Used expired railcard unknowingly - possible prosecution

[Western Sunset]

If the DVLA, God bless 'em, are capable of sending me a reminder that my car tax is due, surely it's not beyond the wit of the RDG (or whoever) to create a system capable of something similiar? Especially, as many on here like to remind us, that it's a criminal offence to travel with the wrong ticket.

 

[island]

If the DVLA, God bless 'em, are capable of sending me a reminder that my car tax is due, surely it's not beyond the wit of the RDG (or whoever) to create a system capable of something similiar? Especially, as many on here like to remind us, that it's a criminal offence to travel with the wrong ticket.

There is already such a system in place for people who choose to opt into it.

 

[Western Sunset]

Is it widely advertised? I never knew that. Thanks.

 

[ianBR]

I can understand there might be complexity in checking railcard validatity when purchasing on other operators sites.

But surely Trainline should be made to do a better job here.

Railcards should not be hidden away within their app - you should giant a warning on their app homepage if a railcard in their app has expired.

I dread to think how many more fines and prosecutions there have been since these digital railcards were introduced

 

[Doubleplus]

Railcard could help themselves too - offer an option like a TV licence so you can just sign up for monthly, quarterly or annual payments, and it keeps on renewing indefinitely until you cancel, so you never even have to remember.

Or they could do nothing and just hide behind all this “Sorry! You forgot to say ‘white rabbits’ three times on the first day of the month, it is your responsibility to remember so that’ll be £1,000 please. Strict liability, no appeals or refunds…”

 

[scrapy]

Railcard could help themselves too - offer an option like a TV licence so you can just sign up for monthly, quarterly or annual payments, and it keeps on renewing indefinitely until you cancel, so you never even have to remember.

Or they could do nothing and just hide behind all this “Sorry! You forgot to say ‘white rabbits’ three times on the first day of the month, it is your responsibility to remember so that’ll be £1,000 please. Strict liability, no appeals or refunds…”

The problem with that is if a payment bounces, and you don't notice, your Railcard becomes no longer valid. The first you may know of it is when it's inspected.

£1000 is a maximum fine and would never likely be given for a one off byelaw prosecution.

 

[MotCO]

In a criminal court after conviction, the basis for compensation would be expected to be amount needed to put the company back into the position it would have been in if the crime had not happened. Normally this would be the difference in fares as the courts would not normally expect companies to profit from pursuing a criminal. We have seen train companies (including SWR if I remember correctly) indeed sometimes only ask for the fare difference, or the fare for the ticketless portion of the journey, to settle out-of-court. Separately, and additionally, a contract is formed when you travel and the train companies regularly interpret the terms of this contract as entitling them to charge an Anytime single fare retrospectively but the legal basis for that being Anytime remains unclear to me (buried in the depths of historic case law?) and we don't seem to hear of the train companies pursuing this option in the civil courts. The National Rail Conditions of Travel 9.2 merely summarises unspecified other authorities and 9.2.3 and 9.2.1 anyway exclude each other. Specific railcard T&Cs may provide authority to charge a new single fare rather than the difference, but that isn't necessarily Anytime ('full price for the single fare applicable').

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 8 Mar 2023 ==

In the situation that a criminal court was somehow persuaded that the amount to pay for a new railcard retrospectively was sufficient to put the train company back into the position it would have been in had there been no crime, as I understand things, the train company would still be able to invite a civil court to order additional fares to be paid retrospectively based on their contractual entitlement.

In a similar vein, if the ticket without a valid Railcard is deemed to be invalid, and given that the redress is the payment of Anytime tickets to cover those journeys, can it be argued that the original tickets were not used and that a refund can be claimed? Or is the 'purchase' of those Anytime tickets just a financial penalty equivalent to the cost of those tickets?

 

[Doubleplus]

The problem with that is if a payment bounces, and you don't notice, your Railcard becomes no longer valid. The first you may know of it is when it's inspected.

How do TV Licensing handle bounced payments? Do they simply and easily let you catch up with missed payments, or do they immediately prosecute you as if you’d never had a licence to begin with?

 

[AlterEgo]

How do TV Licensing handle bounced payments? Do they simply and easily let you catch up with missed payments, or do they immediately prosecute you as if you’d never had a licence to begin with?

