Train fine

[Justnavigating]

Firstly - I know rules are in place for a reason and that when it comes down to it , you don’t pay you get a fine . But this happened to my brother today and it made me really angry for him !

He collects his children from an area about 30 min from the city centre . He gets the train . He usually gets the bus to the city centre then the train , then gets off at the city centre on the way back and takes them for food in the city centre as a treat then gets the bus home . So he gets a single to get the children then he gets a family ticket back to the city centre . Today , he decided to stay on the train and not get off at the city centre but a few stops later at a station near where he lives . When he arrived at the station near his hours he saw police checking tickets at the exit and then he realised he hadn’t got the ticket back to this station , only to the city centre a few stops before . So he went on his app and purchased a ticket quickly for him and the children from the city centre to where he was getting off . He said he just didn’t think when he was on the train . But he paid it . If he had originally booked it back to this station it would have only been £1.20 more but he got the ticket on his app from the city centre to this stop that cost him £5.20 . He did it as he got off the train as he realised at that point when he saw the police , that his ticket wasn’t valid.

So , he then walked over and showed them and they said they saw that he had just done that and the time was different ( they could see it was for trains after as he had just booked it ) . He explained what had happened and that he just forgot so that’s why he had done it and that the fare had now been paid but they said that he wouldn’t have done that if they hadn’t been there so they gave him a fine - £50 if paid within a certain amount of time £100 if not . He isn’t confrontational and he had his children with him . He did say to them that he had paid the fare so did they really need to give him the fine and he said the officer was quite rude and said that that’s what happens when you try to dodge fares . He has said that if they weren’t there it’s likely that he wouldn’t have even realised he hadn’t paid for those stops on his return , but he did and he did pay for the ticket - so technically he has paid for the ticket and still has the fine .

Im really angry for him . It’s a small station ( he said there were about 15 officers ) it is in a not very nice area and and area where I imagine people would just get on and not pay ( it’s rarely staffed , just machines ) so I get that they are clamping down on it but he realised his mistake and he said he was really embarrassed as about 5 officers surrounded him and his children as though he was a criminal and the one who spoke to him was really rude .

Not that it’s relevant but he really is a good man . He goes every week to collect his children for the weekend from their mother who moved quite far away . He collects them and returns them on the train , he’s a great dad - he would never try to not pay a fare . He works hard … I know the officers don’t know this but when I know there are people that would deliberately not pay and when caught would give fake details - it just angers me . Surely they could have seen that he had paid ( so in this instance just warned him ) but to slap a fine on him and treat him like that when he was with his children it’s just made me so angry .

YABU - he didn’t pay , he shouldn’t have forgot , tough luck

YANBU - the officer could have been lenient or at least not treated him like a criminal

We get this, they work in teams. The stations are busy.

Oh how ridiculous! He is not a criminal .

Completely incorrect . I know him , he does not do this regularly .

He didn't forget though, he just didn't want to pay the extra most likely

It's a 'fare' cop imo.

He deliberately stayed on the train knowing he hadn't purchased the correct tickets and was caught.
He would not of paid the extra if the police were not there.
He is a fare dodger and it's theft
It's that simple!

I bet he foes it regularly in which case he technically is a criminal

You said in your OP that he was treated like one. I never said he was one, just that he behaved like one. There's a difference.

How do you know? Just because he told you it's the first time he's ever done it?

Honestly it's much more likely that he's done it before especially as you say the station is normally unmanned and today was the first time he got caught.

If he broke the rules, got caught and fined, what would you call him? It was a crime, regardless of how you say he normally acts.

He had a valid ticket though. I believe the terms and conditions are that you shouldn’t be charged a penalty fare if you have a valid ticket but need to pay an excess because you have travelled further or used it on a service that the ticket isn’t valid on (eg an off peak ticket on a peak train), unless it is obvious you were trying to fare dodge eg you only bought a ticket to the first stop out of London on a train going to Glasgow. He only needed to pay the difference in the fare between his ticket and the correct fare at the first opportunity ie to the train manager, ticket inspector or barrier guard at the other end. (or before boarding if the mistake was already known). You can’t do it on an app.

