On May 24, 3:03*pm, Sam Wilson wrote:

The debate then would be whether it should be treated as a simple debt
or an attempt to defraud punishable by a PF (which might be a fare or
might be a punitive fine levied under railway byelaws.)

In law? The latter. In practice? Who knows?

Suppose you turn up at a shop wanting a bag of crisps, and they tell
you that they only accept credit cards. You only have cash, so simply
take a bag of crisps and walk out of the shop. What's your legal
position?

Now the situation surrounding tickets is more complex, but you do not
have a right to board a train without either holding a ticket or
following whatever process is required for travel without a ticket (in
most cases, "get on board but find the conductor" works fine and
avoids all the excitement). You may think that the hoops erected by
the travel company are unreasonable (means of payment, for example),
but that's not a justification in law for ticketless travel. It
might be a reason for franchise agreements to be consulted,
politicians who provide subsidy to get excited and other longer-term
solutions, but at the point of travel, if the operator demands to be
paid with a card (or even, vide Olympics booking, a particular sort of
card) then you don't have a leg to stand on.

As with the endless wittering from people with objections to direct
debits and the removal of the cheque guarantee scheme, the legal
position is perfectly simple: vendors can insist on a particular mode
of payment (modulo situations that don't apply here, like breaches of
the 1725 Truck Act and its successors) and can charge differentially
for different modes of payment. It may be bad business, bad PR, bad
politics, bad marketing and bad common sense, but it isn't illegal.

ian