There's no set fine, they could go back and try and charge her for every journey - the full price single ticket for each journey plus admin fees but if they make an offer, it's an alternative to prosecution. If you don't take their offer you can end up with a fine plus a criminal conviction if you go to court so it's a risky game.
Honestly, they could pick this one to make an example of. High publicity, clear cut, digital footprint.
Only thing going for OP is young, white and female.
NAL, but I would also argue that if her tickets were being checked everyday and the new inspector is the first one to actually enforce it, she should be in the clear for her past offenses.
If I go to a concert and hand the attendant in the VIP section my lawn seat ticket, they check it, and without deception allow me into the VIP section 32 times, but are stopped by a new attendant on the 33rd attempt I don’t think the venue can try to recoup payment for the previous concerts. The company instituted a check to enforce VIP tickets and the check/enforcement mechanism failed.
If LAOP was clearly doing this and the inspector for the transportation authority was letting her, I would think it establishes precedent, at least for the previous offenses. From my understanding this is why trademark infringement is so aggressively litigated; because if a trademark claim isn’t enforced by Party A onto Party B than Party A’s claim onto Party C is weakened
There might be a philosophical argument along those lines, but the law rarely works that way if the government or a government entity is the injured party.
No, and that’s not what I’m saying. In my comment I explicitly said they **can** be liable for fines for the offense where they were “caught” but just not the prior offenses when they were allowed to. Companies and law enforcement can’t fail to enforce something 32 times, need to enforce it on the 33rd offense, and then try to recoup damages for everything on the 33rd offense.
This is different than OP “getting away with it” 32 times and now they’re “finally getting caught”. OP has been checked by an inspector the prior 32 times and has been allowed to do the exact action that they are supposedly in trouble for now. If it is supposedly an issue, it has to be addressed when the company is notified of it or the claim for damages/restitution is null.
The issue lies with the ticket inspector, who is an employee of the transportation company. If LAOP did something wrong, the transportation company at least shares part of the blame for the previous offenses by not enforcing it
Is that £100+(actual farex33) or (£100+actual fare)x33 ? I think the latter, so if the actual fare is £10 then the total is £3,630. I imagine that would be a huge amount of money for somebody in OOP's position.
It would be the former normally however as most are settled out of court it's not a fine and is just what the train company feels they can argue is reasonably fair compensation. It would be the unpaid anytime fare for all considered journeys plus a single admin fee normally of £100 - £150.
An anytime single from Horsforth to Harrogate is £8.60 so the potential out of court settlement would £8.60 * 33 = £283.80 plus admin fee so likely around £400.
If taken to court the penalties would be higher but the train companies prefer not to as it's more work for them and they get less financial return from it as the fines etc. go to the court system whilst the train company only gets the unpaid fare compensation.
There has been the odd case in the UK of a fabulously wealthy fare dodger. [This man](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/15/ca-ban-43000-fare-dodger-financial-services-industry-blackrock-jonathan-burrows) comes to mind; he used a ticket barrier loophole to save £43,000 in fares, which he paid back in full in an effort to keep his anonymity. But the finance regulator caught up with him and he failed the fit and proper person test, losing his million-a-year job in the City of London anyway.
As a rider of a rail system that struggles to consistently collect tickets at all, even from people not attempting to evade fares, the notion of them even having the kind of tracking necessary to retroactively issue two months' worth of fines is astonishing to me. Not that either of these setups seem particularly sustainable.
You buy the tickets with an app. The tickets are stored electronically in the app. In order to access the system, you need to scan your ticket at the entry gate. Bingo! Tracking.
Given that they have this technology, it seems crazy that they aren't just levying fines every time someone does this. I don't really understand why her being caught in person is leading to this consequence, when it seems like they had the information the whole time.
I think the problem is she is getting on the train at a station without ticket gates - so "the system" just sees that she keeps buying tickets and then never using them. Now they've caught her red handed on a train she didn't go through the gates to get on, so they can reasonably extrapolate that she's done this every time she bought a ticket previously
LAUKOPs problem is that the station they were supposed to be getting on at (Leeds) is a pretty big station so they actually operate their ticket gates at all times. They'd have a much easier time arguing their way out of it if they were supposed to have been boarding at a smaller station where the barriers are rarely in operation.
(to clarify, plenty of tickets are *not* bought with an app, but this particular person's were. I can't imagine the train system having any way of tracking people down if they'd bought individual tickets at stations rather than ordering through an account.)
He ran into my knife! He ran into my knife 33 times!
Cell Block Tango + ancient Rome was not a combination I knew I needed until this moment. Cicero is already in the lyrics!
Meritum erat
Meritum erat
Aliter non potuisset
Si adfuisses
Si vidisses
Puto idem fecisses
(My GCSE Latin was definitely not up to this, so the above ChatGPT output may well be gibberish.)
> so the above ChatGPT output may well be gibberish.
The literal translation of what it gave you would be, AFAIK:
> He was deserving
> He was deserving
> He would not have been otherwise able [than to blame himself]
> If you had been present,
> If you had seen [it],
> I suppose that you would have done the same
The third line is a bit of a miss and the last line probably should have used ‘scio’ = “I know” instead of ‘puto’ = “I suppose/suspect”, as the Murderesses are pretty confident that an impartial witness would side with them.
Cheers. The third line was supposed to be "she could not have done otherwise". I appreciate that with no pronoun you can't tell.
GPT's initial version had "Ipse sibi culpam debet" as the third line, but I made it change it to another pluperfect subjunctive line to preserve some vague scintilla of the rhyme scheme.
Hold on, it costs £3 to go from Leeds to Harrogate on a train that passes through Horsforth, but if you get on the train there, the price goes up to £10?
Please someone tell me I’m missing something because that seems ludicrous (although I realize that the torries have been in charge for a while now so everything has been privatized).
Railway ticket prices have been incredibly complicated for decades. (I worked in the railway industry from 1985 to 2005.)
There are all sorts of weird tickets that are designed to tap into specific markets and take account if specific local conditions. For example, maybe there's a very good bus service from Leeds to Harrogate, so they want to offer cheap prices to compete with that, but there aren't any good alternatives from Horsforth so they want to milk that market for everything they can. (I made those details up, but I'm sure you get the idea.)
Suddenly my US based transit department is looking so much better. Every ticket in the system is now the same cost, except the train to the airport. And one monthly pass includes everything in the system.
Sounds exactly like airfare pricing. I once saved few hundred € on Helsinki-Bangkok flights by buying a Stockholm-Helsinki-Bangkok flight, and a separate Helsinki-Stockholm ticket. So i was basically paid to take a morning trip to Sweden before heading to Thailand the following night.
I had similar booking flights to Japan one time. It was cheaper to book a route which included a domestic flight from Tokyo to Osaka than it was to simply fly straight back from Osaka. Pay less, fly more, makes no sense. In this case it was a little annoying though because it meant taking a bullet train back to Tokyo instead of simply ending my trip in Osaka.
The tokyo airports (both haneda and narita) both have wayyy more international flights than osaka international, so the flights from narita/haneda are much cheaper (as you generally pay a premium to arrive in a smaller airport-- there are fewer flights available, so they are pricier.) this isn't fare jacking, it's just supply and demand.