TV licensing can only prosecute you if you are naive enough to let one of their people into your home to collect evidence against you. But if you miss a payment or don’t renew, they do send nasty letters informing you a visit will happen.

 

[Llanigraham]

Railcard could help themselves too - offer an option like a TV licence so you can just sign up for monthly, quarterly or annual payments, and it keeps on renewing indefinitely until you cancel, so you never even have to remember.

Or they could do nothing and just hide behind all this “Sorry! You forgot to say ‘white rabbits’ three times on the first day of the month, it is your responsibility to remember so that’ll be £1,000 please. Strict liability, no appeals or refunds…”

Again, that can only work with some railcards, not age or disablity ones.

 

[Llanigraham]

How do TV Licensing handle bounced payments? Do they simply and easily let you catch up with missed payments, or do they immediately prosecute you as if you’d never had a licence to begin with?

Not comparable with rail ticketing rules.

 

[JackB]

Trainline has work to do here, especially if they wish to continue partnering with their railway company fraud detection colleagues by mining their database for innocent irregularities like this. Neither the railway nor the Trainline should be able to profit from their sale of invalid tickets and turning a blind eye to how they could easily prevent that.

SWR’s Tap2Go smart card system, for example, allows you to add a railcard to your pay-as-you-go ”tap in tap out” system, and all you have to do once a year is provide a photo or screenshot of your railcard with its number. Someone (presumably manually) verifies that entitlement, then adds it to your account so that it is automatically applied whenever valid. Can’t use it at the wrong time, can’t use it after it has expired. No problems.

I completely agree. They’ve made it incredibly easy to make this mistake and incredibly hard to spot it before damage occurs. I still can’t quite believe that no railway staff asked for my railcard or found out earlier either. I know that it’s still my onus to know this, but it feels unreasonable that I should by heart remember the expiry date of my digital railcard or remember to check it regularly with a penalty so high if I forget.

I’m a very forgetful person, it affects many aspects of my life, but to forget the end date of a railcard with no reminder and be charged with potentially £1200 fine plus admin fees, AND court charges seems absurd.

I truly have no idea what to do now, but I can’t see how this shows any justification. It’s not teaching me a lesson (other than never use trains incase I forget again), or even doing what’s financially just. It’s a financial trap they’ve made all too easy to make, and profit so much from - and all down to byelaws from nearly 150 years ago.

Thank you all, truly, for your support and information. I hate to pull the student card but as I can’t work and pay such high rent here in london I honestly don’t know how they will expect me to pay such a high fine.

I will keep you all updated once the letter arrives. Thank you.

I believe that this is because the railway regards the 'Anytime' fare as the normal ticket (I think it may have been once, eg back in the 1960s, well it's equivalent then whatever the formal name would be) - and any other type of fare eg Off Peak / Season Ticket/ etc etc as one or other form of discounted ticket - then they have Railcard discounts on top...you get the drift - UK rail fares are complex.....

So when they seek a settlement (knowing they have the fall back of a criminal prosecution ability so not like a parking ticket type of thing) they can ask for the full monty, knowing they are in a strong position, seemingly not caring too much if this is the best way to encourage their customers to eg buy a car and never travel by train again if they can avoid it....

It's possible that if you can persuade SWR to believe that this was all an oversight (and this has to be your overriding objective now - use Hadders' advice on the tack to take) they may agree to settle for less than those full fares - so how you write to them will be key - hence the offer of help here with your draft - you could work it out and actually offer the the sum you would have paid for off peak tickets on the days travelled and see what they say for example eg "I beleive the sums I did not pay in error were £x this being the difference between the tickets I mistakenly bought thinking I had a valid Railcard and the relevant undiscounted fare at the time I travelled o the dates in question and I would be happy to pay this sum, as I have never had any intention of travelling without a valid ticket"

So by way of preparation start listing out for yourself every date and if possible time you travelled by trains after the Railcard expiry and list the relevant fares for the journeys and prices. If you are unsure how to get that info ppl on here can help point you to the likely fares listed on the website BRfares.com if you need help.

The problem is that there are lots of fare evaders (and soem end up on here) that opt to biy tickets at railcard discounts but don't actually ever have a railcard - thinkign that saving the £30ish quid on the Railcard is somethign they can 'get away with'. You've got to persuade SWR you are not that sort of person...

