Anyone ever got a penalty fare/fine on the DLR or Tube?

[TW]Fox;9982797 said:
it means 'seek assistance' oddly enough.

Not 'get on a train'.
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Have you been on the DLR? It's a nightmare. Half of the stations do not have staff to "seek assistance" to. The machines are always vandalised and difficult to use, when they are there. It doesn't give the other person permission to board the train but the current situation doesn't help the DLR customers.
 
Scam said:
Now you're just not reading properly. The station is unstaffed, so to 'seek assistance' i have to get on the train. Ok?
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No, you don't - there will be telephones in the station.

And if you can't find assistance, it kinda follows you can't use the item that caused a seek assistance message, right?
 
Ricochet J said:
Have you been on the DLR? It's a nightmare. Half of the stations do not have staff to "seek assistance" to. The machines are always vandalised and difficult to use, when they are there. It doesn't give the other person permission to board the train but the current situation doesn't help the DLR customers.
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Yes, I've been on the DLR many times. And bought a ticket for every trip as well. Otherwise I might have got a fine :eek:
 
You're being ridiculous. You knew you didn't have a valid ticket,and you've been fined for it. If they didn't have penalty fares, who would buy a ticket? If you think you've been "really unlucky and I normally pay", fair enough, but it's your fault you didn't have a ticket and you should pay up. You don't have a case at all.
 
PinkPig said:
You're being ridiculous. You knew you didn't have a valid ticket,and you've been fined for it. If they didn't have penalty fares, who would buy a ticket? If you think you've been "really unlucky and I normally pay", fair enough, but it's your fault you didn't have a ticket and you should pay up. You don't have a case at all.
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Well i was very unlucky, that's obvious. Anyone who's been on the tube/dlr would probably agree it's fairly unlikely anyone is even going to come along to check tickets anyway. But that's not the point. Between not seeing a ticket machine and seeing a 'seek assistance' message on the screen (i.e. thinking if a ticket inspecter had come along, he would be able to sort me out instead of just fining me) i thought getting on the train was the correct thing to do.

I dont think i'm being ridiculous at all. £20 is an unfair fine for someone who was in my position. If i was blatantly fare-dodging then yes maybe it's fair. But i wasnt, and the ticket attendant even admitted that he didnt think i was intentionally dodging the fare, which is why i cant understand a £20 fine. Why not let me pay the single and get on my way?
 
Scam said:
Well i was very unlucky, that's obvious. Anyone who's been on the tube/dlr would probably agree it's fairly unlikely anyone is even going to come along to check tickets anyway. But that's not the point. Between not seeing a ticket machine and seeing a 'seek assistance' message on the screen (i.e. thinking if a ticket inspecter had come along, he would be able to sort me out instead of just fining me) i thought getting on the train was the correct thing to do.

I dont think i'm being ridiculous at all. £20 is an unfair fine for someone who was in my position. If i was blatantly fare-dodging then yes maybe it's fair. But i wasnt, and the ticket attendant even admitted that he didnt think i was intentionally dodging the fare, which is why i cant understand a £20 fine. Why not let me pay the single and get on my way?
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The seek assistance message meant that your oyster wasn't recorded as touching in, AFAIK. You would have had a problem getting off at the other end (even if the inspector hadn't been there) if where you were getting off had barriers.
 
[TW]Fox;9982970 said:
If the rules of the public transport system grate you this much, then buy a car.

Or put up with it.
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Unfortunately it's as simple as that. I honestly can't stand public transport, so the simple way out was to buy a car and i'm damn glad I did :D
 
daz said:
The seek assistance message meant that your oyster wasn't recorded as touching in, AFAIK. You would have had a problem getting off at the other end (even if the inspector hadn't been there) if where you were getting off had barriers.
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Yeah. I've seen people not get through and just flash their Oyster card at the attendant and get let out. I always thought it was a fairly relaxed system in that respect.
[TW]Fox;9982970 said:
If the rules of the public transport system grate you this much, then buy a car.

Or put up with it.
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To drive around London? Stop trying to wind me up, it's really not going to work.

I found a little bit on Google, but not as much as i'd hoped. One site does say;
Reasons for appeal may include a failure by the operator to run its scheme correctly, or when there has been a lack of discretion by Revenue Protection staff.
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If they implement any kind of discretion, in my mind i'm sure i deserved a bit of it considering all the circumstances.
 
