Only special student passes at Irish Rail
Somedays I just throw bury my head in my hands at what we have become.
My son has been doing some specialized soccer training for the last while in Tipperary, he travels every Friday after school by train from Cork to Thurles, the fare is €18 plus a €2 administration fee for using “the internet” (nice move there Irish Rail)
I buy his ticket every week online and he collects it from the machine in Cork’s Kent Station, so he is 17, at 6th year in secondary school so what ticket would you buy? a student one perhaps?
Last Friday he was asked for his ticket by a ticket inspector on the train as he is every week, the inspector asked for his student ID (he was travelling in his school uniform) he got panicked and replied he got on the train directly from school and showed the inspector his uniform. Thats wasn’t good enough, he showed his student card, that wasn’t good enough either, he needs a special student card run by a third party affiliated with Irish Rail, this costs €12.
He tried to explain to the inspector that he was a student, had a student travel card and offered to call his dad to talk to the guy, he was having none of it and issued (wait for it) a €116 fine, a multiple of 4 of the maximum ticket on the route. my son nearly had a heart attack as you can imagine and was still shaking when I collected him Friday night.
I told him it was all a misunderstanding and I would sort it.
Well I can’t. I am just off the phone with another gentleman from “The Revenue Protection Unit” in Connolly Station (a man who would make James turn in his grave) who tells me “tough” you must have the correct student ID card, we only take our one.
So its a €116 fine and I’m left wondering is this what we have become?
This is crazy had the right ticket, school uniform and was clearly a student. I would not let this lie Pat I would do whaterver you can to try and get it sorted. Why could he not speak to you on the phone? After all if they were treating him as a student they should want to speak to his parent. Jobsworth and twats is all I can say about them.
Twitter: shanekny
13th October, 2010 at 10:35 pm
I cant believe what i’m reading… i presume and hope you are taking this all the way to the top and have no intention of paying this STUPID fine
Silly as it is, this is the way it has been for years on Irish Rail. 3 years and more ago and when I was in college, I would get the Irish Rail student card every year as I’d save the cost of it on one train ride. Without it, the train was unaffordable.
Train travel is priced as a luxury in this country and I believe that is how it is seen by CIE. It’s ridiculous.
Unbelievable that they’d:
a) treat your 17 year old son in that manner (I’d have been shaking myself), and
b) imply that he’s not a student just because he didn’t have a ‘special’ card.
Their behaviour and their fine are disgraceful!
Absolutely bonkers.. Being a student should be applicable to EVERY student, not just people who have paid for another useless card to fill up their wallet!
Same shite happened to me on the train down to college last year. Got a fine, challenged it, failed. Bought the card, but now i find that its expired.. Its still ME and i’m still a student. Safe to say I dont do Irish Rail anymore…
Never got that whole 3rd party company required to prove you’re a student.
A few years ago my wife and I got under 26 tickets for an internal train in Belgium, no ID asked for. On train inspector took great delight at charging us extra as we didn’t have ID to prove our age. We were under 26 at the time.
Train inspectors of the world unite!
I am sick. Is this what those in 1916 and the civil war died for, so we could be misruled by a bunch of idiots hiding behind red tape.
I don’t know what else to say. What happened to common sense? We have been so badly let down by every section of society that is meant to represent us. No point in consulting the ombudsman – no teeth.
Mark
I refuse to travel with Irish Rail, and I let them know this fact quite sternly in writing. My first two years living in Dublin and travelling home to Galway, each and every time there would be some delay, or cancellation, or overcrowding, all with the privilege of paying €48 Adult return, Heuston to Galway.
The last straw came one Friday evening when, after being held up for well over an hour somewhere in Offaly (of course with no explanation), we moved on to Athlone, where the train split into two halves, one going back to Dublin and the other on to Galway. Of course again, no notifications, no helpful staff, nothing. I arrived in Galway at midnight and said i’d never travel with them again. I now take the very reliable GoBus, which is actually faster and just €10!
