I should be very grateful for any advice on my rights regarding a problem I have encountered today. I ordered some mail order herbs a couple of weeks ago, which I paid for by PayPal. I had an email on 8 April to say that my plants had been despatched. I was concerned that they haven't arrived yet, and contacted the retailer today. They have just informed me that the plants were apparently delivered by Yodel at 11.40 a.m. on 10 April, and were signed for by someone called John. I was positively at home all day on 10 April, and no delivery was attempted by Yodel. I've had problems with Yodel before, as have many people that I know. There is no-one by the name of John living at my address, or at any nearby house. The retailer has said that they will go back to Yodel again to ask for more details of where my plants were delivered, but have told me that because the delivery has been signed for, even though it wasn't by me, there is nothing they can do! I assume that this is not true and wondered if the best course of action would be for me to start a dispute through PayPal?

I suppose so, please! It happened so long ago, I had completely forgotten about it .

I was thinking the same! I must have asked to be notified when replies were posted to thread and was very surprised to see that such an old thread had been resurrected, particularly when the issue had been resolved satisfactorily four and a half years ago!

Thank you very much for that suggestion, Tide. I had planned on writing to IPFAS out of courtesy to thank them for cancelling the PCN, so I will raise this with them.

I thought I would give an update on my daughter's penalty fare notice. I had a letter from SouthEastern on Thursday acknowledging that their member of staff had acted inappropriately in issuing my daughter with a penalty fare notice when she had not been attempting to travel or gain access to the platform without her ticket. They explained that the correct course of action would have been to set a Silk arrangement in place, whereby the staff at the station could have liaised with staff at her destination station and I could have met her at the station to pay her fare. SouthEastern have told me that they will ensure that their staff at the station in question are better informed in future. This was confirmed in the letter I have received from IPFAS this morning. IPFAS said in their letter that one of the instances in which they will assess an appeal 'is where the penalty fare notice has been issued to a minor, and the parent/guardian of said child had not been informed of said issue. This is because the child may not understand the right of appeal, and the first a parent/guardian would know of the matter is the reminder from Revenue Protection Support Services'. Now that I have brought this to their attention, IPFAS have cancelled the penalty fare notice. Had the jobsworth I spoke to on the telephone initially not been so intent on being as unhelpful as possible, and been a little more aware of the IPFAS guidelines in assessing appeals and accepted that parents should be informed when their children are issued with fines, this could have been resolved far more quickly. Anyway thank you to those who offered help.

Many thanks for taking the time to offer your advice, Esio Trot - it's much appreciated. I'm sorry that my query seems to have led to a bit of a ruck; having never been issued with a PCN before, I thought this would be a good place to come for some advice; I didn't quite expect the response I've had and I think I'll back out of this now. But I'll come back and let you know when I've had confirmation that the PCN has been cancelled.

Yes, I was thinking of doing that. My MP is a fairly high profile cabinet member and has a good reputation for dealing with constituents' problems

Many thanks for your advice. When I asked about further action that would be taken if the PCN was not paid, as well as being told that they would start court proceedings when she was 18, I was also told that if that was not paid, details of the debt would affect her credit rating in future years! however, I have written to set out why I think the PCN should be withdrawn, and will wait to see what response I get. MTM - as I said in my last post, once I had been able to discuss what had happened with my daughter, she told me that the circumstances were different to what I had been told by IPFAS. It is not a question of me changing my account of the events - I was given a different side to the situation by my daughter. In respect of your comment about my daughter entering a compulsory ticket area of a station without a ticket, this was not the case. She approached the ticket collector at the barrier and explained her predicament to him before attempting to access the platform. He then issued the PCN and allowed her to proceed. As far as I'm aware, the main hall of a station is not a compulsory ticket area. Therefore my daughter was not attempting to evade paying for her ticket at all. I have already read the websites to which you provide links, but thank you anyway. I am confident that I have good grounds to get the PCN withdrawn given the circumstances.

