Penalty fare due to season ticket in other school blazer

[gigaset]

Hi Folks,

 

My 15 year old son has been landed with a £60 fine from those wonderful people at Southern (Govia) for not producing a valid ticket. In fact, he does have a valid season ticket, but it happened to be in his other blazer so he didn't have it with him.

 

I am told that he was informed at the time that if he produced his season ticket at the station office no further action would be taken. My son insists he did that (um, yeah - I will give him the benefit of the doubt, although Govia apparently aren't).

 

I have explained the situation to Govia and have the season ticket to hand but they have declined the appeal.

 

Do we suck it up and pay, or is there any form of kind words or actions that can be taken here?

 

Thanks

[king12345]

The pf is correctly issued because your son could not produce a valid ticket when he was stopped.

However the toc should have been more lenient when you appealed and produced evidence of a season ticket covering the day of the incident, even though they didn't have to.

Why don't you contact the local press?

If they have space to fill they might run a story about this.

Also twitter is a powerful tool, but make sure you post facts, not opinions.

[firstclassx]

£60 doesn't sound right to me.

 

A Penalty Fare would be £20 or twice the (child, if 15 and under) single fare - whatever is the highest. So unless the child fare was £30, no Penalty Fare would come to £60. A Penalty Fare would also result in a small paper document being given to your child immediately. If you've had a letter in the post instead, read on.

 

It sounds like this could me a more serious, "reported for prosecution" case, where they are offering to settle the matter out of court to avoid prosecution and a criminal record.

 

Your child has actually committed a CRIMINAL offence, by entering a train and failing to produce a valid ticket on demand, (Railway Byelaw 18).

 

The only other way you could potentially get to £60 is if they have added an administrative fee on because you haven't appealed or responded within the statutory timescales.

 

If you could let us know what exactly is being offered for £60, we can advise further.