We decide to disagree -yes all opinions welcome - I cannot imagine our local bus company fining foreigners $100 for an honest mistake. But in Austria do as the Austrians do - expect no mercy.

Lesson -always self-cancel your tickets before boarding train.

"It's an antiquated system,"

Yes, one that relies on honesty as well as on understanding the rules.

"Yet they can't seem to bring themselves to behave reasonably over this sort of minor infraction."

The same might be asked of the OP. Why can't they seem to bring themselves to behave reasonably (by doing a little advance planning)? Less than five minutes online would have saved the OP €103. That's a rather respectable ROI.

"...they bought tickets and simply did not validate the return part." This part is unclear, PalenQ. There is, at least to my knowledge, no ticket that requires the return be validated. The Single Journey is exactly that. The Day Ticket is validated once. The OP's story just doesn't add up.

fourfortravel
Sorry for the slow reply but we have moved on.
Yes we are law abiding....at least in purchasing tickets. We both possessed two tickets on one ticket ( if you know what I mean ) - a twotrip ticket that we wrongly assumed meant a return ticket which would only need to be validated once on the day it was being used. Our mistake ! It meant it was valid for two trips not necessarily on the same day I gather which is where we went wrong.

They kindly only made us pay one fine. So good of them !

These attempts to smear the OP as a deliberate criminal is pretty low, IMO.

PalenQ and NewbE

Many thanks for understanding what I was trying to say and sticking up for me.

It seems to me that some here are very quick to cast aspersions on one's character. I find it interesting how quickly some of the replies on these forums become quite hostile. Let me quite clear that we had the correct tickets. Both of us ! But we had only validated them ( one each !) in the morning on our first trip to Schonbrunn.

From the start I admitted that we were in the wrong but just felt the way of dealing with the infringement was pretty harsh ( and a bit embarrassing !). Never been dragged off a train and threatened with police action before - especially over a approx 3 euro ticket.

We have put it behind us and are now in beautiful St Wolfgang.........and we are trying to be very careful not to break anymore rules while here in Austria.

Don't litter either!

<I find it interesting how quickly some of the replies on these forums become quite hostile.>

"Interesting" is a very polite word for it, Helsie!

I ascribe it to magical thinking: everything that goes wrong for a tourist must be the fault of the tourist, and can therefore be avoided if one researches enough/spends enough/dresses properly/speaks a few words of the language/carries the right size suitcase/etc. etc. etc.

Put another way: nothing bad can ever happen to *me* because *you* are an idiot and *I* am not.

Happy travels, Helsie!

Not to make any judgement, but to add some legal background:

The regular penalty would have incurred legal proceedings and a penalty payment of €218. Legally, you had committed a misdemenour.

This penalty had been waived since you paid for a "surcharged" ticket on the spot. The surcharge is approved by the local regulatory authority, i.e. the aforemenioned €103.
If I understood your story correctly, neither one of you had validated the ticket on the "return trip". So you could have been fined €103 each.

You will find the same system of steep penalties in most transit systems which do not have barriers to access platforms.
If you think that Vienna charges steep fines, you should not get caught without a properly validated ticket in Lisbon.. 100-150 times the ticket price.. ouch.

Sounds like they got off easy!