Thanks very much for your interesting point, Esio Trot. I would have assumed that any contract was between me as the purchaser of the ticket and South Eastern Railways, and that I would be responsible for any breach of the regulations as my daughter is a minor. Unfortunately, my daughter sent back the PCN without keeping a copy, so I can't check the wording. However, now that I've spoken to her in more detail about the circumstances, it seems that the information I was given over the phone about the issue of the PCN was not quite correct. My daughter realised that she didn't have her season ticket and photocard when she got to the station, and asked the ticket collector at the barrier as she entered the station what she could do because she had forgotten her season ticket and had no money on her to buy a ticket. He told her that she could travel, but that he would have to issue her with a PCN, which she should send to the address on the form, together with copy of her pass and photocard, with no need for an accompanying letter. This is what she did, albeit fairly close to the deadline for appeal. Having been reading the information on South Eastern Railways' Penalty Charge policy, it does appear to me that the ticket collector shouldn't have issued her with a PCN under the circumstances, but shoudl have told her to get a Permit to Travel, which I understand gives authority to travel, and to make payment of the appropriate fare within two hours. From what I can see, a PCN is issued where someone appears to be trying to evade the payment of a fare. In my daughter's case, she hadn't even attempted to travel, but had sought the advice of a South Eastern Railways employee before trying to even get on to the platform, let alone board a train. So I cannot see that she breached any regulation in this instance.

Listing her on eBay has certainly crossed my mind! I will be writing to ask if they will consider an appeal from me after the deadline. I'm not particularly holding out much hope, but you never know. Thanks for your time in responding

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Thanks for your reply. My issue isn't really that they issued a penalty fare, because my daughter should have had her photocard with her. My concern is that, as her legal guardian, I have no right to appeal against the notice. apparently South Eastern Trains can waive up to two penalty notices in a year for people who have forgotten to carry their season ticket/photocard, so the appeal would probably have been successful. I don't think it is acceptable to rely on a child telling their parent that they have received a fine, and not notifying the parent. If I had known that she had received the notice, then I would have appealed. When I received the letter today, and found out about the notice for the first time, I assumed that I could appeal. But apparently I cannot do so.

I wondered if anyone could give me any advice on whether there is anything I can do about a problem I have please. I have just received a letter addressed to my 15 year old daughter, care of parent/guardian from the Independent Penalty Fares Appeal Service. It appears that my daughter was issues a penalty fare notice on 9 May on her way to school because she did not have her photocard with her to accompany her monthly train season ticket. She obviously appealed against the £20 fine she was given, but her letter was not received until 2 June. The 21 day deadline expired on Friday, 30 June, and her letter was apparently received on the next working day. Her appeal was not considered because it was received too late. The first I knew of this was when the letter in response to her appeal, dated 10 June, arrived today. I have spoken to the IPFAS on the telephone, and we went round in circles. Whilst I fully accept that my daughter was at fault for not having her photocard in the wallet with her season ticket, and that she was at fault for not telling me that she had been issued with a penalty charge notice, I am surprised that an official organisation such as IPFAS can communicate with a child and impose fines without notifying their parents. My daughter clearly thought that she would be able to sort this out through an appeal, but, as a child in the middle of exams, she obviously missed the deadline by the narrowest of margins. Had I, as the legal guardian of the child concerned, been made aware of the situation, I could have made certain that the appeal was received by IPFAS in time, and presumably the appeal woudl have been considered. I asked both people I spoke to at IPFAS whether they had a duty to inform the parents of children who were issued with fines, and their response was that they were doing so now - AFTER the appeal deadline has expired. both people were typical jobsworths, and were totally unhelpfu. There must be many children who would be worried about telling their parents that they had been given a fine, and surely there is some onus on the company issuing the fine to inform parents at the time of issue rather than when they no longer have the righ to appeal? :-x:-x Any advice would be gratefully received!