Great Western Coffee Shop

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0l841xeyklo

Here we go again -


And the headline is a couple who either have extreme cheek in pressing their case or have genuinely got it wrong and the system has not shown the discretion that it should.



Of course, pedants will tell you they were not fined, but just charged a penalty fare. But it feels like a fine ...

Edit to correct spelling

Perhaps more discretion needs to be shown in these circumstances.................but I digress  ;)

If you buy an advance purchase ticket for a specific train and you don't travel on that train through no fault of the railway, of course your ticket isn't valid at all and you need to buy a new one.  That's clearly what has happened here.

Personally I don't see why your ticket couldn't be excessed up to the appropriate walk up fare for the journey you are making.  That would at least mean your £50 or whatever it is isn't lost.

£3 sounds very small indeed for the difference between the £50 and the walk up fare.

I sometimes worry when I get on at an unstaffed station and want an Excess, which I presume a ticket machine is incapable of providing.

If I can't locate the guard/train manager, I know I should be able to see him at the station but you would be surprised by the vanishing acts, how do I get the Excess ticket. The example I am thinking of changes crew during the journey, so I am in double jepordy, all for a NIL value Excess for this particular section of the journey. In my case it could £99 for £0.

In this particular case I have absolutely no sympathy for the passengers involved because when one buys an Advance ticket it quite clearly states that it is generally only valid on one specific train for the majority of the journey being undertaken.

Momentarily entering 'broken record mode' it must be obvious to anybody with a modicum of common sense that a major simplification of the UK fares system - my oft stated preference is for a base of Distance Related Fares - would significantly reduce such issues.

In this partIcular case I have every sympathy for the passengers involved.

Getting on the wrong train is very easily done by anyone not completely au fait with rail travel and fares here in the the UK.

We are here, mostly, a clued up bunch when it comes to rail travel, fares, rules and regulations. We can't assume the wider public share the same savvy.

The 'punishment' should fit the 'crime'. Charge the excess when there's any doubt over the passenger's intention to evade the correct fare. The burden of proof, on the balance of probabilities, should be on the authority making the case that a fare was genuinely being evaded. Any doubt, dont 'fine'.


EDIT NOTE I've removed the duplicate post where I quoted myself. Not sure how I managed that. ???

Hear, Hear!

Totally agreed - I am reminded of this incident:

Excessing to the correct fare would have absolutely no deterrent value. Once people realised they could safely just buy the cheapest advance they could find, then why would they ever buy the correct fare again? How does a guard tell the difference between someone doing it accidentally once or intentionally every day?

If you were to allow for that single ‘mistaken’ incident, you then need a robust means of recording names and addresses.  Then wait for people arguing that they shouldn’t have to provide the info.

Paul

In the interests of being cuddly to passengers and not beating them round the head when they make a mistake or miss a train, I think it would be worth looking at.  People would simply be paying the walk up fare for the journey they are making as if they hadn't bought an advance purchase fare in the first place.

How many people would go to the trouble of buying an advance purchase fare in the hope of avoiding paying the excess, I don't know and no-one else does either.  Maybe it's worth a trial somewhere?
 

I don't understand this apparent urge to punish people who have made a genuine mistake, and it's telling that the watchdog appears to suggest that the difference between deliberate evasion and genuine mistakes should be acknowledged.

One of the biggest challenges for the railway to address and overcome is the culture around the way it treats its customers and how they are regarded, and this would appear to be a good example.

Yup - and there's realistically an order in which to do this successfully - fare revision first?

Yes, I would agree. 

You have a system that is overcomplex and then you expect the public who are generally fairly bright but not educated in its complexity to understand it and be responsible for purchasing the correct ticket, with resulting errors of purchase.   At times, the people who will understand the systems (and not only the fares but how they are collected) the best are those who look to reduce what they pay through legitimate or illegitimate means, that made so much more possible (and mentally challenging) by the nooks and crannies in the system.

If you sort out the fares system you then have a system under which the scope for honest errors - and for dishonest  "errors" too is reduced.  Not an unadulterated joy - some of the legitimate bargains will be lost, and pervesly some of the revenue collected by the operators may be reduced because there should no longer be lots of charging more than necessary by booking systems and TVMs.

And revenue from penalty fares may be reduced too. I often wonder how much is gathered by the TOCs in PFs.

The only time I got a penalty payment was on London Underground where I'd managed to buy the wrong ticket but one that was more expensive than the one I should have had. When I queried this - was it fare evasion when I'd overpaid the revenue collector ignored me and radioed for the police to attend as I was refusing to pay. Not the best experience so I have a lot of sympathy for people who make genuine mistakes.

