In This Article:
Daisy Mumba didn’t think her train journey from Reading to Sheffield could get any worse. Seven months pregnant and unable to get to the seat she had booked because of the number of people onboard, she had to sit on the floor, constantly getting up and down to let other passengers past.
But worse it was to get. A seemingly minor error to do with printing out her ticket prompted a series of calamitous events and left her with a conviction for not having a valid ticket, even though she had spent £70 on one before the journey.
Her experience is a salutary lesson for anyone who relies too much on the advances of technology, and a reminder that not all parts of the transport system operate seamlessly in the digital age.
The 32-year-old teacher from Sheffield had been returning from a wedding last August when she bought a ticket from Slough to Sheffield, with a change in Reading, on the Trainline app. Her first problem, she says, was that she could not get to her seat and had to sit on the floor next to the toilet on the CrossCountry service.
When a ticket inspector arrived to check her ticket, Mumba showed her what she thought was her ticket on the Trainline app but was told it was not valid as she needed to have it printed out. “I showed her my ticket on the app and she told me it wasn’t valid. I have used the app for over a decade and have never been asked to do this,” says Mumba.
She went to the ticket office in Sheffield and got it printed out, as she says she was instructed to do, and thought little more of it.
That was until she got a court notification for boarding a train without a valid ticket.
“I filled out the attached paperwork and pled not guilty, attaching a photo of the physical ticket, a screenshot of the online ticket via the Trainline app and a screenshot of the purchase on my HSBC bank statement,” she says.
The letter with the evidence never got to court – she presumes it must have got lost in transit – and Mumba was found guilty in her absence, with the court recording a conviction and fining her £600.
Her experience arguably shows how a simple mistake can snowball into something beyond one’s control.
Mumba’s main problem was that she had bought a ticket that required her to physically print it out before boarding and show that to the ticket inspector. On CrossCountry’s website, it says that “for most of our journeys, there’s absolutely no need for paper tickets”. However, that was not the case in this instance.
Trainline says some tickets are not required to be printed, such as e-tickets and tap-in/tap-out tickets. But on the service that Mumba travelled on, e-tickets, which use barcodes on mobile devices instead of requiring a paper ticket, were not available, according to the company.