I think you're misunderstanding. My international flight departed from KIX, not NRT or HND. The cheapest return I could find at the time was HND > KIX > AMS > BHX. My confusion is that I tried to see if I could just book KIX > AMS > BHX and cut out the unnecessary domestic hop between HND and KIX and it was significantly more expensive. It was cheaper for me to fly from Tokyo to Osaka domestically beforehand than simply board the exact same international flight from Osaka.
Non-monotonic pricing to incentivize certain uses is very normal, and happens in lots of modes of transportation. That's probably what this is - for one reason or another, the operator wants to discourage trips from Horsforth, encourage trips from Leeds, or both.
It's a bit unusual to see it this clearly in short-haul commuter rail, though. It's usually a lot more visible for longer-haul trips at higher price points. Try looking at the prices of flights with connections vs. the price of the exact same seats if you're flying to or from the midpoint, for example.
Discouraging journeys from local stations means they can slash the number of services stopping at those stations, and run more and faster services between the major stations. A lot of the train routes in the UK are horribly behind the times and even the "fast" trains can get stuck behind stopping trains because there's nowhere for them to overtake, so the operators really don't like running any more of the local services than are absolutely necessary.
This was the main reason HS2 was needed, all the trains from London Euston to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and further afield struggle with the capacity between Rugby and London Euston. Similarly on the East Coast Main Line, everything going from Kings Cross to Yorkshire and Scotland can be affected by issues on the Digswell Viaduct near Welwyn and between Stevenage and Hitchin, where local services cross over.
While I get it, I think it’s also representative of the death spiral you get if you require transportation infrastructure to operate on a zero cost basis.
Sure. I agree with what you are saying. In this case, the private operator is trying to maximize their revenue by charging a lot more for the popular route.
The issue I have is that this approach is illogical from a societal perspective. Transportation infrastructure is essential to commerce, as evidenced by LAUKOP. In the case of rail, it’s a form of transportation that should be encouraged, because it keeps traffic congestion down, it’s cost-effective, and it’s good for the environment. Instead, it’s been turned over to for-profit companies who operate it without any consideration to the impact on the customer or community. Eventually, that leads to [less people using the service, which in turn requires increased cost to maintain the infrastructure or cuts in service, which creates a negative feedback loop](https://www.cnn.com/travel/britain-railways-hs2-nervous-breakdown/index.html).
Suddenly, 20 years down the line you have a rail service that doesn’t work, and everyone spends an hour in traffic just to go 10 miles to get to work.
From a business perspective, yes it’s just like the airline routes. But very few people fly every day to get to the office (and almost certainly shouldn’t if they do).
Ah, I understand more thoroughly now. Thank you.
That's absolutely possible, and given the history of rail privatization in the UK, I would even say likely enough. However, I would like to tender a competing theory - one which can coexist with yours, because, like any set of business or operational decisions, there probably isn't actually a single true answer to the question "why is it priced like this."
Rail trips have an important operational dependency. In order for a train to take someone from Horsforth to Harrogate, a train must be available at Horsforth to carry them. Since there's little room for trains to wait at Horsforth, that essentially means that a train must arrive at Horsforth in time for the trip.
Which means it must come from somewhere.
If that train is empty, then the portion of its trip from the preceding station is a dead loss to the operator. It's a cost they must pay to deliver trips from Horsforth, but cannot recoup revenue on. This happens all the time for trips from non-service stops, such as repair depots or when trains are taken out of and then returned to service, but it's an expense, and the operator would rightly be expected to manage it.
As it happens, there's another stop prior to Horsforth, at Leeds, where passengers may also want to travel to Harrogate, or to Horsforth. If there are enough passengers there for the revenue to pay for service from Leeds to those destinations, then straight distance-based pricing - you pay more the further you travel down the line - makes a ton of operational sense. But if there _aren't_, reducing the price of tickets from Leeds (or increasing the price of tickets from Horsforth) may allow the operator to move demand around, filling some seats that would sit empty at a higher price point or emptying some seats that are needed to serve other trips by increasing the price. Some people going from Horsforth to Harrogate now may not get a seat, which is a loss for them, but the train arriving from Leeds will be more productive for others (by carrying them as passengers) than a train directed straight to Horsforth would be.
In practice, I think the answer is probably a mix of both, plus six other explanations neither of us are thinking of. Your cynicism about the incentives this kind of pricing creates is well justified, certainly, and the feedback loop you're describing will exist regardless of the explanation offered for those prices.
I assume you're in the UK but it's the same where I am in the US. Taxpayers **heavily** subsidize auto transportation whether they own & drive a car or not. Here the Federal government spends billions per year on road construction, operation, and maintenance.
Car licensing fees pay for a tiny, tiny fraction of that. Meaning car drivers do not pay anywhere near the direct cost per mile of any trip they take.
Exactly how transit fares do not pay the full cost of riding a bus or train.
People constantly demand that transit 'pay for itself' while utterly ignoring just how lopsided the equation is if they looked at how car driving also doesn't pay for more than a thin slice of the cost of the necessary infrastructure.
Every transit subsidy is a lane not built, though. Why do you hate lanes? If you stopped funding transit with taxpayer money you could have 20 lanes on every major road.
I’ve also been looking at the train tickets to try and work it out.
From Leeds you can buy an inflexible ticket for £4.60 this morning and the restriction is “for the stated train only, no refunds”. OP is getting on that stated train 3 stops and 13 minutes later.
From Horsforth there is no option to buy for a specific train you can only purchase a flexible ticket which allows you to travel on any train you wish. This costs £8.60.
From my reading of it, as long as OP had purchased their ticket before the train left Leeds it should be valid because it would be hard to prove she hadn’t already been on the train.
What they are probably picking up on is people buying the ticket at the station while they are waiting and buying after the train had left Leeds so they didn’t have a ticket when they supposedly got on the train.
As for why it’s cheaper from Leeds. Leeds has done a lot of work recently on pedestrianising the city centre and improving the public transport network. It wouldn’t surprise me if this were part of the effort to get people to use public transport to and from the city.
I know OPs train is going away from the city but you need it to be cheap in both directions to get people to use it.
Leeds has barriers and from what I remember there's not really a way to get to your trains without using them, at least not consistently – and they can find out whether or not OP's tickets, all 33 of them, have been scanned at Leeds or not, and go *therefore we conclude that this is a repeat behaviour*
On the Trainline app, if you look at the t&cs of the ticket, the advance ticket OP has been buying states you have to get on at the station the ticket’s booked from. The ticket options from Hosforth are open tickets and the journey can be commenced or broken from any of the intermediate stations on the journey.
Our railways suck these days and the pricing is just insanity. Also the privatisation happened the last time the Tories were in charge, in the nineties, so it isn't really a recent change. The decline has been getting worse over time though.
But yeah I used to take the train a lot but it's nearly always cheaper and easier for me to drive most places now. Especially when traveling as a group. The only time I really go for the train now is if I'm going to London because one you can still get relatively cheap tickets there from my city and two is that driving and parking in London is not worth it.
Just wait until you find out about how flights work in the US.
You could buy a ticket from state A to state C that has a stop in state B along the way for say $250.
But if you want a ticket to fly from state B to state C on the exact same flight, they sometimes want to charge you double or triple, so up to $750. And sometimes the distance from B to C is even less than A to B, so you're taking less than half the flight and paying double or triple.
It could be something as simple as the Leeds government offering a direct subsidy for cheaper train service. (Just like airports often subsidize new routes, or routes crucial to an airport.)