Surprised this is still going on. I had to do the same as Conor back when i was in college and buy the card each year. Sure you make it back on the first trip, but it’s just crazy that they don’t just accept official student cards.
Another cock-up by Irish Rail who have to be one of the worst Irish service providers and have been so for as long as I can remember. I recently sent them a complaint about the dirt of Heuston station and the cafe area and never even received as much as an acknowledgement. Best of luck with this Pat.
The other quite humorous aspect of their student “discount” is that it’s not always a discount.
As far as the ticket machines are concerned, from Limerick to Clonmel as a student it costs €11, where as an adult costs €10.80. Now i’m not sure, but aren’t student discounts supposed to .. you know.. provide discounts?!? Not to mention that they’re never on time.
I’m never travelling with them as long as I can help it.
I definitely feel this is one for Joe Duffy to get his teeth into. You should give the live line a call.
Twitter: shanekny
13th October, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Had a similar experience almost 20 years ago as a student – clearly nothing has changed in the interim. Now that there’s a decent motorway network in IRL, at least we don’t have to use them anymore, unless of course you are a student….
Unbe-bloody-lievable
Unbelievable Pat. Not the first time I’ve heard such a horror story about Irish Rail, they were doing it back in my student days too. Clowns
My girlfriend and I are moving back to Dublin from London at the moment, and I hate to tell you that some – and I mean some – rail operators over here in the UK aren’t far off Irish Rail. Ticket prices here are super expensive too, and I’ve witnessed several people come under attack from staff despite genuine misunderstandings usually due to misinformation from the rail operators.
I think a lot of it is down to ‘If we build it, they SHALL come’. Your son unfortunately has no other option but to get the train, and Irish Rail know this. But bullying a 17 year old is nothing short of a disgrace, and something needs to be done about this. Your first port of call should be the Department of Transport.
Either that, or ‘Talk to Joe’ as Brian mentioned above.
feel your pain – times like this i would love to challenge Irish Rail in the courts as this is just wanking on the irish piublic –
their bad service – only because they are in state jobs and have no competition – they wouldn’t last till lunchtime in the real world of business
dogs
To be fair to IrishRail, they do say when you are buying the ticket that you must have that specific student card and that you will get fined for having no ticket if you do not hold the student card. However, its appalling… and you know what else is appalling, their attitude generally.
I’ve been looking into this for quite a while now (I’ve been getting figures from them over the past few months to try do out statistics myself) and their pricing and frequency systems seem random at best. For similar distances and arguably passenger numbers based on frequency and price there can be disparities of up to €10 on tickets.
Mind, there are some amazing, helpful and polite staff in IrishRail, but they are far outnumbered by staff who are just downright rude.
They are an unbelievable shower irish rail. There is a very wide gap in the image painted in their ads (gleaming on time trains, clean tidy stations, SMILING staff and the good value pitch) and what they deliver. Your Sons story is all too believable when the place seems to be run for the staff and contractors benefit rather than passengers/taxpayers/owners and unfortunatley it seems to be getting worse.
I took Cork-Dublin saturday last, fare €20+2 “service charge” and took to wondering how long it will be before much of the new investment they shook us down for during the tiger years is let fall apart and decay due to lack of maintainence and management neglect. They are very good at spending other peoples money.
Just to add to the gripe about their charges. I had to unexpectedly return to cork on tuesday morning. When i looked at the website on monday night the cheapest ticket was €36 plus “service charge €2. so to save the charge I turned up at the station to pay cash. The cheapest ticket there had risen to €68.00..All too believeable and symtomatic of their ” rip off the customer” ethos.
It’s rubbish like
sorry, typing error on last comment…
It’s rubbish like this that is starting to make me and my Canadian fiancee seriously consider moving out of Ireland. Ordinary citizens are being treated like criminals and when it comes to money collection the assumption of guilt is always present.
If your son had paid to reserve his seat in advance and found some stranger sitting in it when he boarded would this CIE employee move the offender, not likely.
