Thanks for posting this. Looking at the exact wording of option (a) (and adding some emphasis) it does cover the ‘nothing wrong’ scenario:
(a) offer you the opportunity to re-pay any claims that have proved to have been made fraudulently and an administration charge
If ‘any’ turns out to be ‘none’ then there’s nothing to pay. The wording could have been better, but it’s good enough.
More generally, can Greater Anglia pursue like this? I think that they can (although as with almost anything on the internet, please remember that I am not a lawyer). As far as I can make out, Delay Repay is governed by the National Rail Conditions of Travel (NRCoT) and the train company’s Passenger's Charter.
The current NRCoT came in in December 2019 - and so may not have been in force for some DR claims mentioned in this thread. But without having gone to check, I don’t see why the previous version would have been significantly different.
Relevantly, NRCoT says
32. GETTING YOUR MONEY BACK FOR DELAYS AND/OR CANCELLATIONS
32.1. If you are delayed in reaching your destination as a result of a delay or cancellation of a train service, you may be entitled to claim money back. You can make a claim in one or more of the following ways:
32.1.1. through the industry arrangements provided for:
32.1.1.1. in these Conditions; and/or
32.1.1.2. in the Passenger’s Charter of the relevant Train Company and/or
32.1.2. by relying on your statutory rights, e.g. under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the Rail Passengers’ Rights and Obligations Regulation as it applies in GB law.
However, you cannot recover the same money twice.
(source:
https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/National Rail Conditions of Travel.pdf)
And the Greater Anglia Passenger's Charter (dated 1 April 2019) tells us that
Compensation – get it with our Delay Repay scheme
Get compensation from 15 minutes onwards
If you hold a valid ticket for your journey, you can claim compensation for delays of 15 minutes or more, no matter what the reason. Compensation payments are made when services are delayed against the published timetable, including where we have published service alterations.
(Source:
https://www.greateranglia.co.uk/sit...mAU/10673-ga_passenger_charter_dl_booklet.pdf)
As I've said, I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that a court would have no difficulty in taking the words of NRCoT 32.1 (' If you are delayed in reaching your destination as a result of a delay or cancellation of a train service') and the Passengers Charter ('If you hold a valid ticket for your journey') as meaning that someone claiming Delay Repay must actually have made the journey in question. Not a journey between the same two points an hour later or an hour earlier, but the specific journey actually claimed for.
So that means that we need to consider what journeys people posting here have claimed DR for. If they are journeys that they didn't make, then frankly I don't think that there's anything we can suggest other than letting the law take its course - which could be a voluntary repayment, or (not mentioned by Greater Anglia) the railway recovering the money in the civil courts, or the matter going to British Transport Police for investigation and potentially prosecution, presumably at the Crown Court for fraud.
But if there are people who actually have made the railway journeys in question, what to do now? The easy answer (and one which is legally sound) is 'nothing': wait for the railway and their police to do their worst, attend court and insist that they prove their point. But this will be an immensely stressful course of action - and if the matter goes to a criminal trial, bear in mind that proving something (in this case the allegation that the defendant did not make the train journey in question) beyond reasonable doubt is not that high a bar. Imagine that the railway puts forward that
- someone has put in claims every day for the most delayed A-B service, regardless of what time that journey is
- the railway has uncovered that the defendant works in an office job finishing every day at 1700
- on the day in question the defendant claimed for a delay on the A-B train leaving A at 2330
And the defendant refuses to answer because "it's for the railway to prove their case". Without getting into whether silence can be held against you (IANAL), the court will likely conclude that on the evidence, the 2330 A-B delay repay claim was false - because that's what the evidence the court has seen points towards.
But now imagine that on the day in question the defendant bumped into a friend they hadn't seen for years, and went to the pub, only leaving at 2325 and just making the 2330 train. They tell the court this (possibly even with a letter from the friend to confirm the facts). In that case, the prosecution's case looks much more tentative: the accusation has not been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
So the advice to anyone who really believes that they are being unfairly accused must be to check what journeys they are being challenged on (on the basis of the letter above, Greater Anglia seem to be telling you the day and the route but not the time - but presumably the various autoclaiming companies or Greater Anglia let them know at the time of the claim the specific journey being claimed for). Then try and see what evidence they have of why they might have got that train: do worklogs or timesheets or emails give a hint? If the challenge is (for example) regularly for Tuesday evenings because you regularly play squash after work on a Tuesday? And so on. Then my personal view would be to engage with Greater Anglia and share your evidence: the downside of this is that you are showing your hand, but the upside is that Greater Anglia (who have shown some of theirs by showing what days they are interested in) may then have enough information to walk away.