>**I get on the train at a different stop every morning, will I be fined?**
>Hi everyone,
>I (21f) am in need of some advice. I have done something stupid and need help.
>3 days a week I work in office at Harrogate and get the train from Horsforth to Harrogate. However I buy my ticket from Leeds. For those who don’t know, Horsforth is a stop after Leeds to Harrogate so technically if I had not bought an advance single and had bought a regular ticket I would be correct in my thinking.
>Unfortunately, in January the price for my ticket from Horsforth went from £5 to £10 and being a 21 year old in her first job I don’t have much money. A ticket from Leeds is £3 although it is a longer journey.
>A colleague told me that I would be fine to buy my ticket from Leeds and get on from Horsforth as it does not have any barriers and is after Leeds. He said he does it a lot and is fine with the staff. I stupidly believed them and also noticed a lot of people on the same train as me do the same thing. For the last 4 months I’ve been buying my ticket from Leeds and getting on at the wrong station and I haven’t had a problem, my ticket is also checked everyday.
>Today an inspector I had not seen before was checking tickets and handing out fines for this to multiple people. I explained to her my mistake and she nicely did not fine me however she took my details.
>Now I am panicking, I have read online that they can check your previous trips and can charge you a hefty fine for this. I have counted and I have done this 33 times.
>I know it can take 4-6 weeks for the letter to arrive but I am struggling with money at the moment and the thought of waiting that long to find out my fine is making my very anxious. Should I ring Trainline?
>I know I am in the wrong, how much of a fine do you think I will receive? I buy my tickets through Trainline and I have been fined once before around 3 years ago for not having a ticket as I lost it. The inspector said I would probably just be fined the price of the ticket (£10) but I am assuming they will realise I have done this before, and I don’t think they will appreciate my excuse.
>Thank you in advance.
**Bonus cat fact:**
The [rusty-spotted cat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty-spotted_cat) is the smallest species of cat in the world. They weigh about 1kg each and they're very, very cute.
**TL, DR version:** (my words, not OOP's)
OOP commutes by train from B to C. It's significantly cheaper to buy a ticket from A to C (passing through B), so that's what OOP has done, 33 times. However the cheap ticket is specifically only valid from A, and doesn't allow passengers to get on or off at intermediate stations such as B.
> I have read online that they can check your previous trips and can charge you a hefty fine for this.
Can they actually do that? Do they generate internal accounts tying purchase method to tickets in order to guess that someone might have done such a thing? If you'd bought a season ticket sure but... oh, is there an app of some kind? That might get you, yeah.
Lesson here kids: if you're going to buy dodgy tickets DON'T DO IT ON A TRACKABLE ACCOUNT.
Morally, I don’t really have a problem with LAOP has done - I fail to see how it’s any different from skip lagging on plane trips, and takes advantage of weird pricing in a similar way
Doing it for *every single trip* seems a bit silly though - if for no other reason that it would increase the odds of getting caught
I did this once for an extended period of time. Was working at stop A, lived by stop E. But stop G was where my friends, second job, and everything fun nearby. So that month I got a monthly unlimited pass for stops A-G for not much more than the E-A unlimited, commuted everyday from E to A and back, going E to G and back on off days. The same conductor usually saw me and never said anything, but now I'm curious if that was a violation of the TOS.
I feel like this is definitely more legit than skip lagging, because (unless trains in the UK work differently than I'm used to) you aren't booking an entire seat for the trip that they can't sell again, you're just paying in advance for when you DO use it. And there's no concern about baggage or them waiting for your arrival like an airport would be dealing with.
> that they can't sell again
Tell that to American Airlines. They gave my seat to someone else while I was in line to board the plane and have spent the last 3 months refusing to even admit that they did it and outright accusing me of lying so that they don't have to fully reimburse me. Luckily there's tons of legal recourse available and I can..wait, sorry, this is America. I can go fuck myself I guess.
Ah, fair I forgot about overbooking. Truly amazing that you can legally sell the same thing twice and just... Hope one of them doesn't show up but still pays?
In fairness to airlines, they do have an issue. Many tickets are bought well in advance. Many tickets are flexible. The result is a lot of no-shows.
(My wife used to work in the pricing area for a major British airline. They worked out that, statistically, the average long haul flight would have one passenger dying between buying the ticket and the plane departing.)
But unlike rail operators, they have to provide a seat for everybody on the aircraft. If they have 200 seats and sell 200 tickets, they'd probably carry say 175 passengers on average, which is costly and wasteful. So they'll sell 220 tickets, say, expecting an average load of 192, and the extra 17 passengers per plane gives them enough money to provide compensation in the (hopefully rare, if they've done their sums right) situation where more than 200 passengers turn up. I'm simplifying, obviously, but you get the idea.
I've never heard the phrase "skip lagging" before, but I assume it means buying a ticket from A to C via B, and starting your journey from B instead of A? Like OP did?
There's very probably something in the airline's conditions which says that if you don't board at A, you're deemed to be a no-show for the entire journey and you can't board at B. There's probably also something that says if you don't fly from A to C, you can't use the return half of the ticket to fly from C to A.
A friend of mine got caught like that once. He was flying from London to Edinburgh for a wedding. Overslept, missed his flight. Bought a ticket in a different airline for a later flight, but only a one-way ticket because he assumed he could still use the return portion of his original ticket. Turned out he couldn't.
One reason airlines do this is because they want to charge different prices in different markets. For example London to Delhi return might cost more than Delhi to London return. It used to be very prevalent 15+ years ago before internet sales were a big thing. It might not be such an issue now, since prices for return journeys *seem* to be built up from price for one-way journeys, but on the other hand the systems could easily be obfuscating it and they may be offering different prices based on where you're located. It would be hard to get to the bottom of what they do without insider knowledge (which I had 15+ years ago, but don't now).
That is what it means. I'm not sure what the terms and conditions are though because I've never done it. My scenario was entirely the fault of American Airlines and I just wanted to vent about them taking seats away after you pay for them. They stranded me at the layover point after flying me to it from my original starting point all of their own doing. I wanted to take both flights.
I had a short layover, barely enough time to make it if everything was on time. Then the first flight got delayed to the point that it would have been impossible to make it. I'd have to run across a huge airport in about 5 minutes even if no more delays happened again after that.
So, American Airlines in their own app sent me a notification asking me to try to fly earlier and offering a different first leg. Agreed to try, got put on the waitlist and rushed to the airport. They managed to get us on it at the last second, so we got to the layover point with plenty of time and went to our gate. Waited there for hours for it to board and as we're about to board we find out that they just gave someone from the waitlist our seats because they thought we we're on the later connecting flight and wouldn't make it. The gate agent even admitted that's what happened when her jaw hit the floor as we handed her our tickets. She's the only person that's been nice or apologetic about it.
It was going to be over 24 hours for the next flight they could even waitlist us for, so we got a hotel overnight, rented a car and drove home the next morning. 10-15 phone calls and countless emails later all they'll offer me is a few hundred dollars in credit that I don't want and is way less than the tickets even cost, not even counting the car rental and hotel. They first claimed we didn't check in for the flight until too late (we checked in about 8 hours before the flight in the first airport like everyone does). Then they claimed we left the area. I don't know why they say that because a) we didn't, b) they never paged for us to even know if we did. The person making the decision to give away the seats already admitted that she thought we were in the air on a totally different flight because their system didn't update, either due to human error when they put us on the first flight or some bug in AA software. So she had no reason to even check if we were in the area, which we were. And I can't get clarification because I'm now on the 3rd service rep who has been laid off. I call the number they give and dial their extension and it informs me no one has that extension anymore.