Buying a new ticket makes him look guilty of trying to fare dodge IMO. If he had gone to the barriers and said he needed to pay an excess fare as they decided to come straight home instead of stopping in town or he made a mistake out of habit, he probably would have only had to pay £1.20.

My IL local train station has no ticket facilities at all - not even machines- and you are allowed to buy on day of travel and on train.

Recent years they've had huge arguments with train staff and once a transport police man about this - with them insisting they should have bought before travel. They are not yet okay with phone tickets. They now get the bus go to big station and then buy fir longer journeys.

Honestly I do think your brother was at fault here but as he had tickets before being stopped there may be some grey area - he could try an appeal or it may be better to chalk it up to a mistake not do it again and move on.

I get the train a few times a month. My tickets are probably checked once a month. I’d be quids in if I only bought a ticket when I saw the inspectors, but the rules are to buy a tickets before you board so that’s what I do.

For all the inspectors know, your DB does this every week and only paid the right fare when he was about to get caught. They don’t know it was the first time, and everyone caught will say it’s their first time. It’s not their job to use discretion or to be lie detectors, it’s to fine people who didn’t buy tickets when they were supposed to and your brother is one of those people

If there were 15 police officers at one small unmanned station then I would imagine there was something else going on.
If 5 police officers were surrounding your brother then I doubt he meekly explained he had made an error.
BTP don't regularly check tickets. Train and station staff do this and then call police if there is a problem (not just a fare dodger who then buys a ticket)
I'm sorry OP I don't think your brother is telling you the whole truth.

Op we all make errors like this and sometimes it bites us. I paid for parking and got a fine once as i was on autopilot and keyed in the license plate of our other car.

I bet this was Northern.

Guess I’m going against the grain here, but your brother had paid twice over for train tickets, I genuinely don’t see why it’s worth all the bureaucracy and paperwork to fine someone who’s actually paid. Fining people who haven’t paid at all, fair enough but he had given the train line their money and then some.

Some days they do targeted operations at one particular station or on one particular line.

That's what we get round my way anyway. Turn up and there's a good 20+ team of ticket inspectors and police

Think I need to copy and paste this - he DID forget , I’ve already said this . I wouldn’t bother to post this if I knew he was dodging . I know him .

I think a lot of people who fare dodge probably claim that they only did so “in error”, sadly. The police aren’t to know who is genuine and who isn’t.

This. His story doesn’t add up.

The point is you cant really ever truly know someone. Just because he told you it's the first time he's ever travelled and not paid the whole fare doesn't mean it was.

Years ago DB and I were getting trains somewhere and this was when fewer ticket machines worked too. The ticket office was closed and the ticket machine was broken, no one else around, so we just decided to get on a train without a ticket and pay at the other end. No barriers either apart from walk eg walk through ones. I think this was in the days where you could’ve bought a platform ticket but again nowhere to buy it from.

So we went on the journey which was sort of cross country, guards or ticket inspectors got on our train.

We said our situation but they didn’t believe us. As I had a monthly travel pass (trains etc) I was only charged for the extra zone. DB was fined and made to pay something like £20 upwards. But it meant he always got a ticket. They did say he could challenge it but he never bothered to do so.

This is the thing . He had paid part of the journey ( had he added that to the journey originally it would have been £1.20 more - why would he deliberately take that risk for £1.20 ? ) and then he also paid separately again for the ticket , before he actually reached them . So he has paid . It seems really pedantic to then fine him .

I totally get that there are people that regularly dodge fares and will always have a sob story and if he hadn’t got the ticket when he saw them and just tried to explain his mistake to them then I would understand that , they can’t be expected to just believe every story .

Also ( again I’m not saying the officers should have considered this ) but surely those that regularly dodge fares wouldn’t have an app set up with their card details on that they could quickly access and pay so quickly on !

I've had a very similar thing happen to me. It was 100% a genuine mistake on my part and I did try to explain but they were having none of it so I had to pay the fine. It was annoying and embarrassing at the time but in the grand scheme of things not very important.

Probably British transport police
Real Police wouldn’t be checking tickets.

Some of the stations I use don’t have manned stations or barriers- but a guard usually sells tickets on the train and to get off at bigger stations you definitely need a ticket to get through the barriers.