Great Western Coffee Shop

......with the caveat that I am not a Daily Mail reader, this nevertheless seems very harsh;

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4195682/Pregnant-woman-fined-600-2-30-train-fare.html

1.  What has her being pregnant got to do with anything but an attempt to garner sympathy?
2.  She knocked on the driver's door to attempt to buy a ticket - what's the driver got to do with anything ticket related?
3.  She's obviously ignored all previous correspondence in order for the case to end up in court, and not bothered going to the hearing.

IF the circumstances are as she described ie - no opportunity to purchase at her starting station, on the train, or at Cardiff Bay (and depending on how long the connection time was, Cardiff Queen Street) then she had secure grounds for appeal, which she obviously had not done and so things have escalated.

£600+ sounds a lot, but that is made up of the original fare, plus court costs and victim surcharge which the courts add on and doesn't go to the TOC.  People need to understand that ignoring a legal process won't make it go away.

She does state "I've had nothing else from them, no phone calls, just this letter that seems so threatening" - one would normally expect her to have received a written offer to settle out of court, and a summons before getting to this stage?

Tricky to ignore something that you haven't received?

Maybe she gave a false ID? It isn't exactly unknown.

Also, she says she's 16 weeks pregnant. It takes longer than that to reach the stage she's at in the legal process...so very likely that she *wasn't* pregnant at the time of the event she's been fined for. So definitely a red herring.

She would have been warned that she could end up in court at the time she was originally challenged - isn't that a requirement of the RPIs when taking their details? So it wiuldn't have been the first she knew about it.

Seems to me like a classic case of burying one's head in the sand & asuming it'll go no further to me.

Ifs/buts/maybes.

Where in the article does she claim to have been pregnant when the incident occurred?

I think her point is that now that she is pregnant she can't magic £600 out of nowhere, and the situation is putting her under a lot of pressure.

Whose fault is that?....

She changed at Queen St, and so could have gone to the barriers there where there are staff available to sell her a ticket. it's a short 3 min hop to the Bay, so hardly any time for to get to anyone to buy a ticket. Though I note that she comes from a part of Cardiff well away from the rail network, so she is likely to have been unfamiliar with the necessary ticketing protocols.

Having said that, there are a lot of complaints about ATW's approach to revenue protection - the lack of ticket buying facilities at Valley Line stations, the inability to then buy a ticket on the train because they are so crushed, and the aggressive approach of the "Green Gestapo" subcontracted staff that roam the stations.  The Arriva Trains Fails Facebook page makes for interesting reading, particularly when you think that the person running it is on ATW's Customer Panel, and does try to give a balanced view.   

There are plenty of times where ATW make it the very least difficult to buy a ticket. I know one station where, out of hours and at weekends, the TVM is in a locked building and during a relatively short journey through Queen St and Central to another unstaffed (at that time) station the conductor does not get round the whole train.  So are passengers expected to get off at either Queen St or Central purely to buy a ticket? 

I have not read the article in the Daily Mail as I do not wish to pump up their advertising revenue, and like Wikipedia I regard them as an unreliable source,  but on the face of it here the person could have been dealt with unjustly. 

If ATW want to increase their revenue they should first offer to sell people tickets. 

You are required, by the NRCoT to purchase a ticket at the earliest opportunity, however this does not mean you need to unnecessarily delay your journey.

"Earliest opportunity" means either:
- at your originating station
- on the train
- at an interchange
- at your destination.

Plainly speaking: buy at your starting station; if the TVM is out of order/doesn't accept your method of payment (excluding declined cards)/doesn't sell the ticket you want/the queue is longer than reasonably accepted (a nominal amount contained in the TOC's passenger charter)/ticket office shut and no alternative available, your next opportunity is to buy on board.  If the guard or ticket examiner is unable to serve you, your next opportunity is either at your destination or interchange. 

At an interchange you are not required to delay your journey, ie it is reasonable to board your next train as long as your have adhered to the minimum recommended interchange time between chosen trains and attempted to purchase a ticket OR your first train is delayed thus leaving less than the recommended interchange time before your next train.  If there are ticketing facilities at your destination, you must buy before leaving railway property.

----

Again, in regards to the article, the fine has been imposed correctly by the court by due process.  The lady in question has not taken any steps to dispute the original penalty fare, which if the journey panned out in accordance with the above, is easily disputable.  If, as she states, she has no prior knowledge of the court summons, then it is still challengeable.

I'm amazed you can come to that conclusion based on a Mail Online article.

I could look at the scant relevant information in the article and come to the opposite conclusion.

What evidence is there of that in this case?  Other people doing it doesn't mean this lady did. We are presumably reading about the actual person prosecuted. Had she given false ID and had later been traced, two things spring to mind. Where is the prosecution under RoRA section 5(3)(c)? Why go the the media after providing false details?

Again, from the article, what evidence is there of that? All we do have is the defendant telling the media that they received no correspondence prior to receiving the judgement by post from the magistrates court.

On one hand, the railway industry rules require that all of its customers know the detail of all those rules to legally use the service, and apply those rule correctly even when thrown a curved ball such as the TVM not working - which hardly seems practical, bearing in mind that even on this forum we come across things from time to time that we don't know ... and we're better informed and more logical than most, and have the benefit of time where real travellers have to make near-instant decisions.

On the other hand, there are those who all seek to take advantage of the very detailed rules and curved balls, and staff discression and sympathy offered to avoid paying their fare they know they full well should be paying.

Logic suggests that a simpler / more robust system would help reduce cases of people being unable to follow the rules through no moral fault of their own; as for the current case I'm not going to make judgement; I don't know enough without the tabloid wrapping.  It could be a case of trying to knowingly take advantage of the system and not pay because it failed, or it could be a genuine lack of knowledge or a failure to react logically properly when something wasn't as normal.

I don't think that's a given at all, if taken across all TOCs.

Paul

Regardless of the source of the article, there are very few journeys that you can make in this country where you cannot buy an eticket of some sort. So whilst a #600(oops, kindle keyboard cannot generate GBP sysmbol) charge is rediculous, the idea there was no way to get a valid ticket seems far fetched.

If Arriva Wales choose to make the purchase of tickets difficult by not employing enough guards, or having accessible payment mchines, then there franchise renewal discussions with the Welsh Assembly will be interesting. 

Did you really mean e-ticket? There are many, many journeys for which purchase of an e-ticket is not an option.

Regardless of what's in the article (it is The Mail after all), in court on the day, the magistrate is presented with a case and defendant is not present, nor replied to any correspondence ergo the imposition of the fine. 
Any breakdown in what has led to that situation is not for consideration at the time in court.  However, there is still a process - via statutory declaration - to follow if that is the case.  Maybe someone should point her to RailUKForums.


And e-tickets are not necessarily m-tickets are not necessarily e-tickets, depending on the TOC!

That's why my opening word was 'maybe'.
Likewise, there is no eviddnce in the article that there wasn't...

Chris-just because you see someone carrying a bunch of flowers doesn't necessarily mean they're heading for a funeral.

But theymight be...hence my use of 'maybe'

Did you mean to say that there are very few journeys that you can make in this country where you can buy an eticket of some sort?

Then why introduce a 'maybe'? Nothing in the article suggest the lady concerned gave a false ID. Your 'maybe' is casting aspersions without a shred of evidence.

Such posts really piss me off and say more about the poster than the person, totally unknown to them, they are commenting on.

And that's your opinion.

..........and mine, for what it's worth.