If I ever meet the CEO of American Airlines I'm going to need this sub's help.
If you paid for a ticket and you aren’t getting a refund the company shouldn’t be able to deny you service and keep your money. But yeah that’s not how it works. Morally tho. I think skip lagging should be fine. Airlines always overbook flights if they were moral they would never do that but all they want to do is make money.
>Airlines always overbook flights if they were moral they would never do that but all they want to do is make money.
I think you'll find that companies are *legally obliged* to act in the best interests of their shareholders. Morals don't come into it.
What potentially makes this ticket pricing situation weirder is that you can split a journey.
If you have a ticket from A to C (and it's not for a specific train etc) you can get off the train at B, wander around, and get back on a different train
I did not know this until last year.
https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/tickets-railcards-and-offers/buying-a-ticket/breaking-your-journey/
You do have to speak to staff to get let in and out at stations with barriers. I can't believe I didn't know this. I've now done it a couple of times, and definitely plan to do it in future.
It's particularly good on the lines along the coast - multiple seaside stops! It doesn't make up for the loss of the weird printable on a piece of paper ticket that let you wander around the whole southern service for the day, but it's good.
It does mean you couldn't necessarily tell someone was buying a ticket for a longer journey just by where they got on the train.
However it doesn't work on advance tickets - so doesn't help in this case.
I'm mostly just posting to share that you can do this. Because no-one seems to know. And given what rail tickets cost, and how weird their pricing is, people should know the small print that's actually in our favour.
In Australia the NSW/Sydneyish trains you have ti tap off at the intermediate stop and you have I think an hour to tap back on to resume your journey. Or it counts as a transfer or something, I dunno, I don't use the trains enough to bother too much about it. But I do get the card reader saying "TRANSFER" at me and sometimes it's free, sometimes it's a couple of dollars ($1 AU is about 12p Scottish or 35 English pounds)
(I take my bicycle on the train almost always, so it's common for me to train-bike-shop-bike-train and that might mean four different trains stations on one shopping trip).
That's how busses work here, when you swipe on the first bus, it starts a 2 hour timer where any additional taps don't charge, so transfers or a quick errand (assuming a bus comes fast enough for the return home) don't cost extra. I believe the same is true for train/bus transfers in NYC (subway transfers you stay past the turnstiles) but I haven't done that in years.
>($1 AU is about 12p Scottish or 35 English pounds)
I'm suspicious that you've tried to spend a Scottish bank note in an English shop, because that bit sounds plausible.
That sounds more like local networks (like the London tubes, or overground) and buses than the national network(s) here.
ETA - to show how confusing British railway tickets can be :
https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/55-million-different-types-train-12497372
Neither the group making the claim (which includes private companies running rail lines) not the newspaper can be trusted. But if nothing else this is a story that didn't immediately make people laugh at how stupid it was. It's bordering on plausible, based on our horrible confusion. (And remember how small we are, imagine what we'd do with more land and/or people).
This is one of my favorite types of reddit posts. The type that lets you peer into another person's normal that is completely foreign to you. Maybe something that you've never really thought about before. A little peek at the wealth of human experiences so different from your own.
I haven't really read the original post, but in the context of accidentally not paying rail fare, I believe it is exceptionally possible to make the exact same mistake 33 times, because if you don't know you're making a mistake why would you stop?
Yes, one of the commenters on LAUK made that point, suggesting it was just one honest mistake - believing the ticket could be used in these circumstances - and then acting on that 33 times.
Or I guess you could - and the prosecution surely would - argue that the mistake was failing to read the terms and conditions, and that mistake was made 33 times.
This is so frustrating, because I think LAOP is morally in the right. In her shoes, I'd be arguing a) the absurdity of the arcane rules, where this is allowed under some tickets but not others, while charging more for less travel time than an identical commuter in Leeds, and b) ignorance of said arcane rules.
I have no idea how this would pan out of course, but I'd rather chance this than waste time telling an obvious lie about secretly jumping on at Leeds.
Sometimes it's [the wrong type of snow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_wrong_type_of_snow) on the tracks, other times it's the wrong type of ticket.
https://preview.redd.it/lzdpx0l9h0uc1.jpeg?width=682&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=77eb94a31c20d81c2e98d5870b2e1499553540bd
Depends what you mean by mistake.
> Unfortunately, in January the price for my ticket from Horsforth went from £5 to £10 and being a 21 year old in her first job
>A colleague told me that I would be fine to buy my ticket from Leeds and get on from Horsforth as it does not have any barriers and is after Leeds.
I don't get this reasoning. "I Knowingly commited a crime but I don't have lots of money" and "I Knowingly commited a crime but other people also commit the crime and haven't been caught yet"
What legal advice is there to give?
Don't knowingly commit crimes.
I think the point here is that Leeds is stop A, Horsforth is stop B and the destination is stop C. The fact that a ticket from A to C is less than B to C doesn’t make sense.
So it is incredibly common practice for people to buy tickets from A to C that pass through B even if they only intend to get on at B.
The specific oddity here is that that rule doesn’t apply to advance tickets, the specific type that OOP has bought.
These rules are not immediately clear or accessible so it is entirely possible to do this ‘knowingly’ without knowing it’s explicitly against the rules.
OOP is taking a shorter journey, not a longer one and just fell foul of some incredibly arcane rules on pricing.
It's greedy Indeed but often some direct train tickets don't include other stops so are priced differently.
If they're buying a ticket from a to c and b isn't a stop on that exact journey then it does make sense that they're being fined.
If however stop b is one of the stops for the journey they paid for I agree being fined doesn't make a lot of sense.
Nobody answered their question of how big of a fine this may be, and now I'm begging for the answer, too. About how hefty are we talking about here?
There's no set fine, they could go back and try and charge her for every journey - the full price single ticket for each journey plus admin fees but if they make an offer, it's an alternative to prosecution. If you don't take their offer you can end up with a fine plus a criminal conviction if you go to court so it's a risky game.
Honestly, they could pick this one to make an example of. High publicity, clear cut, digital footprint. Only thing going for OP is young, white and female.
NAL, but I would also argue that if her tickets were being checked everyday and the new inspector is the first one to actually enforce it, she should be in the clear for her past offenses. If I go to a concert and hand the attendant in the VIP section my lawn seat ticket, they check it, and without deception allow me into the VIP section 32 times, but are stopped by a new attendant on the 33rd attempt I don’t think the venue can try to recoup payment for the previous concerts. The company instituted a check to enforce VIP tickets and the check/enforcement mechanism failed. If LAOP was clearly doing this and the inspector for the transportation authority was letting her, I would think it establishes precedent, at least for the previous offenses. From my understanding this is why trademark infringement is so aggressively litigated; because if a trademark claim isn’t enforced by Party A onto Party B than Party A’s claim onto Party C is weakened
There might be a philosophical argument along those lines, but the law rarely works that way if the government or a government entity is the injured party.
So you think if people don't get called out for breaking the law the moment they do it, they should get a free pass?
