Help - Son issued with court summons for non payment of train fare - wrong person and wrong address

[Jesuswasacapricorn]

Awake and worried about potential repercussions of this. I'll try and explain it as simply as I can without giving info - all names have been changed to protect the innocent 😀

1. Joe Bloggs - address in the North - date of birth 01.01.2003
2. Joe Bloggs - address in the South - date of birth 01.01.2006

Son (Joe Bloggs 1) gets a court summons at his home address for non payment of a train fare by Reading Courts, travelling on GWR in January. He's never travelled on that train and was at uni in an exam at the time it was issued. The first covering page of the summons has his name and our address in the north.

On the actual court summons itself it has the name of Joe Bloggs 2, address in the south and date of birth as 01.01.2005 and also 01.01. 2006.

I am concerned about where they have got my address from and if it will affect a/ my son's credit rating and b/ his job prospects - he has just got a job today to work in finance.

I'm awake fretting that this will affect his ability to get a mortgage and they'll search him and see this against him. What the hell do we do to sort out this?

We've emailed the revenue person at the train company that's on the summons and son has called the revenue protection where he now has to prove it wasn't him - the guy on the phone called him dude - that's another rage in itself. He has the evidence of being in his final exam.

I'm absolutely fuming that they've broken GDPR by messing up all this information and caused stress when its nothing to do with him. And the original Joe Bloggs won't get his summons.

This is the point where I have to 'Out' myself for a very very nasty habit

Generally the place to go for advice on rail related prosecution etc is

https://www.railforums.co.uk/forums/disputes-prosecutions.152/

for more technical advice

This happened to me, someone skipped a train and gave my name and a false number so somehow they found me and sent a fine.

I just phoned and said on such and such a date you said I skipped the train but I didn't, I wasn't on the train. Check cctv if needs be it isn't me, I was (at work probably) elsewhere, I don't live on that line I wasn't there.

And they said OK wrote back to me saying not to worry about it. It'll be fine, summons doesn't relate to him.

So he needs to write to whoever issued the summons and tell them that, along with him not being the person they are looking for.

All the other stuff about solicitors and checking credit records is massively overreacting. GWR will not pay your legal bills over this.

But you would agree that under GDPR, once a company has been made aware of a data mistake with someone's personal data , then they have a duty to ensure that they correct it.

Absolutely. But they don’t have to take somebody’s word for it, they are perfectly entitled to ask for proof to an appropriate standard. Think of the problem of cloned plates on cars, and other similar mistakes.

(And they also are certainly not under any obligation not to call somebody “dude”, per OP)

We have quite an unusual name and had this happen. Luckily the middle name was different. I would write to the Company Recorded/registered and telephone the Court. Explain you are not the person on the summons but a person with a similar name. Point out the difference in DOB and your son has proof he couldn't have been on that train. They will hopefully sort it and get extremely angry with the Company doing the summons.

Call IRCAS. This happens all the time when ticketless travelers give other made up addresses. It happened to my husband a few years ago and he worked on the railway as a station manager! getting free travel.

surely the 'revenue protection' person should be in the dock themselves for the "dude" offence? 🤔 i am barely joking 🤯

It’s definitely not a scam is it before you send of photocopy’s of IDs etc?

@Jesuswasacapricorn As @JohnofWessex has stated the place to post your issue is Railforums - they will advise exactly what you should do.

I don't know if this has been mentioned on this thread, but if GWR have sent you a letter containing someone else's details, they may have breached the Data Protection Act and could find themselves in serious trouble. Mention this to your solicitor.

They've gone to a lot of effort if it's a scam. I've got details of the convo with revenue protection guy. It's got a few pages to the document and the franking machine post mark is of the revenue office address.

The call handler talking to my son seemed extremely unprofessional though so who knows.