It’s all about money and nothing about service with the Public “Service”. The name says it all “The Revenue Protection Unit” screw the public, protect the revenue.
I just tried out the system and a notice came up that you have to have their special card and no other student ID will do…seems clear enough – is that new?
If the RPU were that bothered they might make sure that the annual tickets their company issues could last a year’s use. I just flash my annual rail and bus card and walk through most stations. No one bats an eyelid.
Sorry for your son’s trouble, and yours. Sad times indeed.
Twitter: irishstu
14th October, 2010 at 9:49 am
My dad had a similar experience – he presented a photocopy of his senior citizen travel card and the ticket inspector said it was counterfeit and threatened to have him prosecuted for fraud!
Pat, I agree with Ben’s comment above. To be fair to Irish Rail most students know what requirements Irish Rail have for student tickets.
On the other side, in terms of customer service there are very few in that company that know what the concept is about.
My son just started secondary school and travels by train into the city centre every day.
It takes 2 weeks to get the official smart card and the required form must be signed by the school so there’s a 2-week window when he had no card. By the way, Dublin Bus can issue them on the spot.
The crazy thing was that there’s one guy, very helpful, in the station who would sell him a school fare (he’s 12 and wearing a uniform after all) during that period while the other guy refused to, citing rules and regs. Of course, there’s no incentive to speed up the smart card issuance when you can charge more without it.
IrishRail are a joke. 2 tickets between Sligo and Dublin cost €88 last week. No WIFI, no decent food service, rigid seats. It would be cheaper to go via plane.
I can see why you are unhappy about this Pat, but to be fair to Irish Rail it seems to be clearly stated before booking online that you need their student card and no other will do.
That is appalling. What is the law regarding fines? What multiple of the price is allowed?
The M50 toll ratchets up fines very quickly to the point where after a 3 week holiday my €3 toll had become a €250 fine. At Waterford train station I forgot to buy a parking ticket, €2.50, and got back 6 hours later to find a €120 clamping fine.
Your son got a 4x fine on the price.
It seems exploitative to me.
Twitter: shanekny
14th October, 2010 at 12:09 pm
The fine seems ridiculous-I think he was unlucky in coming across a particularly nasty inspector who went out of his way to make a point. Unfortunately he did have a right to if the terms of the purchase say you must have their student card. And it was that way when I getting my student rates from ’95 or so?
Still, he could have just asked for the balance or something and told him to get the card. You’d have been peeved but it wouldn’t have been a nightmare.
It’s a pretty hefty fine all right but I’m not sure what the issue is here? Did your son actually ever buy the €12 Irish Rail student card? I travelled on Irish rail for years as a student and I always had to have the Irish Rail student card. I knew if I didn’t then I wasn’t eligible to travel as a student. If I had known that walking around in a school uniform would be enough to get cheaper tickets then i would have packed one for my train journeys.
If your son didn’t have an Irish Rail student card then I don’t see what your problem is. Do you feel that the same rules don’t apply to you and your son when you travel as do to the rest of the plebs?
I would advise you to spend the €12 on the Irish Rail ticket soon so you can start making savings and eventually you’ll get back your €116.
Pat,
There is Monopoly power for you! Worse, such power infects workers in that system. On the other hand privatising these “natural” monopolies does not work very well either (see the UK!) . Perhaps a smarter public administration linking government subvention to an independent customer satisfaction survey or other metric of customer satisfaction and value for money would keep Irish Rail focused on their customers.
I’m far from pro Irish rail, I have a serious problem with the fact that it is cheaper for me to take my audi quattro where I’m going than it is to take the train, however anybody with a scanner and some fairly basic technology can produce a student id card, I can understand why they might need a standard id card.
However with my experience of sloppy irish rail, what do you have to produce to get a student id from them… any old student id card???
It’s gas how often people complain about Irish Rail. Barry Kenny is on the radio more often than most politicians.
I was in a similar situation to your son years ago where I needed a special card. I managed to get away with it on that occasion.