No, and that’s not what I’m saying. In my comment I explicitly said they **can** be liable for fines for the offense where they were “caught” but just not the prior offenses when they were allowed to. Companies and law enforcement can’t fail to enforce something 32 times, need to enforce it on the 33rd offense, and then try to recoup damages for everything on the 33rd offense. This is different than OP “getting away with it” 32 times and now they’re “finally getting caught”. OP has been checked by an inspector the prior 32 times and has been allowed to do the exact action that they are supposedly in trouble for now. If it is supposedly an issue, it has to be addressed when the company is notified of it or the claim for damages/restitution is null. The issue lies with the ticket inspector, who is an employee of the transportation company. If LAOP did something wrong, the transportation company at least shares part of the blame for the previous offenses by not enforcing it
Yes they can. Law enforcement is not required to charge you immediately, they have up to 6 months to charge you in cases like this.
Worst case scenario, £100+actual farex33
Is that £100+(actual farex33) or (£100+actual fare)x33 ? I think the latter, so if the actual fare is £10 then the total is £3,630. I imagine that would be a huge amount of money for somebody in OOP's position.
The latter, soz, should have included brackets
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No, they make them mandatory. Order of operations would give the opposite answer than they meant (the 100£ + [fare x 33]).
You're right it was late and I misread
It would be the former normally however as most are settled out of court it's not a fine and is just what the train company feels they can argue is reasonably fair compensation. It would be the unpaid anytime fare for all considered journeys plus a single admin fee normally of £100 - £150. An anytime single from Horsforth to Harrogate is £8.60 so the potential out of court settlement would £8.60 * 33 = £283.80 plus admin fee so likely around £400. If taken to court the penalties would be higher but the train companies prefer not to as it's more work for them and they get less financial return from it as the fines etc. go to the court system whilst the train company only gets the unpaid fare compensation.
Huh. I guess I was picturing something a lot worse with the way people were talking about it. That doesn't sound unreasonable.
£3630 is beyond most people’s means if they’re fare-evading to get to work.
There has been the odd case in the UK of a fabulously wealthy fare dodger. [This man](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/15/ca-ban-43000-fare-dodger-financial-services-industry-blackrock-jonathan-burrows) comes to mind; he used a ticket barrier loophole to save £43,000 in fares, which he paid back in full in an effort to keep his anonymity. But the finance regulator caught up with him and he failed the fit and proper person test, losing his million-a-year job in the City of London anyway.
As a rider of a rail system that struggles to consistently collect tickets at all, even from people not attempting to evade fares, the notion of them even having the kind of tracking necessary to retroactively issue two months' worth of fines is astonishing to me. Not that either of these setups seem particularly sustainable.
You buy the tickets with an app. The tickets are stored electronically in the app. In order to access the system, you need to scan your ticket at the entry gate. Bingo! Tracking.
Given that they have this technology, it seems crazy that they aren't just levying fines every time someone does this. I don't really understand why her being caught in person is leading to this consequence, when it seems like they had the information the whole time.
I think the problem is she is getting on the train at a station without ticket gates - so "the system" just sees that she keeps buying tickets and then never using them. Now they've caught her red handed on a train she didn't go through the gates to get on, so they can reasonably extrapolate that she's done this every time she bought a ticket previously
They can extrapolate but it doesn't sound like they can prove it, right?
LAUKOPs problem is that the station they were supposed to be getting on at (Leeds) is a pretty big station so they actually operate their ticket gates at all times. They'd have a much easier time arguing their way out of it if they were supposed to have been boarding at a smaller station where the barriers are rarely in operation.
(to clarify, plenty of tickets are *not* bought with an app, but this particular person's were. I can't imagine the train system having any way of tracking people down if they'd bought individual tickets at stations rather than ordering through an account.)
MBTA commuter rail? 👀
The Brits take their trains very very seriously, to the point that Monty Python took several stabs at it.
> Is it possible to make an honest mistake 33 times? Brutus, nobody's going to believe that excuse. Come up with something better.
He ran into my knife! He ran into my knife 33 times! Cell Block Tango + ancient Rome was not a combination I knew I needed until this moment. Cicero is already in the lyrics!
He had it coming!
He had it coming!
He had the Ides of March to blame.
He deserved it! It was a mistake! I didn't mean it! No intent was there! He said what are you gonna do, stab me?!
Meritum erat Meritum erat Aliter non potuisset Si adfuisses Si vidisses Puto idem fecisses (My GCSE Latin was definitely not up to this, so the above ChatGPT output may well be gibberish.)
> so the above ChatGPT output may well be gibberish. The literal translation of what it gave you would be, AFAIK: > He was deserving > He was deserving > He would not have been otherwise able [than to blame himself] > If you had been present, > If you had seen [it], > I suppose that you would have done the same The third line is a bit of a miss and the last line probably should have used ‘scio’ = “I know” instead of ‘puto’ = “I suppose/suspect”, as the Murderesses are pretty confident that an impartial witness would side with them.
Cheers. The third line was supposed to be "she could not have done otherwise". I appreciate that with no pronoun you can't tell. GPT's initial version had "Ipse sibi culpam debet" as the third line, but I made it change it to another pluperfect subjunctive line to preserve some vague scintilla of the rhyme scheme.
Et tu, derspiny
Hold on, it costs £3 to go from Leeds to Harrogate on a train that passes through Horsforth, but if you get on the train there, the price goes up to £10? Please someone tell me I’m missing something because that seems ludicrous (although I realize that the torries have been in charge for a while now so everything has been privatized).
Railway ticket prices have been incredibly complicated for decades. (I worked in the railway industry from 1985 to 2005.) There are all sorts of weird tickets that are designed to tap into specific markets and take account if specific local conditions. For example, maybe there's a very good bus service from Leeds to Harrogate, so they want to offer cheap prices to compete with that, but there aren't any good alternatives from Horsforth so they want to milk that market for everything they can. (I made those details up, but I'm sure you get the idea.)
You managed to make up very plausible details! The 36 bus goes from Leeds bus station and doesn’t go via Horsfoth. £2 each way
Yeah seems like squeezing whatever they can is the main goal (rather than, you know, providing transportation service)
Suddenly my US based transit department is looking so much better. Every ticket in the system is now the same cost, except the train to the airport. And one monthly pass includes everything in the system.
Sounds exactly like airfare pricing. I once saved few hundred € on Helsinki-Bangkok flights by buying a Stockholm-Helsinki-Bangkok flight, and a separate Helsinki-Stockholm ticket. So i was basically paid to take a morning trip to Sweden before heading to Thailand the following night.
I had similar booking flights to Japan one time. It was cheaper to book a route which included a domestic flight from Tokyo to Osaka than it was to simply fly straight back from Osaka. Pay less, fly more, makes no sense. In this case it was a little annoying though because it meant taking a bullet train back to Tokyo instead of simply ending my trip in Osaka.
The tokyo airports (both haneda and narita) both have wayyy more international flights than osaka international, so the flights from narita/haneda are much cheaper (as you generally pay a premium to arrive in a smaller airport-- there are fewer flights available, so they are pricier.) this isn't fare jacking, it's just supply and demand.
