Well the learning point from this thread seems to be that it is quite foolish to use a smartcard where the data from it can be subject to different interpretation.
I am certain that the train company I used in the past would have had a wonderful time if I had used a smartcard. Until last year I worked in an office in London with no fixed hours. The building was open from 7am and if you wanted to stay after 7pm you only needed to notify the security guard. No minimum hours, so if you fancied leaving at lunchtime, no problem - the important thing was a successful outcome for the tasks being undertaken.
So that meant on a warm summer's day I might be on the 6am train, the following day I might have a few tasks around the house before setting off on the 10am train. On the way back it might be the 5pm train, but it might be the 3pm train if I had come in early, or it might be the 10pm if I had been out in town. No pattern at all.
With the time it would take to drive to my home station less than the time the train took to reach their from its origin, I would never set off until it had departed. If cancelled I wouldn't leave home - that would be stupid to wait at the station pointlessly. But I was intending to catch it. I wouldn't catch the following train because it would obviously now be full of two trainloads of customers and I would need to stand all the way to London, so would catch the following service. Obviously a Delay Repay claim would go in based on the original train I had intended to catch based on the delay of *that* train.
As for the "the train company might have put a taxi on" - pull the other one. Not a cat in hells chance they were going to do that for the few hundred people waiting for the cancelled train to take them the 60 miles into London. And putting an additional stop on trains - nope. More likely they would run them through non-stop to minimise delays elsewhere as we were already late.
Similarly on the way home, my office was 15 minutes walk from the London terminus so there would be a check every afternoon that the train I wanted to catch hadn't been cancelled before I headed off to the station. If it was work a bit longer, but as with the morning, no way am I catching the following service as it will be overcrowded. And again a a Delay Repay claim would go in based on the original train I had intended to catch based on the delay of *that* train.
If there was a lot of disruption on the way home (not that infrequent), then it would head out to the pub / museum / restaurant and catch something substantially later when everything had died down. And again a a Delay Repay claim would go in based on the original train I had intended to catch based on the delay of *that* train.
Now had I been using a smartcard then I have no doubt that someone could look at the absence of a pattern and go 'but, but, but... they claimed for the 4pm train but actually caught the 6pm, or 7pm, or 9pm train and never intended to catch the 4pm'. However they would be wrong.
Could I prove that I was going to catch the 4pm train. Well I would have as much evidence as they would have to argue that they believed I was not going to catch the 4pm train. At the end of the day the system is based on trust, but would I trust someone not to interpret smartcard data in their favour. Not a chance.
Anyway, if we are talking about the stupidity of Delay Repay, the journey that always amused me was one I had to make every month or so. It was a 7 hour journey involving two changes of train and I knew from sorry experience that the timings allowed by the National Rail enquiries system for changes were completely inadequate and there was no chance I would make the connections to the infrequent local service - was it immoral to book that train knowing that the journey would be free or at minimum half price, because it was - every time.
