GWR must have mellowed. They've previously compared an on-time arrival of the later train according to the working timetable with the public timetable arrival time of the earlier train that was missed. Cakeism railway style.
GWR must have mellowed. They've previously compared an on-time arrival of the later train according to the working timetable with the public timetable arrival time of the earlier train that was missed. Cakeism railway style.
Can you find your journey on Realtime trains?I submitted a delay repay claim for my journey last Sunday. There was some line of overhead line failure at Twyford and the train arrived 15 minutes late into Tiverton Parkway. I got an email from trainline telling me to submit a claim. So I did. And GWR rejected it - saying it was not 15 minutes late. It was. And there is no place to upload the photo of THEIR OWN APP which said it arrived 15 minutes late or the email from thetrainline which said it was 15 minutes late. What are they? Judge, jury and executioner? I submitted an appeal but there is no place to upload any new information. This is bizarre. I actually live in Hong Kong (was in the UK for my mum's funeral) and pretty much every train I took was late. I thought at minimum they would honour their own terms and conditions.
I submitted a delay repay claim for my journey last Sunday. There was some line of overhead line failure at Twyford and the train arrived 15 minutes late into Tiverton Parkway. I got an email from trainline telling me to submit a claim. So I did. And GWR rejected it - saying it was not 15 minutes late. It was. And there is no place to upload the photo of THEIR OWN APP which said it arrived 15 minutes late or the email from thetrainline which said it was 15 minutes late. What are they? Judge, jury and executioner? I submitted an appeal but there is no place to upload any new information. This is bizarre. I actually live in Hong Kong (was in the UK for my mum's funeral) and pretty much every train I took was late. I thought at minimum they would honour their own terms and conditions.
Northern has tried it on with me for the same reason (hourly service but all trains arrived 1-2 minutes early). In a nutshell
- northern is only giving me one free single and not a free return because “I was only delayed 59 minutes”
Northern has tried it on with me for the same reason (hourly service but all trains arrived 1-2 minutes early). In a nutshell
- journey was Ellesmere Port to Northwich on the evening of 25th July 2023
- Ellesmere Port to Helsby on the once per day evening train
- Helsby to Chester
- Chester to Northwich.
- train to Helsby did not turn up, showed as “on time” on National Rail website, no departure boards on the platform
- asked Northern twitter account, they ignored me for an hour.
- train finally rocks up 25 mins late, no one gets off, I am the only one getting on.
- again, Northern left me in the dark about this delay.
- missed connection from Helsby to Chester (and the onward connection to Northwich)
- got the next trains from Helsby and Chester an hour later.
- northern is only giving me one free single and not a free return because “I was only delayed 59 minutes”
- appealed and still lost
- contacted customer services exactly 7 days after appeal rejection and got this response:
“Thank you for contacting Northern,
I am contacting you in refence to your delay repay claim, I can see you were delayed by 59 minutes so you have received the correct compensation. Also if you want to appeal a claim you only have 28 days to appeal.
If you have any other questions please feel free to contact us again.
Kind Regards,”
Completely unacceptable.
I cannot believe this email I've just received.
"Dear [my name],
Thank you for contacting Northern.
We have had a look at your correspondence, and we believe this falls under the responsibility of MerseyRail. We have forwarded your correspondence over to MerseyRail and we have asked that they adopt your case and respond directly.
You should be contacted shortly, however, please find MerseyRail’s details should you wish to contact them directly:
Email: [email protected]
Phone:
Kind Regards,
Northern Customer Relations Team."
Yes, or the other thing would be, as I emphasised that they left me stuck at Ellesmere Port, they probably just went "Ellesmere Port? That's a Merseyrail station, I'll pass it on to them."It's probably because you chose to travel on a slower permitted route, rather than taking the fastest train. So someone's typed in Helsby to Northwich into a journey planner and all the options suggest the first operator is Merseyrail, so they've wrongly passed it on, instead of reading the earlier correspondence properly.
We held 2 First Open Singles
we should have taken the 1115 Northern service to Sheffield
Deny; deny; deny. It wasn't me. The time, and therefore money spent in refuting claims is huge, and reattributing 'claims'. I guess the customer is never right, including First Class, whose future custom and fare income I would have thought should be valued. But then, what do I know. 'The System' can't be wrong.It's time to bring this thread back to life perhaps. An interesting interaction with a (very polite and friendly) staff member as part of the LNER social media team the other week. I'm not after advice, more pointing out another poor implementation of the system.
On 21st December me and my wife attempted to get from Doncaster to Edinburgh. We held 2 First Open Singles (with 2 together Railcard). As many will know, chaos ensued that day in many parts of the network but fallen trees south of there stopped much traffic for many an hour. The train we intended to catch was 3hrs late and terminated at Doncaster anyway. We managed to get going later in the afternoon and arrived several hours after our planned arrival.
Whilst it was clear that LNER are "responsible" for the delay repay claim, they decided to (within a couple of hours) determine that actually Crosscountry are responsible.
I questioned this and had a brief text based chat with one of the social media team by direct message.
Their claim is that as the 1110 was delayed (and subsequently cancelled) we should have taken the 1115 Northern service to Sheffield, and then boarded a Crosscountry service to Edinburgh via Leeds.
I had several points and questions, which didn't necessarily generate a direct response.