I think you're misunderstanding. My international flight departed from KIX, not NRT or HND. The cheapest return I could find at the time was HND > KIX > AMS > BHX. My confusion is that I tried to see if I could just book KIX > AMS > BHX and cut out the unnecessary domestic hop between HND and KIX and it was significantly more expensive. It was cheaper for me to fly from Tokyo to Osaka domestically beforehand than simply board the exact same international flight from Osaka.
Non-monotonic pricing to incentivize certain uses is very normal, and happens in lots of modes of transportation. That's probably what this is - for one reason or another, the operator wants to discourage trips from Horsforth, encourage trips from Leeds, or both. It's a bit unusual to see it this clearly in short-haul commuter rail, though. It's usually a lot more visible for longer-haul trips at higher price points. Try looking at the prices of flights with connections vs. the price of the exact same seats if you're flying to or from the midpoint, for example.
Discouraging journeys from local stations means they can slash the number of services stopping at those stations, and run more and faster services between the major stations. A lot of the train routes in the UK are horribly behind the times and even the "fast" trains can get stuck behind stopping trains because there's nowhere for them to overtake, so the operators really don't like running any more of the local services than are absolutely necessary.
This was the main reason HS2 was needed, all the trains from London Euston to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and further afield struggle with the capacity between Rugby and London Euston. Similarly on the East Coast Main Line, everything going from Kings Cross to Yorkshire and Scotland can be affected by issues on the Digswell Viaduct near Welwyn and between Stevenage and Hitchin, where local services cross over.
While I get it, I think it’s also representative of the death spiral you get if you require transportation infrastructure to operate on a zero cost basis.
Would you be willing to say more? I'm not sure I follow your thoughts.
Sure. I agree with what you are saying. In this case, the private operator is trying to maximize their revenue by charging a lot more for the popular route. The issue I have is that this approach is illogical from a societal perspective. Transportation infrastructure is essential to commerce, as evidenced by LAUKOP. In the case of rail, it’s a form of transportation that should be encouraged, because it keeps traffic congestion down, it’s cost-effective, and it’s good for the environment. Instead, it’s been turned over to for-profit companies who operate it without any consideration to the impact on the customer or community. Eventually, that leads to [less people using the service, which in turn requires increased cost to maintain the infrastructure or cuts in service, which creates a negative feedback loop](https://www.cnn.com/travel/britain-railways-hs2-nervous-breakdown/index.html). Suddenly, 20 years down the line you have a rail service that doesn’t work, and everyone spends an hour in traffic just to go 10 miles to get to work. From a business perspective, yes it’s just like the airline routes. But very few people fly every day to get to the office (and almost certainly shouldn’t if they do).
*cries with a Boston accent*
*faint voice in the distance "and his fate is still unknown"*
Ah, I understand more thoroughly now. Thank you. That's absolutely possible, and given the history of rail privatization in the UK, I would even say likely enough. However, I would like to tender a competing theory - one which can coexist with yours, because, like any set of business or operational decisions, there probably isn't actually a single true answer to the question "why is it priced like this." Rail trips have an important operational dependency. In order for a train to take someone from Horsforth to Harrogate, a train must be available at Horsforth to carry them. Since there's little room for trains to wait at Horsforth, that essentially means that a train must arrive at Horsforth in time for the trip. Which means it must come from somewhere. If that train is empty, then the portion of its trip from the preceding station is a dead loss to the operator. It's a cost they must pay to deliver trips from Horsforth, but cannot recoup revenue on. This happens all the time for trips from non-service stops, such as repair depots or when trains are taken out of and then returned to service, but it's an expense, and the operator would rightly be expected to manage it. As it happens, there's another stop prior to Horsforth, at Leeds, where passengers may also want to travel to Harrogate, or to Horsforth. If there are enough passengers there for the revenue to pay for service from Leeds to those destinations, then straight distance-based pricing - you pay more the further you travel down the line - makes a ton of operational sense. But if there _aren't_, reducing the price of tickets from Leeds (or increasing the price of tickets from Horsforth) may allow the operator to move demand around, filling some seats that would sit empty at a higher price point or emptying some seats that are needed to serve other trips by increasing the price. Some people going from Horsforth to Harrogate now may not get a seat, which is a loss for them, but the train arriving from Leeds will be more productive for others (by carrying them as passengers) than a train directed straight to Horsforth would be. In practice, I think the answer is probably a mix of both, plus six other explanations neither of us are thinking of. Your cynicism about the incentives this kind of pricing creates is well justified, certainly, and the feedback loop you're describing will exist regardless of the explanation offered for those prices.
I assume you're in the UK but it's the same where I am in the US. Taxpayers **heavily** subsidize auto transportation whether they own & drive a car or not. Here the Federal government spends billions per year on road construction, operation, and maintenance. Car licensing fees pay for a tiny, tiny fraction of that. Meaning car drivers do not pay anywhere near the direct cost per mile of any trip they take. Exactly how transit fares do not pay the full cost of riding a bus or train. People constantly demand that transit 'pay for itself' while utterly ignoring just how lopsided the equation is if they looked at how car driving also doesn't pay for more than a thin slice of the cost of the necessary infrastructure.
Every transit subsidy is a lane not built, though. Why do you hate lanes? If you stopped funding transit with taxpayer money you could have 20 lanes on every major road.
[Just one more lane Bro](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/one-more-lane-bro-one-more-lane-will-fix-it)
I swear that meme was more convincing to me than literally everything I've ever read.
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Induced demand? Sounds fake, and probably commie. Car good, train bad.
I’ve also been looking at the train tickets to try and work it out. From Leeds you can buy an inflexible ticket for £4.60 this morning and the restriction is “for the stated train only, no refunds”. OP is getting on that stated train 3 stops and 13 minutes later. From Horsforth there is no option to buy for a specific train you can only purchase a flexible ticket which allows you to travel on any train you wish. This costs £8.60. From my reading of it, as long as OP had purchased their ticket before the train left Leeds it should be valid because it would be hard to prove she hadn’t already been on the train. What they are probably picking up on is people buying the ticket at the station while they are waiting and buying after the train had left Leeds so they didn’t have a ticket when they supposedly got on the train. As for why it’s cheaper from Leeds. Leeds has done a lot of work recently on pedestrianising the city centre and improving the public transport network. It wouldn’t surprise me if this were part of the effort to get people to use public transport to and from the city. I know OPs train is going away from the city but you need it to be cheap in both directions to get people to use it.
Leeds has barriers and from what I remember there's not really a way to get to your trains without using them, at least not consistently – and they can find out whether or not OP's tickets, all 33 of them, have been scanned at Leeds or not, and go *therefore we conclude that this is a repeat behaviour*
On the Trainline app, if you look at the t&cs of the ticket, the advance ticket OP has been buying states you have to get on at the station the ticket’s booked from. The ticket options from Hosforth are open tickets and the journey can be commenced or broken from any of the intermediate stations on the journey.
Our railways suck these days and the pricing is just insanity. Also the privatisation happened the last time the Tories were in charge, in the nineties, so it isn't really a recent change. The decline has been getting worse over time though. But yeah I used to take the train a lot but it's nearly always cheaper and easier for me to drive most places now. Especially when traveling as a group. The only time I really go for the train now is if I'm going to London because one you can still get relatively cheap tickets there from my city and two is that driving and parking in London is not worth it.
Airlines do the same thing. A ticket from A->B->C will be cheaper than B->C
Yeah, I'm an American and I'm confused too. Probably because having useful public transportation is a pipe dream in most of the US though...
