Fine off!

Is anyone else getting a bit sick of fines?

I am getting a bit sick of fines.

Yesterday I got a £20 penalty for not having a train tricket. TWENTY POUNDS! I had got the train from London Road to Moulsecoomb as I was going to work. I was running late and the stupid new ticket machine refused my money, it just kept spitting my pound out. I hate the new machines anyway, they are far less effecient and take far longer than the old ones and by the time I had found the right ticket and it refused my coin the train arrived.

I hopped on.

The ticket inspector was busy so I couldn't get one from him and 2 minutes later we arrived at Moulsecoomb.

I disembarked.

There, waiting by the exit, were three burly inspectors, who looked more like bouncers. I explained why I didn't have a ticket but they had none of it and issued the fine anyway. Given the return ticket costs £1.45, £20 seems a little unjustified? Thats the equivilant of paying for nearly 14 of that journey!

The other big finer are banks. Over my three years at Uni, I have suffered their fate a few times when money ran short at the end of a month and a DD bounced or whatever. I know this is a big issue in the media at the moment, and rightly so - they are fucks. Once I was fined over £200 by Abbey because a few things bounced and they charge you £35 for each one then fines for going over your overdraft then fines for the sake of fines and up it mounts. That means, inevitably, the next month you are short of cash and run into the same problem again. Abbey made over £630 million profit last year and they still think its acceptable to rob their customers like that. YES WE ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS REMEMBER!


So my main beef with fines is that its basically treating you like a kid. No room for explainations, no room for taking individual circumstances into account and certainly no proportionate system of fines. Go a pound overdrawn - £30 fine. Go a billion pounds over - £30 fine.

What gives a company the right to fine someone? They are not the Police or the government or a law maker. They are just profiteering corporations who see a chance to extorte more money from their clients. We keep these services and businesses afloat and yet they seek to punish us when we make the odd honest mistake.

Now would I get away with issuing a fine?

"Excuse me Southern Rail, I bought a train ticket from London to Brighton and as your too tight to invest in rolling stock, I had to stand all the way as the train was so crowded. It was also hot, stuffy and generally badly kept. That will be a £30 fine please."

You would have no chance and to seek such compensation would mean expense and personal risk through the courts. So how has this unjust and unbalanced system been allowed? Why can a business that makes a fortune fine individuals who rarely make a fortune, but not the other way around.

I resent being told off and punished at the tender age of 27, thats why I no longer live with my parents!

Needless to say I always write a strongly worded letter to complain about any fines and I sometimes get it back, but sometimes I don't. It pisses me right off how much companies are allowed to exploit the general public.

Its not even as if you get a fine that is a fair amount. If the train people made me pay twice my fare for example, £3.00, they would make their point, make more money than they would have if I had got my ticket and I would know that it would potentially cost me double to not buy a ticket in the future.

Banks charges are even worse. £35 for a failed direct debit. How does that work? The bank does not loose any money as they don't pay it. Their automated computer system is notified there is not the money to cover the payment and rejects it. An automated letter is then issued and the computer automatically charges you the next month. They say the £35 is to cover costs, but its not - its a fine and a penalty and a punishment for breaking the rules that they establish and do not let you have a say in. Fines that boost their profits nicely thank you very much.

I did some digging around and the banks were asked to explain their charges to a tribunal thing. They said it was a parly estimated cost as it turns out, they calculate the cost of all their debt busting activities. This includes issuing balifs, claiming money from businesses, customers going over their limits, unpaid DD's - everything to do with that side of money collections. They then apportion this to the customers by a sort of guess, so that all the fines paid over a year will cover the cost of all their debt busting antics. So that means the average bank customer is no doubt funding the bank to chase businesses who owe them cash or bankrupts and all that. If its a charge for the cost of the customers error, surely it should be calculated exactly, which, given its all automated, should equal about a pence. I even recall when a BT direct debit bounced and Abbey fined me, but BT didn't. So the company who didn't get their cash did nothing but the bank who didn't loose anything or do anything made a £35 profit off the back of it.

Fuckers.