A controller probably a little too zealous. While taking a train connecting Avignon to Rouen on July 20, Marie-Françoise and Patrick experienced a very bad adventure. Logically controlled by an agent who asked them for their transport title, the two retirees – who bought their tickets at Rouen station by presenting their senior card and Patrick’s invalidity card – are running.
“He scanned them and he started to tickle us,” says Marie-Françoise in Paris-Normandie. The agent asks them for the senior card, “I present to him and he does not even look at her”. He then asks them for the disability card, and that’s where the troubles start.
“As we have never been asked for it and everything was written on the ticket, I had tidy it in a bag in our suitcase,” she explains, without forgetting to specify that to buy a reduced price ticket at the counter The presentation of the supporting documents is compulsory. Marie-Françoise explains to him that the suitcase is very heavy, but the agent “does not want to hear anything” and asks her to go and get the card.
“His goal was to make me pay”
Not having the strength to lift the suitcase, Marie-Françoise asks her husband under respiratory assistance and in wheelchair to come and help him. Patrick then runs, under the eyes of the agent who keeps repeating to them that they will pay the 50 % difference (Editor’s note: the reduction for invalid and their accompanying people) if they do not present the card.
Faced with this scene, the wife is panicked and tells the controller that her husband, who had benefited from the SNCF assistance to settle in the train, “risks his life” by carrying the suitcase. By lifting it, Patrick has indeed stuck his back and still wears a belt two weeks after the facts.
When the retired couple finally manages to show the card, the controller is “very disappointed”, according to Marie-Françoise. “His goal was to make me pay the full price ticket,” she said, comparing him to a “sheriff” taking advantage of an “abuse of power”.
Coming home, the two retirees try to contact the SNCF but struggle to make their voices heard, until a registered letter finally makes things happen. They ended up receiving apologies from the South-East TGV axis director.
Contacted by Paris-Normandie on this case The SNCF transmitted a brief answer by indicating “regret the situation” and recalling that travelers are invited to “present all the documents useful to the smooth running of the trip, in particular in the event of control on board. »»