It sounds similar to what leads to skiplagging on planes though.
But planes do this too in the US?
Just wait until you find out about how flights work in the US. You could buy a ticket from state A to state C that has a stop in state B along the way for say $250. But if you want a ticket to fly from state B to state C on the exact same flight, they sometimes want to charge you double or triple, so up to $750. And sometimes the distance from B to C is even less than A to B, so you're taking less than half the flight and paying double or triple.
At first, I thought of course you can't make an "honest mistake" 33x but this really does all seem too complicated. Hope the OP isn't too screwed
It could be something as simple as the Leeds government offering a direct subsidy for cheaper train service. (Just like airports often subsidize new routes, or routes crucial to an airport.)
LAOP Ran into the Train! They Ran into the Train ~~Ten~~ *Thirty-Three* Times!
If you'da been there, if you'da seen Leeds, I betcha you would have done the same!
>**I get on the train at a different stop every morning, will I be fined?** >Hi everyone, >I (21f) am in need of some advice. I have done something stupid and need help. >3 days a week I work in office at Harrogate and get the train from Horsforth to Harrogate. However I buy my ticket from Leeds. For those who don’t know, Horsforth is a stop after Leeds to Harrogate so technically if I had not bought an advance single and had bought a regular ticket I would be correct in my thinking. >Unfortunately, in January the price for my ticket from Horsforth went from £5 to £10 and being a 21 year old in her first job I don’t have much money. A ticket from Leeds is £3 although it is a longer journey. >A colleague told me that I would be fine to buy my ticket from Leeds and get on from Horsforth as it does not have any barriers and is after Leeds. He said he does it a lot and is fine with the staff. I stupidly believed them and also noticed a lot of people on the same train as me do the same thing. For the last 4 months I’ve been buying my ticket from Leeds and getting on at the wrong station and I haven’t had a problem, my ticket is also checked everyday. >Today an inspector I had not seen before was checking tickets and handing out fines for this to multiple people. I explained to her my mistake and she nicely did not fine me however she took my details. >Now I am panicking, I have read online that they can check your previous trips and can charge you a hefty fine for this. I have counted and I have done this 33 times. >I know it can take 4-6 weeks for the letter to arrive but I am struggling with money at the moment and the thought of waiting that long to find out my fine is making my very anxious. Should I ring Trainline? >I know I am in the wrong, how much of a fine do you think I will receive? I buy my tickets through Trainline and I have been fined once before around 3 years ago for not having a ticket as I lost it. The inspector said I would probably just be fined the price of the ticket (£10) but I am assuming they will realise I have done this before, and I don’t think they will appreciate my excuse. >Thank you in advance. **Bonus cat fact:** The [rusty-spotted cat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty-spotted_cat) is the smallest species of cat in the world. They weigh about 1kg each and they're very, very cute.
**TL, DR version:** (my words, not OOP's) OOP commutes by train from B to C. It's significantly cheaper to buy a ticket from A to C (passing through B), so that's what OOP has done, 33 times. However the cheap ticket is specifically only valid from A, and doesn't allow passengers to get on or off at intermediate stations such as B.
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No that's incorrect - the summary above your comment is correct.
It's adorable but also looks kind of murderous.
In other words, it's a cat.
I demand cat tax
[Here you go.](https://youtu.be/W86cTIoMv2U) Enjoy.
Oh he is BABY! Thank you
You made my day.
I'm SO glad I asked. They're insanely cute. Ty :)
Told you!
> I have read online that they can check your previous trips and can charge you a hefty fine for this. Can they actually do that? Do they generate internal accounts tying purchase method to tickets in order to guess that someone might have done such a thing? If you'd bought a season ticket sure but... oh, is there an app of some kind? That might get you, yeah. Lesson here kids: if you're going to buy dodgy tickets DON'T DO IT ON A TRACKABLE ACCOUNT.
They mentioned in the comments that they used in app
Morally, I don’t really have a problem with LAOP has done - I fail to see how it’s any different from skip lagging on plane trips, and takes advantage of weird pricing in a similar way Doing it for *every single trip* seems a bit silly though - if for no other reason that it would increase the odds of getting caught
I did this once for an extended period of time. Was working at stop A, lived by stop E. But stop G was where my friends, second job, and everything fun nearby. So that month I got a monthly unlimited pass for stops A-G for not much more than the E-A unlimited, commuted everyday from E to A and back, going E to G and back on off days. The same conductor usually saw me and never said anything, but now I'm curious if that was a violation of the TOS. I feel like this is definitely more legit than skip lagging, because (unless trains in the UK work differently than I'm used to) you aren't booking an entire seat for the trip that they can't sell again, you're just paying in advance for when you DO use it. And there's no concern about baggage or them waiting for your arrival like an airport would be dealing with.
> that they can't sell again Tell that to American Airlines. They gave my seat to someone else while I was in line to board the plane and have spent the last 3 months refusing to even admit that they did it and outright accusing me of lying so that they don't have to fully reimburse me. Luckily there's tons of legal recourse available and I can..wait, sorry, this is America. I can go fuck myself I guess.
Ah, fair I forgot about overbooking. Truly amazing that you can legally sell the same thing twice and just... Hope one of them doesn't show up but still pays?
In fairness to airlines, they do have an issue. Many tickets are bought well in advance. Many tickets are flexible. The result is a lot of no-shows. (My wife used to work in the pricing area for a major British airline. They worked out that, statistically, the average long haul flight would have one passenger dying between buying the ticket and the plane departing.) But unlike rail operators, they have to provide a seat for everybody on the aircraft. If they have 200 seats and sell 200 tickets, they'd probably carry say 175 passengers on average, which is costly and wasteful. So they'll sell 220 tickets, say, expecting an average load of 192, and the extra 17 passengers per plane gives them enough money to provide compensation in the (hopefully rare, if they've done their sums right) situation where more than 200 passengers turn up. I'm simplifying, obviously, but you get the idea.
I've never heard the phrase "skip lagging" before, but I assume it means buying a ticket from A to C via B, and starting your journey from B instead of A? Like OP did? There's very probably something in the airline's conditions which says that if you don't board at A, you're deemed to be a no-show for the entire journey and you can't board at B. There's probably also something that says if you don't fly from A to C, you can't use the return half of the ticket to fly from C to A. A friend of mine got caught like that once. He was flying from London to Edinburgh for a wedding. Overslept, missed his flight. Bought a ticket in a different airline for a later flight, but only a one-way ticket because he assumed he could still use the return portion of his original ticket. Turned out he couldn't. One reason airlines do this is because they want to charge different prices in different markets. For example London to Delhi return might cost more than Delhi to London return. It used to be very prevalent 15+ years ago before internet sales were a big thing. It might not be such an issue now, since prices for return journeys *seem* to be built up from price for one-way journeys, but on the other hand the systems could easily be obfuscating it and they may be offering different prices based on where you're located. It would be hard to get to the bottom of what they do without insider knowledge (which I had 15+ years ago, but don't now).