A few years ago, before GWR's big revamp of the timetable to/from the South West, two Paddington-bound services were more than likely to be platformed at Newton Abbot at the same time at around 7.30am  -  a Penzance to Paddington, timetabled to depart at 0731 and a Paignton to Paddington timetabled to depart at 0729. The 0729 was an Off-Peak, (almost-)all stations service, whilst the 0731 a Peak 'fast' service, which overtook the stopper at Exeter. A recall many a passenger with an Advance ticket for the 0729 boarding the 0731! 

Thankfully, now, the Paignton to Paddington has been replaced by a slightly earlier Plymouth to Paddington departing some 10 minutes earlier.

Whilst talking Advance tickets, I am shocked at the number of pax lured into buying an Advance ticket that is literally just a few pence cheaper than the more flexible walk-up ticket.

As one of the dying breed that is lucky enough not to pay to travel or get a 75% reduction I feel complete sorry for those who do have to work out the cheapest way to complete a train journey. And even more sympathy for those whose job it is to carry out ticket checks and trying to tell the difference between those who have made a genuine mistake which in my experience is around 35% and those who know exactly what they are doing and have every intention of....

Buying a rail card ticket without the correct rail card.
Wrong number of passengers on a groupsave ticket.
And the regular abuse, advance purchase tickets then travel on the train the passenger wants to be on.

And the worse passengers are those who know they are in the wrong but abuse the person doing the ticket checking whether face to face or on social media.

And this could affect the ticket checkers. A person may be more towards sympathy then gets verbally assaulted or is given a telling off by a guards manager and becomes hard skinned then goes towards full fare single irrespective of the circumstances.

Thankfully quite a lot of passengers pay when caught and is it a geniue mistake and therefore pay the excess or a deliberate attempt to fare dodge and therefore full fare single on top of what has been previously paid? Again a minefield. If the excess is paid there's normally a warning which the deliberate fare dodger will ignore, try it on and if I loose out I'm paying the correct fare. But then the next ticket checker goes straight to full fare single and along comes the abuse because the fare dodger doesn't want to pay over the original price.

Something I remind the staff, the process on buying a ticket requires a box to be ticked stating the terms and conditions have been met BEFORE card details are entered.

Dear Passenger,

This ticket is for the 2332 to Bristol. You are on the 1732 'ow much peak time train.

Pull this stunt at an airport.

I believe ticket simplication has been on the agenda for how many years?

Looking at today and tomorrow irrespective of time of day the České Dráhy fare on the commuter belt from Pardubice to Praha is 213 Kč with a couple of reservation compulsory trains which are an extra 35 Kč. Turn up and board any train whether next stop Praha, a semi fast or an all stops. The distance is around 63 miles or 104 km.

The main private operator, RegioJet are charging between 114 Kč and 204 Kč 2nd class. This company does not allowing standing on board, no seat reservation equals no boarding. And it is enforced.

Not a comparison. You can't pull such a 'stunt' at an airport. You cannot board an earlier or later flight than your ticket is valid for either by accident or design. At an airport, tickets, documents and boarding passes are checked numerous times before you take your seat.

I think that Jaymac hits the nail on the head - we have a primarily turn up and pay system, that's what most passengers think they have and want. Most are not booking a flight to go on holiday, paying extra to book in luggage and having (in most cases) to go through passport and security checks. Give us what we want if you want to encourage more of us to use trains or travel on them more frequently.

There's a lot of talk (hot air?) about fair simplification to encourage more train travel - here's a few ideas for some basic, "passenger focused" rules -

1 - You pay for the journey, not the train. If you have a ticket from A to Z, you can catch any train that travels between A and Z, subject only to peak hours rules. If you fall foul of these peak hours rules, you can pay the excess on arrival at A before boarding the train, at Z before departing the station, or on the train without penalty. No need to get into whether it's an innocent mistake or not (you cannot judge this reliably on the spot). There should not normally be any discount for paying in advance, but if a ticket is sold at a discount as a sales promotion, then it will be treated as if it was paid full fare. No such promotions will be allowed that impose restrictive terms that breach this fundamental rule, nor any of the others below.

2- The only thing that will be train-specific is booking a seat, at a modest (fixed?) premium. If you decide not to take that train, or are late to the departure point other than as a result of a late running in-bound connection you forfeit this. If you miss the train because of a late connection, or because of a cancellation, you are entitled to an immediate refund. If it's a cancellation, and you paid by card, it should be possible to do this immediately to your card.

3 - If you are travelling in or out of the TfL travel zones, and have an Oyster Card, or some other TfL ticket, you need only pay from the edge of Zone 6 to your destination, and can take any train, even if it's non-stop to your destination from a London terminus - you can switch from Underground/Overground at any convenient point along the route. Some rules will no doubt be needed for touching in and out - perhaps "connection" touch in and out pads at all Tfl/National Rail interchange stations.

4 - Generally - you can break your journey as many times as you like along the route within the period of validity without penalty, and you can "short stop" without penalty - if a TOC or GBR is dumb enough to have fares (even offers) that are less than for a longer journey on the same route, all passengers can take advantage and finish their journey and start a return journey at the intermediate station at the lower price without penalty.

