Forgot young persons rail card, charged additional £60. Mitigating circumstances?

Livingthedream

^^^ good advice, you have nothing to lose in complaining and you might just be lucky and receive some travel vouchers in the post. It's a long shot but all it will cost you is time and a 1st class stamp. Enclose all tickets purchased orginal and replacements and a photocopy of your 16-25 railcard.

Good luck

Pollycat

Livingthedream wrote: »

^^^ good advice, you have nothing to lose in complaining and you might just be lucky and receive some travel vouchers in the post. It's a long shot but all it will cost you is time and a 1st class stamp. Enclose all tickets purchased orginal and replacements and a photocopy of your 16-25 railcard.

Good luck

OP
I'd follow this advice.

BUT - as other posters have said - word your letter very carefully.
In your first post you mention 'complain' several times - do not make this a letter of complaint. Be very polite.
You are not entitled to anything and are asking for a refund as a goodwill gesture.

Keep your letter brief, to-the-point and as unemotional as you can (in the circumstances).

Tigsteroonie

Arriva were sympathetic - on your outbound journey, you were not penalised for forgetting your railcard or forced to buy another ticket. But it's another thing to expect them to be equally sympathetic on your return journey, as at this point you were already aware that you were travelling in contravention of the T&C of your ticket.

Still, nothing ventured. You might get lucky - we complained to Northern about sitting on a stationary train for an hour, between stations, with no power. Northern sent us free return tickets ... and I later found out that it wasn't their fault!

glider3560

Best thing to have done would be refuse to pay the fare and ask for an "Unpaid Fares Notice" (or whatever Arriva call them). This entitles you to complete the journey and then later dispute the fare before committing to pay anything.

Pollycat

glider3560 wrote: »

Best thing to have done would be refuse to pay the fare and ask for an "Unpaid Fares Notice" (or whatever Arriva call them). This entitles you to complete the journey and then later dispute the fare before committing to pay anything.

I'm not sure that disputing the fare would do any good.
Arriva's website says the Railcard must be shown.
The OP couldn't do that.

In Arriva's T&C's it says (the bold text is on the website):
You must carry your Railcard with you on your journey and when asked by rail staff, you must show a valid ticket and valid Railcard. If you fail to do so, you will be required to pay the full price Standard Single fare for your journey as if no ticket was purchased before starting the journey and in some cases a Penalty Fare. This does not apply if there was no ticket office at the station at which you began your journey or if the ticket office was closed and there was no ticket machine from which you could buy a discounted ticket.

Link here (Conditions of Use #6)
http://www.16-25railcard.co.uk/buy-16-25-railcard/railcard-terms-conditions

So, as a number of other posters have said, I think the best the OP can do is write a grovelling letter and hope for a goodwill gesture.

OP - have you drafted a letter to Arriva?
Or do you still want some advice on that?

kajstring24

I'm sorry, but using your own angst as an excuse won't always help you. Some companies will take pity and try and help, but at the end of the day rules are rules. If I've had a bad day, it doesn't give me the right to be rude to someone and for me to expect them to understand. People have their own problems to deal with, so why should they be burdened with yours?

By all means, write a letter of complaint, it won't hurt, someone at the company may have some sympathy. I see someone has already had a positive experience doing this, so it's worth a try, especially if you're polite about it.

geordieracer

Also when you write your letter make sure you write in paragraphs and be polite or else it will go straight in the bin.

david39

I agree with geordieracer.

When you write to them, space your points out into separate paragraphs.

Your original post was just a mass of words which, after reading a couple of lines, just became a blur. Frankly, I just glossed over most of what you had written and got the gist of what you were saying from the replies of others afterwards.

If you put a blank line between each point you want to make, then the reader can follow it more easily and, hopefully, sympathetically - otherwise, they'll just read the first couple of sentences and then bin it.

But, good luck with your claim!

Pollycat

Key to a good letter:
keep it brief, to-the-point and unemotional