Great Western Coffee Shop

I will speak plain in that I am a commuter and I work in Performance and Auditing and I work in Highways > now under the Office of Rail Regulation, thanks to the current Govt.

The Railway Byelaw 14 'framework' is an anchronism in the way that is treats its customers and allows a 'guilty until proven innocent' approach under its 'older style implementation'.
That framework exists and cant be argued with and can be deployed with great ease to muscle the rail user into submission if he finds through extraneous circumstance/no fault of his own he is without a ticket.
This is a harsh reality that gives the impression of criminalising the user.
Also Revenue Protection dont seem to have the resources/care to look into things and base their outcomes on commercial targets. Put it another way - youre guilty if your documents arent in order & we'll throw the book at you".   At some point, if you commute everyday, you will be in a challenging situation because of these outdated policies. Best assured outcome for you is to cough up and shut up.
>>Having said that, I did this and because of a back office error I was again threatened with prosecution because apparently the data management at Revenue and Protection isnt capable or JUST.
>>If I worked in Rail, as opposed to Highways, I would distance myself from the ugly & politically incorrect practices of R&P as much as possible. ORR guidelines mention compensation.. so I would like to hear some thoughts..

No need to mention names, but an idea of the actual timeline & history in this case would ease our collective responses - it's difficult to comment without.

But welcome to the forum....please stay around!

The details are that Ive had to look into the 2015 passenger charter and the byelaws - so I know there is a massive disjoint. There is also an operational disjoint because R+p will influence the action of other rail staff towards you; ask them not to sell you a ticket because they believe you have committed a certain offence and you not having any kind of ticket will strengthen their case. They also took away the ticket machine at Oldfield Park blurring the lines of 'opportunity to buy ticket'. In this recent case, I had a bank card fail and wouldnt be read in the ticket guards machine> its a fair cop - give me a UPN that Ill pay within 21 days, while I go and get cash from the high street nearest bank.  As mentioned, I paid in good time but their systems failed : (I couldnt find a paper reciept but Temple Meads Ticket records backed me up in the 11th hour) : The default response is to exact payment over the ods and threaten litigation. Third time for me in 10 years... zero customer focus....

Thanks - can you expand on this?

Welcome to the forum, Sleeve.

I'm going to leave much comment to other members. I can add both a sympathy having been in a handful of awkward positions where I've had to tell what seems like a pretty improbable (but true) story against what I felt was an assumption of guilt; "we'll let you off this time" is unpleasant when you know there's nothing to be let off!  But I can also add a sympathy for the staff who have to deal with a significant fare evasion issue where at time the vast majority of people the come across with certain metrics are indeed trying to cheat the system.

The crux of this matter appears to be the 'bank card failing'. It's a common problem with on board purchases. The rail industry, as a whole, accepts credit and debit cards, but the equipment used on board trains is set up to refuse certain cards. This could be cards set to 'online authorisation' only (on train purchases are always an 'offline' transaction), or chip/mag strip read errors. Or just the fact that some cards will always be refused.

It's a problem that TOCs are well aware of, and one that some passengers exploit. It is being addressed with new equipment though that will ensure all card sales online are fully authorised at the time of purchase.

Electron Visa cards have always required authorisation at point of sale & are among those that can't be used offline, as GWR does currently. Why they don't advertise this far more thoroughly beats me.

Are you saying that that they're moving to an online set-up? How's that work in areas of no mobile reception?

Avantix replacement has the capability for online authorisation. Dependent of course on WiFi/mobile signal.

Avantix replacement is currently being trialled by Arriva Trains Wales. Other TOCs will the new on board TIS soon.