This really is a prime case of following rules to the letter, but a letter no one else knows. I used Irish Rail a fair bit this year and nowhere could I see any info. on the rules about student cards (as a masters student I have one, but my card is often rejected because it’s a postgrad one) so I kept buying student travel tickets. Until one inspector decided to change that.
I wasn’t hit with a big fine, because I managed to talk him down, but next time I might just get the Aircoach.
Pat, what I find hilarious about this whole situation and this goes for the luas as well, is that if your, clearly polite, son had tied his school tie around his head, opened a can of dutch gold, and told the inspector to ram his fine up his hole, I can guarantee that he would not have come home holding a fine slip.
It’s always the quiet, polite and HONEST people in this country that get f*cked around.
To take an extreme example, if you owe a bank 20k, you’re hounded for it, if you owe them 20million, it’s “in your own time Sir”.
I’m beginning to hate this, once upon a time, wonderful country of ours and Irish Rail epitomise everything bad about it right now.
Please for all of us…DO NOT pay that fine. Any judge in the country will laugh this out of court and possibly hold Irish Rail in contempt for wasting the court’s time.
Twitter: shanekny
15th October, 2010 at 1:33 pm
I agree Keith. Id let it get to court and have your say. You won’t get any satisfaction dealing with Irish Rail but more infuriated.
I hate to side with Iarnród Éireann, but you’re warned so many times during the ordering process that you really can’t blame them for your oversight.
However, that fine is nothing short of outrageous and you may get somewhere on appeal because 1) it’s totally ott 2) you (your son) is only 17, presumably with no income.
The third issue is Iarnród Éireann’s total ignorance with regard to young people in full time secondary education but over 15. Something needs to be done.
Paid 78€ to go up to the Webbies this week because I didn’t get my Student TravelCard.
You’d think that my UCC Student ID (which I paid 1,500€ for the privilege of having, 900-odd of that going straight back into the Irish Government) would do.
Missus got the student travel card and her ticket was 40-odd euro, which is still a ridiculous amount of money to spend. 30€ would full the tank of my Fiat 500 and I would have gotten from Cork to Dublin much faster than I would have with the train.
Pat, you’re the man, you can fight this.
Twitter: shanekny
19th October, 2010 at 4:43 pm
I just recieved a fine yesterday. I boarded the Dart at dun laoghaire where one ticket machine was broken and the other being held up by a credit card user that didnt know how to use the machine. The dart was approaching and I had another train to catch at heuston which Id paid for. I went to the ticket booth where the man was in a back room chatting away. I shouted twice and no reply. I decided to get the train and pay at the other end. Arriving at Connelly I went up to the ticket booth saying I had to pay my fare, where I was bluntly told I would have to pay a 100€ fine! Im going to try and FREEMAN ON THE LAND it. I urge people to seek this concept out. Its the only way to deal with this unjust, unfair, ficticious system.
Just have to say – I subscribed to the comments when I commented on this post, and I’m loving the replies.
Pat – I really think you can do us all some good with this one, and fair play to you for pursuing it. Marcus above didn’t NEED to go up to the ticket booth and say anything, he could have just dodged the fare easy peasy.
Annoying thing is – it’d be so easy to change ‘the system’ and make things better for everybody.
I also subscribed to the comments and I think a lot of them are great.
I summarised a good report about the benefits of integrated ticketing and how simplifying ticketing has overall benefit for reduction of fare fraud (non-payment and falsification such as wrong ticket) on my blog earlier http://ben.dismiz.com/transport/irishrail-1/
Unfortunately IrishRail seem to bury their head in the sand when something that might require a little bit of thought is mentioned… hey, I think I’d quite like to get a job there
Seriously – I can’t believe I am actually sticking up for Irish Rail but this is like a session on the Joe Duffy show – people complaining about something that they are clearly in the wrong on. @ Enda crowley – why didn’t you just drive up then? If your girlfriend had a student travel card then you obviously knew that it was required!!! Seriously this is a microcosm of what is wrong with this country – everyone thinks somebody else should be responsible for their lack of thought/ effort.
