The company cancels the title and keeps the deposit of the users who do not cancel the reservation of the trips without making them three times.
Renfe has detected 75,000 travelers who misused their pass to travel for free on Media Distancia trains. These users will receive a notification by text message on their phone or by email, the operator explained on Wednesday.
The aim is to “prevent misuse” of the tickets after some travelers denounced that trains were empty when they had not been able to buy a ticket because they were all reserved. Some users of these free passes reserved multiple seats on different train times and then took just one or none, preventing other people from traveling.
For this reason, Renfe has communicated that it will start sending these notices from this Wednesday, although they do not mean the immediate withdrawal of the subscription, but will only be a first warning. It will be on the third notification when the company will seize the deposit of 20 euros deposited by the user, which would be returned to him at the end of the year. In addition, this subscription will be canceled and you will not be able to get another subscription for a month.
Renfe asks users that if they are not going to take a train they have reserved with their subscription, they must cancel at least two hours in advance. Nevertheless, it sets a transitional period of 7 days within which it informs the traveler of the non-compliance without this implying the immediate application of the measure.
In addition, it should be remembered that under the new terms of use, the maximum number of trips that can be formalized per subscription is limited to four daily round trips and it will be impossible to formalize two trips in the same direction until three times the time of the scheduled trip expires.
The operator indicates that the abuse of free tickets is limited to 3% of the more than 2.3 million season tickets purchased, but “it harms the rest of the citizens by limiting their mobility and undermines the effectiveness of these tickets whose the aim is to stimulate the demand for public transport and to contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions”.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
