Southern Railway thieves charge me £20 penalty fare and lie.

matt1979_2

Firstly, this three minute thing you are refering to is rubbish - forget it as an arguement you are wrong. What you are refering to is the national conditions of carriage, which does indeed state the target queue time is 5 Mins peak time and 3 Mins off peak. HOWEVER: This is a target and not a guarantee. There is NO maximum time you must wait to buy your ticket.
Under the penalty fare rules, and more importantly the regulation of the railways act 1889 it is an offence to board a train without a ticket or relevant permission (i.e permit to travel, a notice indicating it is Ok to buy tickets on the train, rail staff telling you to buy on the train etc.)
It is your responsibility to ensure you allow enough time for your journey and allow enough time to purchase a ticket. Simply being late, or arriving minutes before your train does NOT give you the right to get on the train without a ticket. It is not the train companies fault you are late, and how long it is reasonable to wait to buy a ticket is open to interpretation however in my experience it is a lot longer than three minutes.
You do not mention which station it is you boarded from, but if they have ticket machines or permit machines in addition to the ticket office then obviously there was an alternative method to buy tickets, again undermining your three minute arguement.
DO NOT even think about small claims court, you simply will not win. As for those saying it wouldn't be worth the train companies while fighting you there, it will. If they do not fight, and win, they will not be able to issue another penalty fare. The relative costs to the company are minimal, each TOC has it's own legal department who deal with this sort of thing every day and are paid solely to fight and prosecute these cases in the courts.
Your right of appeal was IPFAS, the Independant Penalty fare appeals service. As you may gather from the title, this is an INDEPENDANT body who are nothing to do with the train company who issued the penalty fare. They allow 21 days to respond to the penalty fare notice and submit you case for appeal. This time is set down by law, as is the criteria by which they measure each penalty fare issue. If you have not managed to submit an appeal within this period that is down to you. There is a reason that everything is done through the post and not on the phone, (without wanting to sound threatening) they need to keep track of all correspondence with you so they can present it in court at a later date, obviously a phone call you have no record of whereas letters you will have and therefore cannot dispute in court.
As unhelpful as this may sound, you were issued a penalty fare correctly - in accordance with the penalty fare rules and relevant acts of parliament. However understandable your reasons, you boarded a train without a ticket. Period. This is the only fact the train company needs to prove, and is a fact you have not disputed. Railway byelaw 18 states that:

"no person shall enter any train for the purpose of travelling on the railway unless he has with him a valid ticket entitling him to travel."

This byelaw is punishable by a fine of up to £1000 and/or up to three months in prison.

If I was you I would put it down to experience and pay the penalty fare. From everything you have said, you do not have a case to fight it and the train company have a case you cannot dispute - you were unable to produce a valid ticket for the journey you were making.
If you do not pay the penalty fare by the date the set down they can add reasonable charges on top. They can, and very often do, chase any remaining amount through the magistrates court again adding reasonable costs (in this case set by the magistrate) on top. All of a sudden a £20 Penalty fare can start to add up to 100's of pounds.
Also, on a point of law what a penalty fare is is just that a fare, the penalty fare notice is from a legal point of view a ticket. DO NOT confuse this with a fine, as such you cannot dispute the issue of the notice in quite the same way as a fine, as the train company openly advertise that this is what you may have to pay if you board the train without a ticket.
Again, I emphasise the fact you did not have a vaild ticket for travel. Unless you can dispute this point you have no case, your reasons for not having a ticket are unfortunately irrelevant - you have gone past your 21 days to make your case.
Seriously, put it down to experience and pay up, it isn't worth the hassle, you will not win.

Voyager2002

Matt1979 is absolutely right. Your only hope is a complaint that the station was not operated correctly (particularly blocking access to the ticket machine); that you lost money as a result; and ASKING them to refund your loss as an act of good will.

johnmoney05

Last year, I travelled One Railway from London to Ingatestone, holding one day travel card. I feel asleep when I got up, I was one stop behind at Chelmsford. I got off straightaway, because there was only one hour a train between Chelmsford to Ingatestone, I went to the gate to ask the staff there to see if I could buy a return ticket between Ingatestone and Chelmsford. So I could walk out the station. The first thing the woman said "you need to pay £20 penalty". I said if that was the case, I would rather wait the next train back to Ingatestone. She said "no, you still need to pay for the £20 penalty." I said "I am still inside the station, why should I pay." She would not let me go, then I just had to pay for that damn £20!!! plus my one day travel ticket costs which was almost empty my pocket!

shockHorror

Matt1979, do you work for a train company or penalty fare collection agency? Call me a cynic but that is a lot of information for anyone to know... :-)

The Department for Transport has the penalty fares rules on their website:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/rail/legislation/pf/annexapenaltyfaresrules2002

See if you can find anything in the section about when a penalty fare cannot be charged...

sgcfc

It think it is worth including the phone number for IPFAS as it is difficult to easily find out.

The IPFAS phone number is: 0870 166 0256

However, you cannot appeal over the phone but you can pay your fine over the phone and are able to speak to an advisor.

smawle

I am in the process trying to get back a penalty fare taken unfairly by South West Trains. I had no luck with the Appeal Panel as they seem to just ignore any correspondence and London travelwatch are the same, 2 months of getting no response to emails.

I did try and take this to the county court, but the judge would not proceed with it as he didn't think he had the jurisdiction to process the case. So, now I am also out of pocket for that.

It seems that if I didn't pay this fare I would get taken to court in an instant, but I am unable to take South West Trains to court.

Does anyone have any experience about taking train companies to court?

moonrakerz

Matt1979's post is very impressive, chapter and verse - just like a ticket inspector !

However, the railway companies seem to be going the same way as the London congestion charge and the oyster card. Make the system as complicated as possible then you can rake in huge sums in "penalties" when a minor transgression is unwittingly made by a traveller.

I'm afraid the "it's all your own fault" lecture doesn't work with me ! - the Railway Companies seem to do all they can to entrap people. Chippenham station, during the morning rush often has one ticket window open and three people checking tickets on the footbridge to the platforms - this practice has even made the letters in the "Telegraph".

Even the ticket machines installed to cut staff, are poor design, poorly sited and only give out the cheapest tickets by a very circuitous procedure.

AND - the touch screens on them are DISGUSTING ! they should provide rubber gloves ! MRSA, C Diff, E Coli , etc, etc, etc ...................................... or perhaps just clean them now and again.

PS: Apparently they are not ticket inspectors any more, they are :- "revenue protection employees" - delusions of grandeur !

Kez100

Why did you sit by the collector and not approach him immediately to buy a ticket?

LuciferTDark

Going back to the OP for a second, I have a few questions that I feel need answering as it seems we haven't heard the entire story.

Would waiting for the next train have been a life threatening inconvenience?
were you late for work?
were you actually on your way anywhere important?
was it just a shopping trip as your post seems to suggest?

chuckley

basically u got on a train with no ticket and got fined??

sum1 please show me the problem here... as i cant c it...