Funnily enough whenever I go through the barriers at Southampton Central (which is not that often I admit) they are set to reject my ticket due to the Railcard discount I have - and make me show the ticket and Railcard to the barrier attendant - which had that happened to you soon after your Railcard expired it would have prevented you getting into this problem in the first place.

I normally travel to southampton airport parkway, as this is closer to my partners place. Perhaps because it’s a smaller station ticket checks are not as often? I travel on very off-peak times too normally after 9pm, maybe there are less staff I’m not sure.

I just can’t believe that, even unintentionally, I was able to slip through cracks I wasn’t aware of for so long. Now concluding with a very heavy and very sudden intent for prosecution and an extremely disproportionate fine.

It really does blow my mind how they could argue though that anyone would run this risk of criminal conviction and fines, well above a thousand pounds, over the cost of a £30 railcard that they had previously paid for.

For someone travelling with a railcard years out of date, or someone travelling without a railcard they claim to own, then this would make much more sense. But as a forgetful person with no warnings or reminders, this feels far to easy to target people with no unlawful intent.

 

[Nova1]

It really does blow my mind how they could argue though that anyone would run this risk of criminal conviction and fines, well above a thousand pounds, over the cost of a £30 railcard that they had previously paid for.

Lots of people do

 

[Haywain]

it feels unreasonable that I should by heart remember the expiry date of my digital railcard or remember to check it regularly

As you state you are forgetful this would seem to be an appropriate approach.

 

[JackB]

Lots of people do

But from my response at the gate immediately showing them, not trying to hide it, instantly offering to pay for the ticket again and to renew my railcard doesn’t that point toward how unintentional this mistake was?

I suppose courts aren’t so human in their interactions, and for those that do intentionally run this absurd gauntlet it makes sense. I just can’t believe how incredibly disproportionate the fines seem to be.

For a first time offence that’s too easy to make, the punishment doesn’t make sense.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 8 Mar 2023 ==

As you state you are forgetful this would seem to be an appropriate approach.

I do agree. But for something so trivial as a railcard, that is still working absolutely fine (with no warnings or prompts) in the complexities and distractions of real life it becomes way too easy by design to unintentionally commit a ‘criminal offence’.

 

[WesternLancer]

But from my response at the gate immediately showing them, not trying to hide it, instantly offering to pay for the ticket again and to renew my railcard doesn’t that point toward how unintentional this mistake was?

I suppose courts aren’t so human in their interactions, and for those that do intentionally run this absurd gauntlet it makes sense. I just can’t believe how incredibly disproportionate the fines seem to be.

For a first time offence that’s too easy to make, the punishment doesn’t make sense.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 8 Mar 2023 ==


I do agree. But for something so trivial as a railcard, that is still working absolutely fine (with no warnings or prompts) in the complexities and distractions of real life it becomes way too easy by design to unintentionally commit a ‘criminal offence’.

The Railcard system has not really caught up with the pre digital world where to buy a ticket you went to a ticket office and had to show the card railcard to the staff who checked the date (or were / are supposed to).

Obv in future you will I'm sure put a reminder in your calendar for the card expiry date of your new card to avoid the problem.

Ref S'ton Airport Parkway - yes I don't know that station so may be ungated or gates switched out at the times you have used it for reasons you explained.

I'm pretty sure you can avoid court on this so don't worry too much - and they may agree a far lower settlement than worst case fares.

 

[Llanigraham]

I know that it’s still my onus to know this, but it feels unreasonable that I should by heart remember the expiry date of my digital railcard or remember to check it regularly with a penalty so high if I forget.

It's quite easy to find a way to set a reminder if you have a computer or a mobile phone. They all come with a diary feature that you can add that date to.
And as you get older you will find that there are more and more dates that you will need to remember and you won't get reminders for, so it is a good habuit to get into now, whilst you are young.

And then you eventually get old and decrepid and forget things again!

I do agree. But for something so trivial as a railcard, that is still working absolutely fine (with no warnings or prompts) in the complexities and distractions of real life it becomes way too easy by design to unintentionally commit a ‘criminal offence’.

But that is the point, railcards are NOT trivial they are an important part of your travel requirements. Trivial are things like birthdays.

