I'm with you. It is the time for civil disobedience until SWT is brought to book. I recently bought three tickets for myself, my wife and son and was charged on my credit card £80 for less than £20 worth of tickets. Since I am travelling and no longer have the tickets, i'm screwed. SWT should be in the dock for their borderline criminal activities. But do the fat, self satisfied burghers have the bottle to fight them? heel no!

oldasiahand, Guildford, UK

I always buy a ticket - to avoid any discussion with ticket inspectors, who are souless depressing individuals out to get you.
sometimes that means I pay more, but at least I feel secure.

mary, London, UK

Ref: The SWT spokeswomans statement of "We are looking at adding more options, but then we get advised that the machines are really complicated and people can’t use them.” - Surely it is simple enough to design the machine so you enter your destination, single or return and the number of adults / children travelling, and the machine then gives you the cheapest option. How complicated can this be?
Sound like an excuse to me

Chris, Denham,

I was charged nearly double on Thursday for a return journey between Ulverston and Carlisle. The ticket clerk would not honour the day return fare quoted on the National Rail website. It appears Transpennine Express had hidden that fare from him as well! The rail operator has yet to acknowledge my e-mail of complaint!

Colin Hamer, Ulverston, Cumbria

Why are the train company managers not brought to account. If they have told guards to 'ignore' the plight of the customers they are ripping off, then they should be brought to account. Surely UK law cannot be so flimsy as to not make provision for the crime that these managers are committing? (but then bearing in mind the way most things work in this country these days, nothing would surprise me!)

John Dixon, London, UK

I was in Boston, a train ticket purchsed on the train from Boston to the top of the state of Massachusetts was less then a a single ride on the tube. It's no wonder so many natives are leaving the UK.

NIck Knight, Dublin 15, Ireland

If it's too complicated to use ticket machines when they show all the options, they should simplify the fare structure.

Dave Hinton, London,

I pay SWT over £3500 a year to travel a short distance into London to work and for that money I'd expect a guaranteed comfortable seat and complimentary glass of champage with cucumber sandwiches. The reality is usually sitting on the floor, or crushed by a fellow traveller with B.O., a permanent noisy sniff and noisy mobile ringtone. Whilst I'm a peak time commuter and therefore supposedly only exposed to small % increases in fares, SWT managed a 7% hike in March by bumping the car parking charges. Last month they almost doubled the daily parking charge at my station. What's the solution? If we, the passengers, got organised we could hit SWT where it hurts.. mass non-payment of fares would make them sit up and take notice. But I can't imagine aill the overpaid, over-fed burghers of Surrey and Hampshire having the backbone to fight back.

Simon Holly, Woking,

As a person who suffers from S W T,I feel annoyed by your report concerning over charging of its Train Tickets,but I am not at all suprised knowing how rude and dissmissive the management of the company can be,but what do you expect from people who are not proper railwaymen,Stagecoach are a disgusting firm who should never of been given the new franchise,is it any wonder,with the sort of people at the top, that they behave in this way.

John, Woking, Surrey

The obvious response to the quote from the SWT spokesperson is that if the machines are so complicated it is SWT's duty as a responsible operator to have more ticket office staff available.

Can not improvement in this area be made a condition of SWT continuing to hold the franchise? It ought to be!

Clare Amos, London, UK

Rail companies, especially commuter rail companies, are infuriating. The service they provide is abysmal, but if one complains one is told that they are engaged in "revenue protection" or protecting their "legitimate profit", or loftily informed that the fare one has paid only covers one third of the cost of the journey (the implication being that freeloaders like their customers should just suck up whatever awful service they provide). The truth is that there is no legitimate profit in providing the sort of service they provide - the only legitimate outcome would be their going bust.

Time to take it all back and have it run by not-for-profit agencies.

Jamie, Bolton, UK

Cynical "daylight robbery". Even booking online does not guarantee the cheapest fare. Greed seems to be the order of the day.

Alan Henderson, Whitley Bay, England