Are the ticket required areas well defined and labeled? Obviously
the ticket office should not be in the ticket required area. Where
have the confrontations listed here taken place? Are there adequate
provisions for ticket purchase at the required points? The
enforcement of fares is needed and I would like to see as few barriers
as possible on a system so doing it right is important. If we start
getting decent rail networks in North America, I would like to have
examples of how to do things to point to in England.

On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:36:31 -0800 (PST), Offramp
wrote:

On 21 Nov, 11:55, Ganesh Sittampalam
wrote:
On Nov 21, 10:55*am, Bruce wrote:

The problem is, the only people attracted to these sorts of jobs are
almost entirely the wrong kind. *

Then give them a uniform ... *:-(

I commute on the Great Northern route and I've always found the
inspectors polite and reasonable, both in their dealings with people
with tickets and the occasional time I see them deal with someone
without one.

Having browsed through the linked articles on the penaltyfareappeal
site and in particular having read the correspondence in the appendix
to their report athttp://www.penaltyfareappeal.co.uk/files/PFAS2009-1-FCCTET.pdf,
it seems to me like FCC made a diligent effort to investigate their
claims and found no evidence to back them up.

Of course nothing would excuse the alleged behaviour listed upthread,
and it may well be that the staff on Thameslink are worse behaved than
on Great Northern.

Ganesh

Having read the entire pdf it does seem that FCC's Revenue team is
doing its job pretty well. The fact that people have made complaints
which are demonstrably unfounded shows that some kind of 'Hate
Campaign' is being waged against these RPIs. These RPIs should
consider taking legal action against these malcontents, possibly
though the penaltyfareappeal.co.uk website itself. It may be the only
way to stop thugs who have been correctly penalized erecting a
smokescreen around their offence by traducing the law-abiding.