Caught in Czech Republic for travelling with invalid ticket

I am looking out for tips in the future as to how to avoid such mishaps.

IMHO the best is to buy ticket with cell phone. There are three possibilities:

1. SMS (text message): send to number 90206 text:

• DPT24 (price 24 CZK, valid for 30 min)
• DPT32 (price 32 CZK, valid for 90 min)
• DPT110 (price 110 CZK, valid for 24 hrs)
• DPT310 (price 310 CZK, valid for 72 hrs)

You just show the text message :).

2. Use app PID Litacka:
   Google Play,
   Apple Store

3. eshop (but it’s in Czech only)

As an additional point aside from the other answers, you should always try to make sure you are being stopped by real ticket collectors:

• Will be wearing a uniform (at least a coat with the DPP logo).
• Will be carrying an official numbered badge and service card, which they most often show you when asking for your ticket, and are required to show on demand.
  
  

Also remember that legally, ticket collectors are not police and so:

• Cannot force you to go with them to the police station.
• Cannot make arrests.
• Cannot force you to pay them.
• Cannot confiscate your passport or id.
• Can ask you to pay 800 CZK + ticket price if your ticket is insufficient.
• Can ask for your passport/id when issuing a fine if you refuse to pay at once.
• Can remove you and your luggage from public transport (require that you get out of the tram/bus/train for instance.)
• Can and will call the police if you try to resist.

Transit-inspection website

(Also source: 25 years living near and commuting to Prague)

Sounds like a scam to me, and like a familiar one.

I was in Prague, though this was a couple decades ago, and was confronted by a group of young men, one or two of which were in at least partial uniform, who said I had done something wrong and needed to pay a fine. I was clearly a foreign visitor, and they were clearly not an official police unit, and the idea I should pay them a cash fine on the spot was clearly not a reasonable legal policy. But the amount they were asking was quite small due to the conversion rate, so I paid it to avoid them.

On the same visit to Prague, I also encountered groups of young men trying to charge to enter public lavatories. In that case, I just glowered at them and walked in without paying, which also worked.

Your case sounds like the same pattern, but a more recent flavor. Your ticket was valid or at worst, unclear, and demanding immediate payment on the spot seems like a scam tactic.

As far as I know (empirically, after living in Prague for about a decade) it doesn’t matter where (on which side of the ticket) exactly the stamp is as long as there is only one. This way I recommend to prefer stamping the rear side of the ticket where there are no pictures so the stamp will be easier to read.

They did not believe me and took me to another person who forced me to pay 800 Kronas as a fine. They said if I refused to pay, I would be taken to the police station.

Ticket inspectors cannot make you pay anything. As outlined on the official Prague Public Transport website:

The authorized person is entitled to:
…

• impose a supplementary charge on a passenger who failed to show a valid ticket, or require the passenger to disclose the personal data referred to in paragraph 1), letter c).

Therefore you have the right to refuse payment on the spot and simply show them your passport. They are authorized to write down the details and issue you a fine, which you may pay (or contest) later on. They could only ask you to go to the police if you refuse to provide your passport/ID, at which point the police will find out your personal information. The ticket inspector is not authorized to use force, as he’s merely an employee of the transport company rather than a police officer.

How can I prove my right in such cases?

Before giving your passport to the inspector, ask that he writes the reason for the fine on the penalty paper and puts his signature down, so that you can prove the origin of the dispute because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to show the 1/7 confusion was the source of your problems. After you have the penalty statement, you may visit the Penalty Fare desk and contest the charge.

However I wouldn’t set my hopes too high — the public transport authority would usually only accept disputes over personalized monthly tickets, rather than anonymous temporary ones, since it’s hard to prove you didn’t get someone else’s ticket after you’ve received the fine.

Was I scammed?

We cannot know for certain, but future readers could be advised to avoid paying anything on the spot if they have doubts about the legitimacy of the ticket inspector. Instead, one can take the penalty paper and pay it in cash at the Penalty Fare desk or pay online using a bank transfer.

If the public transport agent insists on paying on the spot, I’d advise calling the police myself to sort it out, as it’s likely that those people are scammers. Do not worry about issues with the police, they’re much more pleasant than the ticket inspectors.

The stamp on your ticket is so poor, that it is really difficult to read. It does indeed say Aug 27th, but it can very easily be read as Aug 21st:

The stamp actually reads ‘P27Ⅷ17’, but the uppermost line of all characters is missing, so it could even easily be misread as 21st July (21Ⅶ). The last digit (7) is so weakly printed, that you can barely see it. Even on your stamp, it is pretty obvious that the digits before and after the Ⅷ are different.

If you look at the font used by the Prague ticket validators and the digits 1 and 7 properly printed, you can see that if the upper horizontal line of a ‘7’ digit is missing, there is only the rightmost vertical bar left, which can easily be read as a ‘1’. The digit ‘1’ is however printed with a horizontal bar at the bottom, with a vertical line rising from the center.

It is difficult to say if you ran into real ticket inspectors, were conned or if the ticket inspectors really did make an honest mistake.

To avoid such situations, you could have seen yourself that the stamp is very hard to read. Depending on wether you want to waste time or money to solve the problem, you could either have made an attempt to replace the ticket at a ticket office, or bought a new ticket and stamped it in a different validator. The problem had likely been solved if you had let the ticket inspectors take you to the police, but you might have lost even more time.