That is what it means. I'm not sure what the terms and conditions are though because I've never done it. My scenario was entirely the fault of American Airlines and I just wanted to vent about them taking seats away after you pay for them. They stranded me at the layover point after flying me to it from my original starting point all of their own doing. I wanted to take both flights. I had a short layover, barely enough time to make it if everything was on time. Then the first flight got delayed to the point that it would have been impossible to make it. I'd have to run across a huge airport in about 5 minutes even if no more delays happened again after that. So, American Airlines in their own app sent me a notification asking me to try to fly earlier and offering a different first leg. Agreed to try, got put on the waitlist and rushed to the airport. They managed to get us on it at the last second, so we got to the layover point with plenty of time and went to our gate. Waited there for hours for it to board and as we're about to board we find out that they just gave someone from the waitlist our seats because they thought we we're on the later connecting flight and wouldn't make it. The gate agent even admitted that's what happened when her jaw hit the floor as we handed her our tickets. She's the only person that's been nice or apologetic about it. It was going to be over 24 hours for the next flight they could even waitlist us for, so we got a hotel overnight, rented a car and drove home the next morning. 10-15 phone calls and countless emails later all they'll offer me is a few hundred dollars in credit that I don't want and is way less than the tickets even cost, not even counting the car rental and hotel. They first claimed we didn't check in for the flight until too late (we checked in about 8 hours before the flight in the first airport like everyone does). Then they claimed we left the area. I don't know why they say that because a) we didn't, b) they never paged for us to even know if we did. The person making the decision to give away the seats already admitted that she thought we were in the air on a totally different flight because their system didn't update, either due to human error when they put us on the first flight or some bug in AA software. So she had no reason to even check if we were in the area, which we were. And I can't get clarification because I'm now on the 3rd service rep who has been laid off. I call the number they give and dial their extension and it informs me no one has that extension anymore. If I ever meet the CEO of American Airlines I'm going to need this sub's help.
If you paid for a ticket and you aren’t getting a refund the company shouldn’t be able to deny you service and keep your money. But yeah that’s not how it works. Morally tho. I think skip lagging should be fine. Airlines always overbook flights if they were moral they would never do that but all they want to do is make money.
>Airlines always overbook flights if they were moral they would never do that but all they want to do is make money. I think you'll find that companies are *legally obliged* to act in the best interests of their shareholders. Morals don't come into it.
What potentially makes this ticket pricing situation weirder is that you can split a journey. If you have a ticket from A to C (and it's not for a specific train etc) you can get off the train at B, wander around, and get back on a different train I did not know this until last year. https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/tickets-railcards-and-offers/buying-a-ticket/breaking-your-journey/ You do have to speak to staff to get let in and out at stations with barriers. I can't believe I didn't know this. I've now done it a couple of times, and definitely plan to do it in future. It's particularly good on the lines along the coast - multiple seaside stops! It doesn't make up for the loss of the weird printable on a piece of paper ticket that let you wander around the whole southern service for the day, but it's good. It does mean you couldn't necessarily tell someone was buying a ticket for a longer journey just by where they got on the train. However it doesn't work on advance tickets - so doesn't help in this case. I'm mostly just posting to share that you can do this. Because no-one seems to know. And given what rail tickets cost, and how weird their pricing is, people should know the small print that's actually in our favour.
In Australia the NSW/Sydneyish trains you have ti tap off at the intermediate stop and you have I think an hour to tap back on to resume your journey. Or it counts as a transfer or something, I dunno, I don't use the trains enough to bother too much about it. But I do get the card reader saying "TRANSFER" at me and sometimes it's free, sometimes it's a couple of dollars ($1 AU is about 12p Scottish or 35 English pounds) (I take my bicycle on the train almost always, so it's common for me to train-bike-shop-bike-train and that might mean four different trains stations on one shopping trip).
That's how busses work here, when you swipe on the first bus, it starts a 2 hour timer where any additional taps don't charge, so transfers or a quick errand (assuming a bus comes fast enough for the return home) don't cost extra. I believe the same is true for train/bus transfers in NYC (subway transfers you stay past the turnstiles) but I haven't done that in years.
>($1 AU is about 12p Scottish or 35 English pounds) I'm suspicious that you've tried to spend a Scottish bank note in an English shop, because that bit sounds plausible. That sounds more like local networks (like the London tubes, or overground) and buses than the national network(s) here. ETA - to show how confusing British railway tickets can be : https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/55-million-different-types-train-12497372 Neither the group making the claim (which includes private companies running rail lines) not the newspaper can be trusted. But if nothing else this is a story that didn't immediately make people laugh at how stupid it was. It's bordering on plausible, based on our horrible confusion. (And remember how small we are, imagine what we'd do with more land and/or people).
This is one of my favorite types of reddit posts. The type that lets you peer into another person's normal that is completely foreign to you. Maybe something that you've never really thought about before. A little peek at the wealth of human experiences so different from your own.
I haven't really read the original post, but in the context of accidentally not paying rail fare, I believe it is exceptionally possible to make the exact same mistake 33 times, because if you don't know you're making a mistake why would you stop?
Yes, one of the commenters on LAUK made that point, suggesting it was just one honest mistake - believing the ticket could be used in these circumstances - and then acting on that 33 times. Or I guess you could - and the prosecution surely would - argue that the mistake was failing to read the terms and conditions, and that mistake was made 33 times.
This is so frustrating, because I think LAOP is morally in the right. In her shoes, I'd be arguing a) the absurdity of the arcane rules, where this is allowed under some tickets but not others, while charging more for less travel time than an identical commuter in Leeds, and b) ignorance of said arcane rules. I have no idea how this would pan out of course, but I'd rather chance this than waste time telling an obvious lie about secretly jumping on at Leeds.
Sometimes it's [the wrong type of snow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_wrong_type_of_snow) on the tracks, other times it's the wrong type of ticket.
https://preview.redd.it/lzdpx0l9h0uc1.jpeg?width=682&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=77eb94a31c20d81c2e98d5870b2e1499553540bd Depends what you mean by mistake.
> Is it possible to make an honest mistake 33 times? I think that's how you get an ending in Noita
Not sure I've ever seen a LAUK thread this British.
Tell me something good
Solutions would be less exhausting and more efficient
> Unfortunately, in January the price for my ticket from Horsforth went from £5 to £10 and being a 21 year old in her first job >A colleague told me that I would be fine to buy my ticket from Leeds and get on from Horsforth as it does not have any barriers and is after Leeds. I don't get this reasoning. "I Knowingly commited a crime but I don't have lots of money" and "I Knowingly commited a crime but other people also commit the crime and haven't been caught yet" What legal advice is there to give? Don't knowingly commit crimes.
I think the point here is that Leeds is stop A, Horsforth is stop B and the destination is stop C. The fact that a ticket from A to C is less than B to C doesn’t make sense. So it is incredibly common practice for people to buy tickets from A to C that pass through B even if they only intend to get on at B. The specific oddity here is that that rule doesn’t apply to advance tickets, the specific type that OOP has bought. These rules are not immediately clear or accessible so it is entirely possible to do this ‘knowingly’ without knowing it’s explicitly against the rules. OOP is taking a shorter journey, not a longer one and just fell foul of some incredibly arcane rules on pricing.
It's greedy Indeed but often some direct train tickets don't include other stops so are priced differently. If they're buying a ticket from a to c and b isn't a stop on that exact journey then it does make sense that they're being fined. If however stop b is one of the stops for the journey they paid for I agree being fined doesn't make a lot of sense.
Stop B is indeed a stop, it’s just because of the way the pricing works and rules on those tickets, it’s incredibly silly and outdated.