Southeastern have announced that from Monday 20 February they’ll only sell full-priced “Anytime” tickets on board their trains. Cheekily they say that doing so will “strip out uncertainty for you – our passengers”. However there are also some exceptions that customers need to know about. For something that is supposed to be a simplification it is still all very complicated!

The proposal is to charge you the full un-discounted anytime single fare to a station directly served by the train that you are on. You will not be entitled to any discounts (such as off-peak or railcards) or special terms, or to buy a ticket to a station other than one served by the train that you are on. They are relying on Condition 9.2(b) of the National Conditions of Travel 2016. (That allows them to make the charge but does not require them to do so.)

Southeastern justify this change by saying:

The independent watchdog Transport Focus recommends all train operating companies focus on becoming more consistent, urging fairness and transparency. Therefore we are introducing a consistent on board retailing policy which will strip out this uncertainty for you – our passengers.

That’s pretty cheeky. We doubt that Transport Focus – which is supposed to be on the passengers’ side – intended that consistency and fairness to mean that everyone would be charged as much as possible! It looks like Southeastern are using this as a pretext to increase fare revenue without any improvement in services or any other investment – so it goes straight to their bottom line.

Importantly there are still circumstances where you can still buy a discounted ticket on a train:

• condition 6.3 (a) of the National Conditions say that if “at the station where you start your journey, there is no means of purchasing a Ticket, either because there is no Ticket office open or self-service Ticket machine in working order” then “you must, as soon as you are reasonably able, buy an appropriate Ticket to complete your journey. The price of the Ticket you purchase will be the same as if you had bought a Ticket at the station from which you first departed.” That means that you are entitled to buy on-board a discounted ticket, including an off-peak ticket and/or a railcard discount, and that you can buy a ticket for the whole journey, not just to a station served by the train you are on.
• Condition 6.3 (c) of the National Conditions say that you can also buy a discounted ticket on board if “you have a disability and Ticket purchasing arrangements at the station you are departing from are not suitably accessible.” This might apply if the ticket office is closed and your disability prevents you from using a ticket machine.
• Condition 6.3 (b) of the National Conditions say that you can also buy a discounted ticket on board if “you are specifically permitted to board a train service by an authorised member of staff or notice of the Train Company whose service you intend to board“. We’d advise customers to take the name of the member of staff who authorises you to board. It’s also important to note that permission from a member of staff is not required if one of the other two provisions of Condition 6.3 above apply.
• Southeastern’s rules also explicitly allow the purchase of discounted tickets on board if “queues were too long“. We’ve pressed Southeastern to tell us how long is too long, and what instructions have been given to on-board conductors about this, but they’ve declined to do so. That’s unacceptably vague – and allowing conductors to make their own individual judgement about what too long means will inevitably re-introduce the sort of inconsistency that Southeastern claim to be removing! There are national standards about maximum waiting times (five minutes in the peak, three minutes in the off-peak), but it is difficult to relate that directly to queue length. There’s some advice on this point from Transport Focus: in this case it would seem wise, as Transport Focus suggest, to get permission from station staff before boarding the train and to take a note of the person’s name.
• Southeastern’s rules also say that you can purchase a discounted ticket on-board if “the ticket you wanted was not available [at the station]“. That could be an issue if the ticket office is closed (or, as at Dunton Green and Bat & Ball, does not exist) and there is only a ticket machine working: the ticket machines only sell certain types of ticket, and not always the cheapest ones (that’s what the sticker with the ticks and crosses is supposed to convey).

Unfortunately there appears to be some inexcusably loose drafting in Southeastern’s explanation of all this. For instance they say that discounted tickets are available if “there is no means of buying a ticket … and you were advised to board without [a ticket]“. The National Conditions of Travel say that “there is no means of buying a ticket … or you were advised to board without [a ticket]“. Whether it’s “and” or “or” makes a real difference at unmanned stations where there is no member of staff to advise! Southeastern have acknowledged that it is the National Conditions of Travel that apply in this case.

Southeastern say that:

• “The availability of ticket purchasing facilities is flagged up to conductors at the start of the working day.” (Comment: that doesn’t cover the case where the ticket office closes during the day due to staff sickness or a ticket machine goes out of order.)
• “If a passenger claimed there were no working facilities at their station, then in the interests of good customer service a discounted ticket would be sold.”   (Comment: reports on penalty fares for people arriving at Sevenoaks having been unable to buy a ticket at Bat & Ball suggest that the “benefit of the doubt” is not always given.)
• “On board staff want to make life as easy as possible for our passengers and it’s not in our interest to quibble with a passenger who wants to buy a ticket.”  (Comment: we understand that conductors get a commission on ticket sales; if so they would have a self-interest in taking a hard line and charging a full fare.)
• “To get the best value fares and benefit from numerous discounts and offers, please buy before you board …. with your smart card (The Key).” (Comment: that’s not very helpful because, certainly at the moment, The Key is only used for Season Tickets – it will not hold any sort of day ticket, discounted or otherwise.)

For something that is supposed to be a simplification this is still all very complicated! What we would really like to see is a simplification of the fare system that, like the TfL/Contactless system, that ensure that you always pay the lowest fare for the journey you actually make. That’s simple, easy to understand, and the best deal for customers.

Finally there’s a useful guide to penalty fares from the Evening Standard with some points well worth knowing if you’re challenged.

Update: A recent Freedom of Information Act request has obtained from DfT a copy of the Southeastern Penalty Fare Scheme (2009). This includes the statement that: “[Staff] may only consider the issue of a penalty fare notice where positive information has been provided to them personally about the availability of ticket and permit to travel purchasing facilities at the penalty fares station of journey origin and where queuing time standards are not being exceeded. …  the Ticketing and Settlement Agreement and the Passenger’s Charter queuing standards [are] normally five minutes at peak times and three minutes at other times.”  While a Anytime ticket is not a “penalty fare” it would be very complicated and confusing if a different standard was used to judge whether a queue was “too long” for the new “Buy before you Board” policy.

Update 18 February: We’ve continued to press Southeastern for clarity on these issues.

• On “queue length” they have finally said that “in terms of an acceptable queuing time we would look to the guidelines” [of normally five minutes at peak times and three minutes at other times].
• They have also said, “it is in [our] commercial interest to give passengers every opportunity to buy a ticket and in the interests of good customer care, our on-board staff are not in the business of quibbling with passengers who approach them in order to buy one“. That’s a strange statement: it looks to be very much in the commercial interest of Southeastern only to sell the most expensive tickets; if the objective was customer care or simplicity then the same range of tickets would be available on-board as at stations.
• Southeastern have also still not amend their website to be in line with the National Conditions of Travel.

Update 6 March: Southeastern have finally (and quietly) updated [1] their FAQs to clarify (in line with the National Conditions of Travel) that if you cannot buy your ticket at the station then you do not need additionally to be advised by staff to board the train anyway. But the FAQs are still out of line with the National Conditions of Travel: they don’t say, as the National Conditions of Travel do, that if you are advised to board without a ticket then you can still buy a discounted one on board.

What do you think please? Please let us know here. Also please let us know if you have any difficulty buying reduced-price tickets on-board when you have not been able to buy them at the station.

[1] the original version is here and the revised version is here; the text is in the second FAQ and appears if you click on “Can I still use my Railcard …”