hairyhandedfool
Established Member
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- 14 Apr 2008
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Whilst I consider your points, can you explain why they were charged a Penalty Fare.
Ending a journey early falls within section 16 of the NCOC, which explains that it should be dealt with by an excess fare, which is calculated as the difference between the price paid for the ticket you hold and the price of the lowest priced ticket(s) available for immediate travel that would have entitled you to start, break and resume, or end your journey at that station on the service(s) you have used.
The NCoC also says the TOCs may give more restrictive rights for reduced price tickets provided they make the traveller aware of them (The T&Cs that they ticked the box to say they had read). Penalty Fares rules also take precedence over excess fares rules, this will be noted on the Penalty Fares notices displayed in a prominent position at all Penalty Fares scheme stations for everyone to read (and is probably also in the T&Cs).
To continue the question I asked on the other thread that was locked with the request to continue the discussion here -
Is there any reason why the couple could not have bought a normal £3.40 Eastleigh to Southampton ticket, to complete their 'journey'
I understand that the Megatrain ticket was valid under the terms of the National Conditions of Carriage between London Waterloo and Southampton with no 'break of journey allowed'.
But a 'break of journey' is specifically defined in the NCOC as leaving the train station. Merely getting off the train at Eastleigh is not a 'break of journey'.
Therefore if you reach Southampton without leaving railway property, you have not had a 'break of journey'.
So you have not invalidated your London Waterloo to Southampton Megatrain ticket.
The problem is that you just don't have a valid Eastleigh to Southampton ticket to complete your journey.
Hence the question, could they have just asked the ticket inspector to sell them a £3.40 Eastleigh to Southampton ticket?
If the pair had shown the inspectors at Eastleigh a ticket from Southampton to Eastleigh ticket for each of them, they may have passed through unnoticed (although this is still wrong IMO), however the Insepctors may have noticed that a train from Southampton had not recently arrived, aswell as the fact a train in the opposite direction had just arrived might alert the inspectors to an attempt at avoiding paying the 'correct' fare.
Also, the conditions of the ticket are that you use the trains you agreed to use when you bought the ticket, as illustrated by the seat reservations, as soon as they alighted from that train at Eastleigh, they almost certainly invalidated the ticket.
Furthermore, having started their journey at a Penalty Fare station, they were expected to have in their possession, tickets for their entire journey unless facilities were not available to buy the tickets they required.
Yes it is. If I take a library book out for a month and take it back after two days, the library have done well.
SWT in this case have actually saved money, there are two spare empty seats between Eastleigh and their destination, they won't be using facilities onboard for as long etc.
What the majority of people don't understand is why travelling a shorter distance costs more money. A very simple argument. Having a blinkered Railways T&Cs view of things simply doesn't wash with the public.
The library book example might work for an Anytime Return (where you can return at any time within a month, but to compare it to an Advance fare, with all it's restrictions, is as bad as Yorkie's cans of drink!
The fare from London to Eastleigh is £28.50 each, the fare they paid was £6 each, If they didn't buy that megatrain ticket, who is to say no-one else would have bought it? If someone else did want to buy it, but couldn't because the quota had sold out and they chose to drive instead, how exactly have SWT saved money? If anything they have lost out.
You trade cheaper fares for more restrictions, it's not a hard concept to grasp for most people. The most obvious answer to there being no cheap fare for a given journey is that there is no need for teh operatior to discount them further, supply and demand, again, not a hard concept, but maybe there are othere reasons besides.
At the end of the day, the conditions of tickets are there for a reason and should be adhered to. Those who fail to adhere to them should not benefit from it.
.... So, what do you do. Well instead of making this couple pay the full penalty fare from London to Eastleigh I'd charge them a penalty fare from Southampton to Eastleigh. That way you are recognising that what they've actually done is deprive swt of the fare back from Southampton.
Brilliant! That'll teach them to adhere to the conditions in future. As a one off incident....
Actual fare paid = £52 (£40 PF* + £12 Advance fares)....
Fare they would have paid for the journey actually made = £57.
Therefore their penalty for breaking the conditions of the ticket is actually a saving of £5.
And if it transpires that they get caught once in every four attempts, their penalty becomes a saving of £140!
And lets not forget that it might stop someone who is actually travelling to Southampton from getting the cheaper fare aswell.
[*Assuming a Penalty Fare is still double the single fare or £20, whichever is greater]
....Getting the £57, plus getting to keep the original £12 paid for the advances should be sufficient.
The company get their fare - no admin costs necessary as it's done face to face - and the loss of the £12 acts as a deterrent for the couple not to do it again.
But to double the amount to £114 is, again to my mind, ludicrous and profiteering. The company cannot claim there is any extra cost to be covered by doing this, it is purely to punish the passenger. Now by all means, have a deterrent, but keep it proportional.
If this had gone to press with the story being the couple getting charged £28 each to cover the cost of the tickets they should have used then perhaps the public would be less incensed. Perhaps more people would see it as "fair"?
Persistant fare evaders are a different kettle of fish. They'll keep popping up on the radar and can be dealt with by different means.
Can you say that everytime this happens, it is easy to spot who is the serial fare evader and who has made a genuine mistake/error?
Do you really think the press are worried about the value of the fare, or do you think they are going to write a piece on how they were charged more for making a shorter journey on the same train?
Is £12 really a deterant? If the offenders get caught once in every five attempts, is it still a deterant?