Cancelled Trains with Trainline

[alex9345]

Hi

Today all TransPennine Express trains from Manchester Piccadilly to Edinburgh were cancelled due to the weather.

I phoned Trainline, who I booked my ticket with, to advise it is now not possible for me to travel and if I could move my ticket to another train tomorrow. They advised all they could do is refund the ticket (which they took an admin fee for) and I would have to book a train for tomorrow as a new ticket, which now costs twice as much as the original.

Could anyone please advise if this is correct? Seems a bit ridiculous to be out of pocket on the admin fee and new train ticket when there was no possible way for me to travel today.

Thanks in advance

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Don't think you necessarily have to re-book. The following is from the train operator's (TPE's) website...

Travel Updates | Live Train Times | TransPennine Express

Search travel updates and live train times to plan ahead for your journey. Use our alternative route planner in case of disruption

www.tpexpress.co.uk

Extract...

Ticket acceptance

Those with tickets for Wednesday 27 December for services between Manchester, Liverpool Preston to Carlisle, Glasgow and Edinburgh can use their tickets up to and including Friday 29 December.

Only thing to consider is that you won't automatically have a seat reservation if travelling tomorrow (Thursday), and this may be a consideration given the circumstances.

 

[alistairlees]

There should be no fee for a refund where it’s because of disruption like this. In any case, I would expect that your ticket will be accepted for travel tomorrow (and possibly the day after) by tpe, at no extra cost of course.

 

[TheJester]

This is a bit poor from Trainline. Why couldn’t they have advised the change to ticket acceptance on the call with the op?
The op may not routinely check the TPE website Surely this is on the ticket retailier?

 

[furlong]

Report the company to the ORR demanding an investigation into a breach of the consumer regulations? Basically giving you false information about your contract in order to obtain extra money from you by pocketing a refund fee and selling you a new one? In certain circumstances this can be a criminal offence. The ORR should put the company on notice so it cannot in future deny knowing the correct thing to do, opening up the criminal sanction should it happen repeatedly. (I believe the duty to police this sort of thing likes primarily with the ORR but if the ORR does not act, take it to one or more of your MP, Trading Standards, the media, Transport Focus, the DfT etc.)

 

[OscarH]

There's two issues here - charging an admin fee for an obvious disruption refund is completely unacceptable, and you should complain about that.

Ideally they would also have known about the ticket acceptance too - that's an area where the industry is absolutely hopeless, there's no decent way acceptance information is distributed and any projects to improve that will either fail or produce a useless product. Retailers need to be given proper information they can provide to customers automatically as well as have in call centres etc, but any time there's talk about improving the dire way we handle disruption for passengers various TOCs are obstructive to any change because it would be inconvenient for them

 

[robbeech]

This is a bit poor from Trainline. Why couldn’t they have advised the change to ticket acceptance on the call with the op?
The op may not routinely check the TPE website Surely this is on the ticket retailier?

They’re not the slightest bit interested in helping passengers.

Report the company to the ORR demanding an investigation into a breach of the consumer regulations? Basically giving you false information about your contract in order to obtain extra money from you by pocketing a refund fee and selling you a new one? In certain circumstances this can be a criminal offence. The ORR should put the company on notice so it cannot in future deny knowing the correct thing to do, opening up the criminal sanction should it happen repeatedly. (I believe the duty to police this sort of thing likes primarily with the ORR but if the ORR does not act, take it to one or more of your MP, Trading Standards, the media, Transport Focus, the DfT etc.)

Meanwhile, back in the real world*. . .


Trainline’s automated refund process will always take the admin fee or suggest no refund is due. They don’t like to advertise that when there is disruption you should follow a completely different and much much time consuming process to obtain a fee free refund. However, they don’t usually put up a fight with this sort of thing when you do use this process.

Your original post isn’t clear as to whether Trainline have specifically denied you a fee free refund.

The other advice here is however correct. No refund should be required as TPE claim that tickets dated for today can be used tomorrow (and on other days).



*I appreciate the accurate post but none of this would ever happen, this is the railway. Regulation is a con. There is simply no way that anyone would do anything more than correct Trainline for a one off mistake and ensure the passenger is refunded in full, and it would be entirely on the passenger to push this, and know exactly how to push this, which in almost every case they won’t.

 

[robbeech]

Ideally they would also have known about the ticket acceptance too

Quite often the staff on the operator that is accepting tickets from another disrupted operator (allegedly) know nothing about acceptance. We see this all the time.

Operator A falls over.

Operator A organises acceptance with Operator B and posts it on their website and social media feed.

Operator B guards deny passsnhers with tickets from Operator A and charge for new tickets / charge penalty fares / refer for prosecution accordingly.

 

[OscarH]

Quite often the staff on the operator that is accepting tickets from another disrupted operator (allegedly) know nothing about acceptance. We see this all the time.