5 - If there are two fares for adjoining parts of the journey that are cheaper than the whole, you can buy tickets for the two legs and undertake the whole journey without any requirement to break it or use a train that stops at the "break" between the two tickets without penalty. It's up to the TOC/GBR to ensure that there are no such anomalies, but if there are then the passenger need not be concerned about any rules to take advantage of them.

What do others think?   Or should this be the start of a new thread?

1.  This means open house on just buying an off-peak ticket then travelling on a peak train and only paying the extra if you happen to get checked at the start/end of the journey or en route.  Plenty of cases where that quite reasonably won't happen (crowded train, short journey, minor station, interchange to tube across platform).  No incentive to buy the correct ticket.
2.  Fair enough. 
3.  I wonder if by "Oyster Card" you mean one with a Travelcard already on it?  Increasingly a niche case with changed working habits, but you can anyway already do as you describe.  If you're wanting to use pay as you go instead, the real answer is to be able to buy a combined ticket for your whole journey at the expected price rather than juggling two different payment media.  Consistent pricing needs a single authority setting all fares, rather than the current split between the Mayor of London and the DfT.  Yet another type of validator (already pink and yellow which confuses enough!) really isn't the answer.
4.  Broadly the case already on most tickets, except unsurprisingly those that are train-specific.  Some inconsistencies in pricing exist deliberately to cater for different service levels or demand to/from different places on the same line, and opening the loophole as described would mean the more generous offering would end up being removed.
5.  Similarly to 4, this could be because that intermediate station has a poor service with slower trains, most passing through without stopping.  Would you want to penalise those actually travelling to/from there by having their fares adjusted up to avoid the summing anomaly?

More generally, this level of simplification completely removes the ability to offer bargain train-specific fares to encourage travel on particularly quiet trains.  Simplification does not equate to cheaper fares, in fact for many journeys the opposite will apply.

This is allowed under the Conditions of Travel. Whether or not the passenger is given an opportunity to pay the excess is down the operator.

Dealing with some of the points not just addressed by Jaymac-

3 - Forgive my yokel ignorance of Oyster Cards, but I understood that Travelcards were an entirely different thing. I am aware that those travelling out of London who hold an Oyster Card find the whole business of working out what they can do when they travel outside the TfL zones confusing. I was attempting to suggest some kind of simplification. Happy for others who understand more to suggest something better - but please make it simple and easy to understand.

4/5 - The main point is that all these attempts to influence travel habits by building in anomalies to try to get people to use what are seen to be lesser-used trains are the ultimate reason the fare structure is such a convoluted mess. If we want a simpler fare structure that is fair for passengers, then fiddling around like this should be ended. And this means generally there should be no specific fares for particular trains, except sleepers or other services where there genuinely is something different being offered.

Primarily you are (and expect to be) charged on the distance travelled. We keep reading that there will be some who will lose out on any simplification. But if someone is paying more than another travelling a shorter distance to the same destination, but less than another person travelling from a previous stop on the same service to the same destination, people will generally accept that this is fair.

Exactly my point. You can't buy a ticket for one plane then try to board another. So why do some passengers try do that with advance purchase train tickets?

Around 18 months to two years ago the ability to buy privilege rate tickets online became available. As an experiment I looked up London (any) to Birmingham (any).

I think over 20 options were shown ranging from £8 to £110! And this is with 75% off.

Luckily I was on a BR box that day but if it's a minefield for staff then how are the passengers supposed have the correct ticket for the journey being made?

But that is exactly point. By all means sell tickets in advance, but on the same terms as turn up and pay customers so everyone knows the rules and they are simple and fair. As I said in my post, separate out reserving a seat in advance from paying for the journey itself, and if you miss the train you can still travel, you just don't get the seat of your choice.

If we are to simplify rail fares and make rail travel attractive there are two easy wins - harmonising rules applicable to advance and walk up fares, and stop trying to influence travel habits by complex fare structures backed up with complex rules about ticket validity.

Trains are not planes. With the exception of Eurostar, there is a substantial proportion of walk up passengers, most stop at several points on route, there are no immigration and security formalities, not the severe restriction on space and luggage weight with the need to carry most of it separately to the passenger accommodation. It's much closer to a bus or coach, but with more flexibility as to passenger capacity.

Hmmm. I'd love to see any research done on this - do many break a journey, or simply go from A to B and then most back to A? I suspect that I'm not far wrong in that very few break a journey.

I read that as most trains stop at several points along the route.   I can think of Stourbridge Junction to Stourbridge Town, Waterloo to Bank, and some Kings Cross to Cambridge services that don't.

... and for rail travel, it can be a major major benefit for passengers: out to 'B', back from 'C' without the car shuffle.

Mark