How To (Theoretically) Scam Cheap Yearly Tickets On NSW Trains

Yearly train tickets are a good way to avoid the weekly queue. They can also save you quite a lot of money, although they’re far from cheap. Depending on where you alight from, a yearly ticket can cost upwards of $1000. If you’re not concerned about breaking the law, you could potentially follow this extremely evil hack and pay a lot less.

Disclaimer: This hack almost certainly constitutes fraud and is therefore against the law. Don’t come crying to us when you get busted.

One of the major drawbacks of a yearly train ticket is that there’s a much higher chance of it going missing — unlike a weekly, you need to keep it safe for 365 days. To circumvent this, Sydney Trains will replace a yearly ticket if it gets lost or stolen, provided you still have the receipt.

Doing so will naturally deactivate the old ticket’s unique barcode, but otherwise, it will continue to look like a valid ticket to inspectors. You could on-sell the deactivated ticket to a friend at a reduced price (explaining the scam, of course).

Getting through barriers will obviously be tricky, but train tickets aren’t known for having a 100 per cent success rate — your friend simply needs to show it to the officer at the gates and he/she will likely be let through.

Again, we don’t think anybody should actually do this, not even during Evil Week. Seriously. DON’T DO IT. Outside of NSW, where you need a smartcard, it seems even less likely to succeed. If you have a better train fare-saving tactic, we’re all ears in the comments.

This post is part of our Evil Week series at Lifehacker, where we look at the dark side of getting things done. Knowing evil means knowing how to beat it, so you can use your sinister powers for good. Want more? Check out our evil week tag page.


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