People need to get off forums and stop whining about everything. Especially things they actually have control over – there is no obstacle course with crocodiles on the way to purchasing a student travel card – you get a passport picture, your student id, walk up to the ticket booth and they give you one in about 2 minutes.
For all those people complaining about the injustice of not being told / couldnt find out – this is what I got off the Irish Rail site within about 15 seconds of checking.
Student Fares - Students – Valid for Single and Monthly Return Travel. student single and monthly return fares.Passenger must have a valid Student Travel Card to avail of student fares. http://www.studenttravelcard.ie for more information
Scholar 5 Day ticket are available on the Dublin- Balbriggan, Maynooth, Hazelhatch & Greystones routes, valid up to 5pm, Mon-Fri only. Scholar ID card is required. No Yes Scholar ID required. Click here to download a Scholar Photo ID card.
Discounted Single, Day Return or 5-Day Return tickets are available on the Dublin- Balbriggan, Maynooth, Hazelhatch & Greystones routes and are valid up to 5pm, Mon- Fri only. No Yes ID may be required. Click here to download a Schoolchild Photo ID card.
@Eoin: Reading up on both Irish Rail and StudentTravelCard.ie websites it doesn’t seem like you can get the card from the ticket booth. You can get an “on the spot one” if you visit one of their locations (at some colleges and other places.) You also have to have the completed form with you or get one on the spot and fill it out.
Hopefully the websites are out of date and your personal experience of getting one in 2 minutes at a ticket booth is correct.
This is disgraceful.I think the inspector was on a power trip.Does he realise your son is paying his wages and by using the service is keeping him in a job.You should contact Joe Duffy on his daily radio programme.Irish Rail would have to come or to defend their LITTLE HITLER attitude and the listners would have a field day and Je would give them the grilling they deserve as he hates when these Authority Figures cant use their brains and show a little compassion or understanding and hide behind RED TAPE to bully people especially young people like your son who would be intimidated by them.Go on phone Joe,Irish Rail would then be squirming from the adverse publicity on the national airways and not for the first time.Its the only way to stop them.
When it comes to Irish Rail, their ticketing system and the inspectors, it’s all a huge joke. One look at the Commuting and Transport forum on boards.ie shows many many people unhappy and disgruntled with IR and these pointless fines for the most frivolous of things.
Twitter: shanekny
6th November, 2010 at 11:26 pm
Form a simple physics point of view, there is very little difference in an “adult” and a “student”, still take up a seat. The pricing structure should be the same for all. It’s because of these “discounts” that the standard price is so high. It makes no sense that someone should enjoy the same CIE privileges for a reduced price, maybe ‘they’ should means test the students.
Quote Smae “The pricing structure should be the same for all. It’s because of these discounts that the standard price is so high”.
Let’s get the pensioners first, shall we?
Yawn!
This is hilarious.
Absolutely loads of whinging because no-one can actually be bothered to buy the right ticket / railcard combination – and everyone (bar a few posters) seems to think they have a right to travel on student fares without the clearly-required railcard.
It’s no wonder the economy’s buggered is it really – everyone sounds like a shyster on here rather than someone who might genuinely contribute to society and the economy.
Still doesn’t excuse CIE’s action in handling this though!
Twitter: shanekny
7th March, 2011 at 1:03 pm
No it is a joke! if your a student, your a student and should receive a student discount, i received a €100 fare because my student travel expired. They should make you buy a new adult card at most. My fare was €2.20 of a diference and now i am receiving a fine plus they took my ticket so i had to buy one for the way back. This is an absolute joke!!!!!!
Iarnrod Eireann are a complete joke. I got fined €100 for having a ticket I paid €93. I bought this with no information anywhere saying I needed a student travel card. But the idiot on the train wouldn’t accept this or my normal student card because of a no tolerance policy. We as commuters get zero tolerance but all the idiots with no education and a serious chip on their shoulder get to harass us and get away with it. Let them all suffer in pain for their stupidity!