Small print and nasty surprises

You & Yours, Radio 4, 21.11.07 (podcast available from BBC website)

1.  a labyrinth of rules and practices have sprung up around train tickets. This has created a set of conditions where a traveller cannot reasonably be expected to know it all, and takes the small print on trust. Even the automatic ticket barrier at the station in this particular case was not sophisticated enough to know all the rules and let the man through and onto the train. This left it to the ticket collector on the train to be the One who had confront the traveller who happened to have broken a bit of small print rule. This confrontation of strangers had to be done in front of more strangers on a crowded train and of course, this leads to anxiety, embarrassment, and bad stuff for all the ordinary people involved.   

In this case the small print even contained a link to the legal system which empowered the ticket collector to put the man off the train and threaten him with more law. As it happened, in this particular case the traveller was a lawyer.  It was an 'innocent' (and trivial) mistake that led to his not having the return portion of the ticket about his person that day. All that fuss. All that fluster. All for what? What good can it possibly do?