This evening I travelled from Charing to Maidstone where I received a £20 penalty fare for travelling without a ticket. I travelled at 6pm from a station where the ticket office closes at 11am and there is no ticket machine.

There is a permit to travel machine at Charing but you need to have change to use it and I did not have any change with me when I made my journey.

I fully intended to pay for my ticket, as I always do, when I reached my destination.

I explained all of this to the ticket inspector, next to the very machine from which I would have purchased my ticket, and he still made me pay the fine!

The thing that has made me really angry this evening is the inconsistency of staff at South Eastern Rail. The varied approach is confusing for customers and leads to misunderstandings.

As I cannot drive I travel by train everyday, at least one journey a day. Depending on the timing of my journey I am not always able to buy a ticket before I travel and do not always have cash available to purchase a permit to travel. Every other time it has been okay to pay on the train or at my destination station, so why not today?

There are ticket inspectors on the train who know that certain rural stations do not have ticket offices or machines. They can see people boarding the train and surely it is their job to check people’s tickets and offer them a way to pay their fare?

I travel from Charing to Ashford a few times a week and I do not always have a permit to travel. I explain where I have come from and I am allowed through the gates to purchase my ticket. I have never before been made to pay a penalty fare.

This is not the first time that I have been treated unfairly by South Eastern Rail. I am a 19 weeks pregnant mother of 17 month old twins. From our village station I cannot access London bound trains and so stations wihtout travelling via Ashford, the opposite way. Depending on who I buy my ticket from and on what day depends on how much I am charged. Sometimes I have to pay for my travel to Ashford and then from Ashford to my destination. Sometimes I am allowed to travel for free to Ashford as it is the only way that I can access certain places. When I come home from Ashford I have to rely on my husband being able to come to the station to help us over the bridge. If he was not available to do this we would have to travel on to Maidstone, adding at least 40 minutes to our journey and depending on who is on duty an extra £6!

I am ranting now because I am so so angry about what happened to me today. I would like my £20 penalty fare back as it may not be much for South Eastern Rail but it means a lot to me as it was the only cash I had and was actually my children’s Christmas money from relatives.

I do not understand why if it is possible to have a permit machine in Charing it is not possible to have a ticket machine enabling customers to purchase their tickets with a card. Our village has no bank or out of hours cash machine and no cash point at all that can ever be accessed with a double buggy!

I understand the need to penalise people who abuse the system but that is not the case this time. If the inspector had listened to my story then he would know and understand my reasons. He could have let me pay for my ticket at the machine we were standing next to, which had been my intention all along.

I am lodging my complaint, making my appeal, well within the regulation 21 days and would appreciate my money being returned to me before Christmas so I can buy my children their presents.

Thank you.