 

[BRX]

Lots of people do

What's this assertion based on?

 

[D365]

If the DVLA, God bless 'em, are capable of sending me a reminder that my car tax is due, surely it's not beyond the wit of the RDG (or whoever) to create a system capable of something similiar?

Surely it's out of their hands when customers choose to use a third-party app such as Trainline. Or do you mean some sort of email reminder.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 9 Mar 2023 ==

As you state you are forgetful this would seem to be an appropriate approach.

I concur. If I didn't have a physical railcard, I would be adding the expiry/renewal date to my iCloud reminders.

 

[alholmes]

I have a digital railcard, purchased through railcard.co.uk which expires 26/03/2023. Email reminder was received from railcard.co.uk on 26/02/2023 advising I have one month left, including link to renew.

i haven’t renewed yet - will be interesting to see if I get any more reminders.

 

[Doubleplus]

I have a digital railcard, purchased through railcard.co.uk which expires 26/03/2023. Email reminder was received from railcard.co.uk on 26/02/2023 advising I have one month left, including link to renew.

i haven’t renewed yet - will be interesting to see if I get any more reminders.

Can confirm I usually receive reminders too, both for digital or physical cards purchased through railcard.co.uk. One month out, 48 hours out, one day out, and on the day. As well as subsequent reminders (and sometimes offers) to renew after that, too.

 

[Western Sunset]

So if some folks are getting reminders, why can't all?
Or is there a box one has to tick on the initial Railcard application to receive these? I never got reminders when I let my Senior Railcard expire during Covid, even though I'd purchased it online.

 

[island]

So if some folks are getting reminders, why can't all?
Or is there a box one has to tick on the initial Railcard application to receive these? I never got reminders when I let my Senior Railcard expire during Covid, even though I'd purchased it online.

In line with GDPR, they can only send marketing emails, such as an invitation to purchase a new Railcard, to people who have chosen to opt-in. This is reasonably well implemented online, but for paper forms at ticket offices, the forms may not always be sent through to the central office, may not be keyed correctly, may be illegible/ambiguous, etc. etc.

During parts of the COVID period I think a decision was made not to invite renewals at all.

 

[some bloke]

I agree that companies should not have the power to demand such large sums in this kind of situation, and that where they have the power they shouldn't use it. There's a discussion here:

Should not having a railcard to which you're entitled be treated less seriously?

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...

www.railforums.co.uk

As well as the student union, which may be able to provide some free legal advice, other options could include a law centre/clinic, or Advocate. Some places may not cover criminal law, so it's worth checking their websites before you ask.

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Explore a comprehensive list and map of Law Centres across the UK. Locate and connect with your local Law Centre for essential legal assistance and support.

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[spag23]

So if some folks are getting reminders, why can't all?

Indeed. In fact, if most of the general public believe that Railcard holders always get expiry reminders, it's hardly surprising that they rely on this process; and then fall foul of it. Perhaps like the OP in this case?

 

[Western Sunset]

So is issuing reminders an unintended consequence of GDPR? I can understand ticking the box to not receive email junk, promotions, etc, but not to get a helpful reminder which might save one getting a criminal record seems rather counter-productive.

 

[ianBR]

ctive.

Service messages are permitted under GDPR regardless of whether someone has opted out of marketing emails. I would think there is a pretty strong case to argue that advising someone a service is expiring is a service message.

 

[Western Sunset]

Service messages are permitted under GDPR regardless of whether someone has opted out of marketing emails. I would think there is a pretty strong case to argue that advising someone a service is expiring is a service message.

Totally agree.
I want railways to succeed, I really do. But the industry itself puts up so many barriers. As the OP states above, the only thing the industry has done with these draconian penalties is to turn folks away from ever using trains again. All due to honest forgetfulness. Sure, crack down on those who play the system etc, but for basically honest folk to be criminalised.
Anyway, I've said enough...

 

[island]

Service messages are permitted under GDPR regardless of whether someone has opted out of marketing emails.

Actually, the right to object extends to almost all processing of personal data, whether you choose to call it a "service message" or not.

 

[Llanigraham]

I've just checked and there is no facility to set up a reminder in the application system to renew my Disabled Persons Railcard.