On 21 Nov 2004 13:44:13 -0800, (pcuz) wrote:

A friend recently travelled on an underground ticket that was zone 2
and 3 only, she travelled from brent cross through to kennington on
the northern line.

They just moved to the area so did not realise that you had to get a
zone 123 if you are travelling through zone 1, we thought you only
needed this if you got off the train at any station in zone 1.

Anyway she got stopped at the station at Oval and they took her
details and gave her a degrading telling off in front of the other
customers and were very rude in dealing with her, which is now what I
have come to expect of LU staff.

They read her rights to her and we recived a letter in the post from
LU saying that she has 10 days to write back and give her side of
story, so they can prepare a case to take to court. This seems a
little bit harsh when the entire tube system is littered with warnings
a £10 fine for travelling without a ticket and here she is travelling
with a ticket but not realise that she needed a different ticket.

She is now worried that she will go to court get a fine and a criminal
record.

Has anybody else come across and delt with this??? and have any advice
on what we should do or what could happen? do they treat LU fines like
a car fine or do you get a criminal record which seems a little over
the top???


You account is filled with the a number of inconsistencies, which I
have to say is not unusual on this NG when someone is fishing for a
loophole to get themselves or someone they know out of an often quite
justified fine.

First you say "a friend," and "_they_ just moved to the area," but
then you say "_we_ thought you only needed..." and then "we recived a
letter..." etc. This sort of thing looks odd and leads people to
suspect that you are taking about either a) yourself, or b) someone
more than just a "friend." The latter would be significant if it's
actually someone you know a bit better and would have had more
occasion to point out what ticket "she" needs to get from one side of
London to another.

The bit about the person in question having, "just moved to the area."
Hmmm... right. My own experience is that people in that situation
tend to be hyper-paranoid about getting the right ticket, rather than
just blithely assuming that the first one they pick up is going to
work. And was it actually a single-journey ticket, or a Zone 2/3
Travelcard? If the latter, it beggars belief that someone could have
gone through the process of acquiring one and not know the fare
structure.

Next we have the fact that you say "she" was heading for Kennington,
but got nabbed at Oval, which is the next station on. Were it the
other way around, one might be inclined to suspect that her ticket was
checked by inspectors on the train, but this can't have logically been
the case.

Lastly we come to the point others have raise, i.e. that how the
person stopped for apparent fare evasion reacts to being challenged
goes a long way to how they are treated. The situation you've
outlined - for all its anomalies - doesn't appear to merit the
treatment your "friend" got, unless "she" got very gobby with the
revenue protection/station staff.

Of course, if your "friend" _is_ new to the area, I expect "she" can
produce documentation to that effect (recent utility bills to previous
address elsewhere, Council Tax documentation, etc.), which may help
prove the claimed ignorance on "her" part.
--
Nick Cooper

[Carefully remove the detonators from my e-mail address to reply!]

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