Manchester Metrolink Standard Fare - that will be £100 please

Travel on a Manchester tram and you probably expect to pay a few pounds.

So it is a bit of a surprise to see that Metrolink's Standard Fare is £100.

Are they serious? Well - Yes and No. That £100 is actually a penalty fare by any other name - but if they call it a penalty it means that they are in a much more complicated legal position. So they (and many other public transport operators) set a punitive "Standard Fare" and then give everyone who jumps through the appropriate hoops (find a working ticket machine, have necessary denominations of change or acceptable plastic, understand the system correctly, keep ticket until it is checked) a big discount down to a more normal amount.

But if you slip up, they don't need to prove any intent to avoid payment - they just need to explain that in travelling with them, you "accepted" that you would have to pay the Standard Fare of £100 if you made a mistake.

I've never fallen foul of this sort of penalty personally, but I can see that it would be all too easy for an innocent person to get stung by this.

Just another part of making life scarier for ordinary, hard-up, well-meaning but fallible people. Dressing it up in misleading language makes it seem even nastier and meaner.

We are unable ...

How I despise companies who hide behind the word "unable" to suggest that their mean actions are inevitable - when actually the meanness is completely optional.

IAG (owners of BA and Iberia) bought airline bmiBaby along with BMI, but decided that they didn't want to carry on with lossmaking bmiBaby. So they have this week announced that they are closing it down. 

Fair enough - but how are they treating the people whose plans they have ruined:

• The people with hotel rooms booked on no-refund deals because they trusted bmiBabyto run the flights they promised? 
• The people who may be able to rebook on a different airline, but only at much higher costs given that they are much nearer the time of travel, and competing with all the other ex-bmiBaby customers?

For those with reservations on flights that aren't going to run, IAG say: 

• We are unable to transfer customers on to alternative airlines including bmi and British Airways.
• We are unable to offer customers preferential rates with alternative airlines, including bmi and British Airways.
• We are unable to refund any additional costs relating to the flight cancellation.

Do they mean that making a transfer is something that they are not able to do? That offering a better price on another airline they own is too difficult a task for them? That there is some rule that says they can make a payment to you off £x but not a payment of £x+100?

Of course not.

I reckon what they mean is:

• We don't care about the bmi brand any more and if people come to hate bmi, that won't cost us anything as they won't make the link with BA or Iberia
• So, there is no reward to behaving any better than the law requires of us
• But even though we have made this decision, we are uncomfortable about admitting to it, so we will pretend that some greater force is preventing us from behaving any better