The staff member claimed that the automated system does NOT take any form of routing (be it possible routes or permitted routes) into account. It does NOT change its algorithms during disruption. It also does NOT calculate the delay based upon the difference between your original planned arrival time and it's assumed arrival time, it merely uses the delay to your assumed journey. So in this case, the XC service the system assumes we caught arrived into Edinburgh only 20 minutes late, as such the system deems no delay repay would be payable, it does NOT take into account that this is nearly 3 hours after the planned train should have arrived.
- How would a passenger due to board the 1110 think to board a completely different service going in the opposite direction, locate this, and then board it within 5 minutes of the proposed departure time?
- At 1110 the original service was just showing as running but delayed on the screens at the station. Who in their right mind would look at this and decide to change their route entirely based on this, this is even more ridiculous when we consider.................
- Doncaster to Edinburgh is not Valid via Sheffield, and even if it was permitted due to disruption, a delay repay system does not know this.
- Regardless of what a passenger "should" have done according to the automated system, the fact the journey they intended to take became impossible was STILL the fault of LNER so the responsibility falls to them anyway.
. It also does NOT calculate the delay based upon the difference between your original planned arrival time and it's assumed arrival time, it merely uses the delay to your assumed journey.
This was one of the most puzzling parts. But this is what I’m told.I'm pretty sure that's not how it normally works.
I'm having trouble with EMR rejecting claims but taking a month to do so at which point I struggle to remember what happened. Is there a website showing actual train times and cancellations that goes back that far in time?
Alternatively, the one linked below *might* be of help...Is there a website showing actual train times and cancellations that goes back that far in time?
I can believe that. I had a claim with TPE a few years ago for a Euston to Piccadilly to Darlington journey (the ECML was closed so I decided to go that way to get home). The TPE from Piccadilly was cancelled, next train in an hour. The system declined my claim on the basis that it decided my journey was actually via Liverpool (that's what it's internal journey planner found for Euston to Darlington) and I would not have been delayed at all. This despite me travelling on APs...The staff member claimed that the automated system does NOT take any form of routing (be it possible routes or permitted routes) into account.
Might this be one where the timetable was changed before 2200 the previous day so the railway argue that buses were the scheduled service?The links helped thanks as it reminded me what had happened. It turns out my train was unexpectantly cancelled along with the rest of the morning's trains. I had to get a slower replacement bus service. It will be interesting to hear why EMR don't think I was delayed!
Only a limited number of TOCs are subject to FOI.Has anyone thought of an FOI request to one of the repeat offender TOCs on:
That is true, but far as I can see it hasn't stopped anyone else on this forum.Only a limited number of TOCs are subject to FOI.
So a month on and a couple of contacts and they appear to just be fobbing off and ignoring things now.They’ve reopened the case (on the 4th) so I’m expecting a result soon.
So my experience with delay repay from West Midlands Trains (specifically with LNWR):I am hearing a lot of reports of Delay Repay claims being rejected for spurious reasons.
Some TOCs have a policy of rejecting claims until you have taken another photograph of the ticket showing the ticket has been "spoiled'' to "prevent you using it again" even when the relevant ticket/portion is only valid on one specific train and/or one specific date.
Some TOCs make it really difficult to make Delay Repay claims by requiring customers to use convoluted forms.
I believe an investigation should be carried out into malpractice by TOCs for making it as difficult as possible for customers to claim.
Does anyone know which TOCs engage in the malpractice of asking passengers to re-upload images of spoiled tickets?
And also, does anyone know what the policies of those TOCs are in relation to retaining tickets at gatelines?
I would have thought a customer should be able to take a photo of their ticket at any point before, during or after their journey, and upload this photo once the extent of delay is known, and the customer should have no further obligation to retain the ticket.
For example if a customer makes a Delay Repay claim while sat on a delayed train, and their destination station retains the ticket, the TOC should not be able to claim the customer should go back to the station and ask for the ticket to be fished out of the machine (!) in order to deface it.
Is there some collective action customers can take against TOCs for wasting their time and rejecting valid claims? I wonder if a class action claim could be brought against TOCs who engage in the malpractice of making Delay Repay claims as difficult as possible? I am not sure if this is the sort of malpractice a class action claim could be brought against, though.
Thoughts welcome.
Norwich definitely returns tickets after use, Cambridge definitely retains them (unless that's changed recently), so depends on which GA station you travelled toScotrail do too.
Does anyone know if these companies have set their ticket gates to always return tickets, or do they retain them at the end of the journey?
I believe some TOCs try to place the burden on the retailer, hence they are keen for you to seek a refund rather than provide you with compensation.Northern are outdoing themselves. I submitted a Delay Claim eligible for £55. Their response was they didn't operate a train that would allow me to complete my journey, so I should seek a refund for the unused ticket. That was despite submitting the return part of an Off Peak Return on orange printed stock, where the guard had scribbled the date on it. They cancelled the second to last service but operated the last service, meaning a 1 hour delay. And given it was an Off Peak Return (that didn't expire for another two weeks), it would have been valid for the first train the following morning, even if they think they cancelled the last train as well.
I wonder whether train operators just see Delay Repay claims for larger amounts and just choose a random reason for rejection, in the hope it goes away.
Unless it's an Open Return (in the traditional sense, i.e. valid for a month) there is no good reason; it's been discussed in previous threads.What are they hoping to achieve by making you cut your ticket in half or otherwise deface it?