Ok, below is a draft of my indended appeal statement. Any comments / improvements appreciated. Once again, thanks to everyone who has commented on this thread. It's been fantastic to be able to get some advice and opinions from people in the know on these things!
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Reason for appeal: penalty incorrectly issued. On 18/04/24 my partner and I travelled between Chester and Liverpool lime street by train (leaving 11:01am). We booked tickets via thetrainline.com while we were walking to the station. We did not realise there were two different routes available between Chester and Lime Street and purchased tickets with a route via Runcorn. There was no warning on the route when buying the tickets and ticket itself doesn't state TFW only, just “route: via Runcorn”. At Chester, we completely accidentally got a train going a different route. Our tickets were checked on the train and we were issued with a £100 penalty fare (each). This penalty is incorrectly issued as the reason stated is “00 No Ticket” when clearly in the grounds info section below, it states that we DID have a ticket, but were off route. National Rail Condition of Travel 13.2 states:
“If you make a journey by a route that is not valid you will be liable to pay an excess fare. The price for this will be the difference between the amount paid for the Ticket you hold and the lowest price Ticket available for immediate travel that would have entitled you to travel by that route.” Therefore we should have been charged an excess of 50 pence, not a penalty of £100. Please see attached tickets which were purchased in advance of travel.
Did you use the fare-dodger's lift? Otherwise, all the central Liverpool stations have gatelines so you'll have been checked to get inside those!
Of course at this point I had two valid tickets for the gates at Liverpool via different routes, but the gates were open both at Liverpool and Chester so literally no one looked at them. Go figure!