albeit this is a technicality as unlike a railcard this would normally renew once expired), it is probably prudent to pay up sooner rather than later to hopefully make the issue go away.

Your only other card to play is if you co-operated fully with the train manager and didn’t put up any argument. That might earn a small amount of goodwill from LNER, but essentially they hold all the cards on this one.

 

[43066]

Hi all,

We recently purchased a return journey from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh for the 18th April to the 22nd April. We'd planned to stop off for a couple of hours at Durham on the way up. Unfortunately we were actually travelling on the 19th April. We had a newborn in January so it was an uncharacteristic mistake from myself.
When the ticket didn't work correctly through the barriers I realised my mistake. I started buying the ticket on the train but by the time it went through, it had left Kings Cross, so I was only able to buy from Peterborough to Durham, so I did.
To complicate matters, we were travelling on rail staff discount - our 2022/2023 card expired in November. They sent a new one out (there's no associated cost for the scheme) but it didn't arrive and we missed the window to inform them it hadn't (again, newborn world!). So whilst we were covered by the scheme, we didn't have the up to date card.
The ticket inspector confiscated our 2022/2023 rail staff travel cards, gave us 0.00 train tickets up to Edinburgh and issued us travel irregularity notices
The fines have since come through which come to £200 for the ticket from London to Edinburgh and £150 admin - each. So £700 in total.
We've asked to dispute and LNER have replied say we would need to address the points below.
Does anyone have any experience in this and know if theres a reasonable way to dispute the fine?

• You were travelling on 19th April
• You produced a ticket from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh purchased with a Staff Travel Card, dated 18th April
• You produced a ticket from Peterborough to Durham purchased with a Staff Travel Card, dated 19th April
• The Staff Travel card you produced expired on 30/11/23

It was a silly mistake which we tried to make better, but ultimately ended up with the wrong ticket inspector for that situation unfortunately. Any help would be great.

Cheers

I wouldn’t even attempt to dispute it, and would just pay what you owe. Also speak to your union rep as we all know how seriously this can be taken if they decide to make a big deal of it with your employer.

Realistically I don’t think you have much option but to pay up.

Whilst there might have been a case to argue for leniency in respect of either the out of date staff travel card or the wrong ticket date, it’s a stretch trying to make a case for leniency with both issues combining - even if both were genuine mistakes.

The only thing I can suggest is seeing if they will deduct the value of the tickets you didn’t use. However that would be at LNER’s discretion, and the risk is that if they don’t wish to apply that then the situation may well escalate.

Given the risk of the situation escalating in respect of the staff travel card (albeit this is a technicality as unlike a railcard this would normally renew once expired), it is probably prudent to pay up sooner rather than later to hopefully make the issue go away.

Your only other card to play is if you co-operated fully with the train manager and didn’t put up any argument. That might earn a small amount of goodwill from LNER, but essentially they hold all the cards on this one.

Absolutely.