Operator A falls over.

Operator A organises acceptance with Operator B and posts it on their website and social media feed.

Operator B guards deny passsnhers with tickets from Operator A and charge for new tickets / charge penalty fares / refer for prosecution accordingly.

Yeah, internal communication in the industry is a complete shambles and we consistently make it the passengers problem

 

[robbeech]

and we consistently make it the passengers problem

Why not. It’s easier and cheaper to do so.

 

[furlong]

Ideally they would also have known about the ticket acceptance too

There's no excuse for an accredited retailer not to understand the details of the contracts they are selling and to provide customers with accurate information.

Once it's clear that disruption to a journey is going to exceed an hour, any affected passenger can require that their journey be moved to an alternative day and/or time of their choice if they wish (with the operator bearing the additional cost, if any). Ticket acceptance may offer *additional* rights, but this doesn't replace any entitlements set out in law. (Similar to how a manufacturer's guarantee when buying a product doesn't replace statutory rights but most often it's the guarantee that gets used.)

In robbeech's example, all guards on Operator B must already be aware of their duties to fulfil their company's Obligation to carry . This kicks in automatically and is independent of any additional ticket acceptance that might or might not be negotiated:

10-2 1 Obligation to carry
(b)If any event occurs which is capable of affecting two or more trains of an Operator and is likely to result in passengers who are using or wish to use those trains being delayed by more than an hour, every other Operator must use its reasonable endeavours to enable the passenger to complete his journey on its trains at no extra charge.

Sometimes operator B is even required to make additional stops on its own initiative if affected passengers need that. (And note that there's no requirement for the involvement of company A in such arrangements.)

With some provisos:

(2) Exception
The obligation in sub-Clause (1)(b) above only applies if the affected Operator could not reasonably have been expected to make alternative arrangements to prevent the passengers referred to in that sub-Clause being delayed by more than an hour, having regard to the length of any notice it had of the event which affected its train(s).

(3) Additional services
The obligation in sub-Clause (1)(b) above does not require an Operator to run additional trains.

(4) Additional stops
The obligation in sub-Clause (1)(b) above does not require an Operator to make additional stops at Stations if:-
(a) it is not entitled to do so; or
(b) to make such stops would cause a significant disruption to its passengers or to its own commercial arrangements.

and without compensation

(5) Compensation
(a) An Operator which carries passengers pursuant to sub-Clause (1) above will not receive any compensation for doing so unless the delay referred to in that sub-Clause continues for more than 48 hours.

 

[Watershed]

Ideally they would also have known about the ticket acceptance too - that's an area where the industry is absolutely hopeless, there's no decent way acceptance information is distributed and any projects to improve that will either fail or produce a useless product. Retailers need to be given proper information they can provide to customers automatically as well as have in call centres etc, but any time there's talk about improving the dire way we handle disruption for passengers various TOCs are obstructive to any change because it would be inconvenient for them

With Trainline being, by a significant margin, the largest Third Party Retailer they should be very quick at updating their site and staff with the latest disruption and ticket acceptance information.

Heck, they could pay for a team to be on-call 24/7/365 doing this and it would still barely make a dent in their profits. That's the kind of proactive customer service I'd expect given their booking fees.

And regardless of what ticket acceptance may (or may not) be in place, there is no excuse for misleading passengers as to their rights in the event of disruption - notably the right to have your ticket re-dated free of charge (NRCoT 28.3 refers).

 

[OscarH]

With Trainline being, by a significant margin, the largest Third Party Retailer they should be very quick at updating their site and staff with the latest disruption and ticket acceptance information.

Heck, they could pay for a team to be on-call 24/7/365 doing this and it would still barely make a dent in their profits. That's the kind of proactive customer service I'd expect given their booking fees.

And regardless of what ticket acceptance may (or may not) be in place, there is no excuse for misleading passengers as to their rights in the event of disruption - notably the right to have your ticket re-dated free of charge (NRCoT 28.3 refers).

I don't disagree with anything said here, particularly about their lack of NRCoT knowledge both with redating and the refund without a fee, but Trainline absolutely could and should do better. But I think it's still worth raising the way the industry handles disruption is fundamentally broken and needs improving across the board

 

[island]

With Trainline being, by a significant margin, the largest Third Party Retailer they should be very quick at updating their site and staff with the latest disruption and ticket acceptance information.

Heck, they could pay for a team to be on-call 24/7/365 doing this and it would still barely make a dent in their profits. That's the kind of proactive customer service I'd expect given their booking fees.

And regardless of what ticket acceptance may (or may not) be in place, there is no excuse for misleading passengers as to their rights in the event of disruption - notably the right to have your ticket re-dated free of charge (NRCoT 28.3 refers).

I agree.

None of this will happen, however, because there is no enforcement.