Scam said:
If they implement any kind of discretion, in my mind i'm sure i deserved a bit of it considering all the circumstances.
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Well if you consider the circumstances, you went wrong when you did the following two things:

Scam said:
i didnt really want to buy a paper ticket as it would cost me more in the long run, plus there was no ticket machine that i could see (admittedly i didnt try too hard).
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You should have made a proper effort to find a ticket machine. I would just accept the fine and be done with it. :)
 
Explicit said:
You should have made a proper effort to find a ticket machine. I would just accept the fine and be done with it. :)
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In fairness, that's probably easier to say when it's not you that's £20 thats out of pocket. With the circumstances i knew i wanted to appeal when i was arguing with the guy, therefore i'm quite angry that he led me to believe that i had to pay the fine, whereas in reality i didnt have to then. That's what is really bugging me. I'm also wondering why there is an appeals system if it werent for specific circumstances like mine.

Has no-one here had any experience appealing these? I thought we had quite a few Londoners.
 
I got stung for dodging fares when I was living in Paris and had hardly any money... soon realised that I deserved the fine, after all I'd taken the Metro without having a ticket, I'd tried chancing my luck and it hadn't worked, so I had to face the consequences.

Penalty fines are there for a reason.

Don't bother trying to appeal the fine - you were clearly in the wrong by taking the train without having a ticket.

Just pay the fine and forget about it (but don't do it again).
 
Sorry, but you knowingly doged a fair and got fined. I don't know why you think your entitled to a refund. The fine is there to stop exactly what you have done.
 
Scam said:
In fairness, that's probably easier to say when it's not you that's £20 thats out of pocket. With the circumstances i knew i wanted to appeal when i was arguing with the guy, therefore i'm quite angry that he led me to believe that i had to pay the fine, whereas in reality i didnt have to then. That's what is really bugging me.
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Well if you argued with the ticket inspector, then it's fairly obvious why he didn't exercise any discretion.

So what are you appealing against? (Genuine question). Against the fact that he made you pay on the spot rather than at your own convenience? It doesn't make much difference given that you will eventually have to pay the fine.
 
Although I can sympathies to a certain degree, I'm of the opinion that you should just take it on the chin. You knew the risk. It's also hardly a surprise that somebody wearing a uniform was a trumped-up jobsworth with a superiority complex :) Unlucky....but you really don't deserve to get away with it based on what you say happened. Sorry.
 
So the facts are

1 - You went on the tube without enough credit
2 - You did not top up your card knowingly when you knew you don't have credit
3 - Didn't try other means of payment
4 - trying to talk your way out of it because you are a tourist

What am I missing here? Since when being a tourist except someone from paying a fare? And I have never been on a tube station where there are no machine/til to pay. How do you think other people can get in?

You can appeal, they'll just laugh at your face, I mean what is your argument exactly?

Just for the record, I got stung once in Paris and I had a legit case. Just for your information, the exits in Paris tubes don't have a ticket machine, just basically a 1 way gate you just push through. I got myself a pack of 10 tickets, to use on 10 journeys there for the week. I got on, and on one of the connection change I lost it (actually saw it fell out of my pocket and went down the gap in the platform when getting on a train), got off at the Eiffel tower there were 3 inspectors there checking tickets. Now I didn't have a used on on me (a used on have a little ink mark from the machine when you go in). I did have 7 other new ones in my pocket. He wouldn't have any of it, my french is non existent, he gave me a choice of "police or 35 euros" I paid, it was other that of spent the day at a police station and ruin the week.

You live and learn, but you should know better, in fact you KNEW better but ignored it.
 
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OP - You are in the right, why should you get a fine for not paying for your journey?
I would definitely appeal it and if you fail, I'd take it a step higher and appeal again.

Is this the answer you want to hear?
It just seems that you're getting upset with anybody who has replied telling you that you're in the wrong, that you were right to be fined and yes - it would have been "hassle" to get the situation sorted out, you were in the wrong.

In your opening post you mention other options that would have "cost you more in the long run".
However those other options were open to you and would not have ended up with you getting a fine.

IMHO - Pay your fine, let it go and realise that really however you try and paint this you attempted to make a journey without paying for it.
 
This is one of the most stupid threads I've seen, you have knowingly boarded a train without paying and now you are whining about it on the internet claiming you didn't deserve a fine because you are a tourist. How do you think other people use the train when they don't have any money on their Oyster card? They buy a ticket from a machine, thats not so hard is it?

You tried to steal and you failed, simple as that really.
 
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