Passengers who purchased a train ticket advertised as being valid at ‘any time of day’ have been taken to court and fined for using their ticket before 10am.

One such passenger is Cerys Piper, who lives in Westhoughton, and travelled from Daisy Hill station to her job as a sales agent in Wigan using an ‘Anytime Day Return’ ticket she says she purchased from the station’s ticket office.

A Railcard gives the ticketholder one-third off the full-price fare – in Cerys’ case, she received £1.60 off the £4.80 ticket price.

However, according to the terms and conditions of the Railcard, the discount cannot be used with ‘anytime’ or ‘off-peak’ tickets under the value of £12 before 10am – meaning her ticket was declared invalid.

Now, she has a court judgment against her for £462.80.

READ > Tragic death of woman as police called to a concern for welfare call

Cerys, 23, said: “I’ve emailed them, and I’ve told them that they need to investigate it – I hadn’t had a letter to go to court or anything like that.

“They might be able to prove that they have sent me a letter, but I’ve not seen one – sometimes the letters at my address I might not even get, I don’t know where they go, but there’s multiple people at that address.

“If I’d have got one I’m sure I’d have been told about it.”

Cerys says she is still paying back the fine to her mum, who helped her out.

Only earning £11.44 per hour in her job, Cerys said she had been treated ‘horrifically’ by the rail company and that the experience of getting on the train will ‘never be the same’.

She added: “It’s just such sourness now getting on the train, because I used to love it, and it is kind of therapeutic.

“It shows you really do mean nothing to them, at all, to do that, but it is what it is.”

Cerys isn’t the only person who has been prosecuted or threatened with prosecution for this error, with the BBC reporting on a Glossop student who is facing a huge fine and a criminal record over a £1.90 fare underpayment, which was also bought with a railcard.

Another case includes a 26-year-old man who has been ordered to pay £462.30 over a £4.30 underpayment for a journey from Prescot to Liverpool Lime Street.