Some years ago my brother was over from the UK and travelling with his two young sons on a Zurich tram, when the inspectors boarded.

He had bought a valid adult ticket for himself and one each child-rate for his boys. To his amazement he was told off by a leather-jacketed inspector because he had paid too much and it was explained in English that should have bought a cheaper 'family deal' ticket...

I managed to travel for three months with my kids before spotting that the family card had expired...

This happened to some friends, except they didn't get told off, they got a refund.

Hi Mickyfin, hopefully you can write and get your money back minues de 5 CHF...I gather you have not complained yet to the authorities but I guess you will be lucky when you do , don't give up!

More bad luck than unfair.

......10 chars now

Coming back from Zurich Airport with my two kids, forgot to get a zone extension. Inspector looked at us , gave a Santa type "Ho Ho Ho" and asked us to make sure we have tickets next time.

Were you on a regional train going between cities or one of the "S" trains (S16, S2, etc)?.

Apparently the inspectors on the regional trains are more sympathetic, plus you can buy a ticket on board, whereas the inspectors on the local, "S" trains are a bit more anal and seem to relish issuing fines to the un-ticketed and unaware...

Yeah, what a bunch of tossers to demand from their customers to actually pay for a service... I mean it smells, there are other passengers so they should be happy to have any people on their trains at all...

The outpost?

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if you take the fine to the sbb with your pass, they will probably cancel the fine and give you a 5chf fine instead.

the inspector obviously cannot give you a reduced fine as you didn't have the pass and everyone would simply claim to have a pass and get reduced fines.

I was on the train coming back from Zug one night when stopped for a control. I passed my ticket and halb tax to the inspector who promptly asked for my night ticket... oops. I told him I'd forgotten to buy one as I hadn't expected to need it and prepared for the worst, he smiled asked if I had a mobile, and showed me how to use the SMS service to buy it, no fine and now I have the number saved should I make the same mistake again... what a nice chap

But if you read the experiences shared in previous posts you'd realize that they can (and do) exercise ample amount of discretionary power they have...

I welcome an organization being stringent about getting its due revenues, but it must also have a sense of balance. SBB spends a lot of money on good-will building measures, but if a few anal inspectors decide to pounce on junior card offenders (heck, what is 30 CHF per year in Switzerland ) that is counter-productive.

Sorry, I wasn't clear - of course everyone should have a valid ticket. I was just pointing out that some people, fresh off a flight and legging it for a train, either don't have chance to get a ticket or, like happened to me once, forgot to get the extension of one station to airport-Oerlikon as a supplement to the city Abo.

If you are on a regional train they seem a bit more understanding and the inspector let me off for forgetting the extension (and another time when I paid for a class upgrade instead of an extension - d'oh! Damn confusing buttons on the ticket machines when you're jet-lagged ).

That's not quite right - if you do have a valid pass you can take that and the fine documents to the ticket office and you just have to cough up CHF 5 for the lesser offence of forgetting your pass. Plus it doesn't then count to your "three strikes and you're in court" tally. Bargain!

OMG LOOOOOOOOOOL

I definitely need to make a Final Fantasy pause… Original post… I am so sorry…

The fine for traveling without a ticket (which is the 80CHF fine) comes with fine print that explains how to get it reduced to 5CHF.

Read the fine print.

Read the fine print again.

You usually have to go pay the fine within 24 hours of being issued the ticket. In that case you can get the 5CHF version.

Afterwards, keep the receipt for a while. Sometimes (this happened to me and it was superuberannoyingridiculousomgbbq) the information about your payment never makes it to the SBB's correct database. In that case, if you are as unlucky as I was, you can keep receiving fines in increasing denominations of chuffs.

Indeed, and if you're not sure, please do quote the source, like this official one here, so as to avoid spreading half-truths...

That's not quite right - if you do have a valid pass you can take that and the fine documents to the ticket office and you just have to cough up CHF 5 for the lesser offence of forgetting your pass.

is there an echo in here?

Does all this SBB talk apply to the OP, who got fined on a tram?

Do ZVV (or whoever runs trams over there) reduce fines for forgotten passes?