South West Trains - Penalty Fare inspectors

womble100

never mind op
next time you dont buy a ticket the inspectors might not be there and you can happily walk out without paying,but dont worry i will pay for your journey next time the fares go up to allow for people fare dodging.

Iamthesmartestmanalive

Mistryman wrote: »

Hi caliston,

Thanks for this - it really sheds some light on the whole situation.

I should add I was dropped off in Staines in the first place, & needed to make my way back to Datchet by train, when the encounter with the ticket-checker occurred at Datchet.

So, as such, there are no 'witnesses'; only the people who were also in the queue with me (whose details I don't unfortunately have), & as you say, Staines station's account of the situation.

Whether SWT regard the queues when I was at Staines station as a 'problem' of their doing, is of course, another matter...

Cheers...

But surely your "witnesses" would have all been stopped for not having tickets too and punished, did you not all think to swap details and explain your problems together

I mean 5 or 6 people with a problem due to queues is far more convincing than one

And I agree with the previous poster, if you were that interested in traveeling with a ticket you would have got one on arrival, instead you saw a chance to escape without paying and got caught

LCFC_Foxile

womble100 - you have completely lost me now. I really don't know what you are on about.

Which of my postings have you interpreted as any intention that I'm going to get on a train without a ticket again? Or that I've done this sort of thing in the past?

Sure, you only have my word on what I've said here, but then consequently, you & 1 or 2 others on this board appear to be so disbelieving that something like this could happen to anyone. I wonder why that is.

LCFC_Foxile

Iamthesmartestmanalive - apologies for not being as thorough as you would have been in that situation, but I can only assume one of 3 things about the other people in the queue :

1. That they were getting on a different train altogether (the other platforms are London-bound; I was on a Windsor-bound train).

2. That they travelled onto a stop further than mine.

3. That their reasons were more convincing than mine when approached by an inspector.

And as for "...instead you saw a chance to escape without paying and got caught". Oh dear - I'm not even going to furnish that with a response.

Save your cynicism for something much more worthwhile.

Dylanwing

As some of you will know, the trains on this line run every 30 minutes, so I had a choice between getting on a train without a ticket, or arriving 30 minutes later than scheduled to pick up my son from my friends who were looking after him. Unfortunately, they could not look after him longer that day as they heading off for another engagement that evening.

To me, this is the key point - Perhaps the detractors would like to say what they would have done in such circumstances?

LCFC_Foxile

An update on this, & specifically to voyager2002, & anyone else who thinks approaching someone in uniform when there are issues regarding ticket purchasing on the day.

Spent exactly 14 minutes waiting at Datchet station this morning - long queues at both the ticket machine & the manned-window.

The manned-ticket window was hardly moving, so joined the ticket machine queue thinking (hoping!) that this would be quicker.

When the London-bound train pulled-in, there were 2 people in front of me at the ticket machine & at least 4 people from the manned-window that sprinted from the queues & boarded the train without a ticket.

I ran to the middle of the train where I figured the guard would be & spoke to him. In short...

(1) He had no ticket-purchasing machine; therefore, I could not purchase a ticket from him at all.
(2) He could not give 'authority to travel', & informed me that I would be getting on the train at my own risk, & would be charged a penalty fare if I was approached by a ticket inspector at any point of my journey.

Considering my encounter of a couple of weeks ago (which I've written to the appeals board about, detailing exactly what happened - no reply as yet), I decided it would be better not to board the train, & get to work late, instead of chancing it, & possibly ending up with a journey costing 2.5 times more than buying a ticket & then boarding a train.

skate1966

Just to give another slant on this topic !

talking about fare dodgers well i have just started using the train to commute to work, now the price i have to pay for a ticket in my opinion is disgusting !! in this day and age of encouraging everyone to go green and leave your car at home shouldnt we be paying a fair price to get to work by train come on you have to entice people out of their cars surely !!

and as a little bonus, if the fares were not so extortionate we may have less fare dodgers and as a result employ less inspectors and we may all end up being smiley happy people instead of being on here bickering about fare dodgers !!!

LCFC_Foxile

SWT could win a lot of goodwill back by announcing on the trains that a ticket can be purchased from the guard in the xth carriage.

That way, anyone caught without a ticket has exhausted every possible opportunity of buying one, & SWT are well within their rights to penalty-fare those people.

There are going to be queues every so often, & when trains are 30 minutes apart, very few people have the luxury of thinking they can board the next train.

The fact that you can't buy a ticket from the guard, & that the permit machines have been removed, seems to suggest that they are happy to tap into the penalty fares as a particularly "lucrative revenue stream" (as the clever-clogs who probably thought of it in the first place would have put it!).

As long as we, the passengers, see the benefits of the revenue they collect in terms of more ticket windows & ticket machines at the station, guards with ticket machines, & sensibly-priced tickets, then we'll spend less time on here slagging them off!