Fraud

[WesternLancer]

I can recall cases in the forum where season ticket holders were using real time train monitoring apps to find out which trains within the validity of their season tickets had been delayed, and submitting claims to have travelled on those trains. Recommendations to people with unusual travel patterns and genuine claims included taking photos of departure boards at the stations where they had been initially affected by the delayed or cancelled trains. Greater Anglia did an exercise in this area where people who worked in the city of London genuinely went to Liverpool Street, found their intended train was disrupted, repaired to a nearby hostelry for a couple of hours, caught a much later train, and submitted delay repay based on what they could have caught without the refreshments. I think they detected the anomaly through records of times when the season tickets were scanned. This was deemed abuse of the system. Like @WesternLancer I think @George53 will have an uphill struggle to present a credible explanation of his apparent misunderstanding of the process.

Yes. I recall that. Anglia case must have been one of the first big trawls identifying many. Perhaps over a hundred plus people. But the op’s explanation here is so incredible that I’m prepared to believe their misunderstanding could be genuine. But EMR believing it is another matter.

Perhaps the op needs to write to emr to say they have made a fundamental miss understanding and need to apologise and arrange to make a repayment. Or indeed seek legal advice on best way forward as previously suggested.

 

[Hadders]

As others have said you can only claim Delay Repay compensation for journeys you actually made. A season ticket can be used 7-days a week but let's say Saturday is a day on which you're not travelling you can't submit a claim, even if there are massive delays on that day.

While the service from EMR (and all train companies for that matter) hasn't been as good as anyone would've liked it's not been bad enough to have claimed to the extent that you have.

Ps EMR provide an extremely poor service for the price currently over £8.5K I'm paying annually..

£8,548 was the price of an annual Wellingborough to London Zones 1-6 Travelcard. This is an expensive ticket but it does give you unlimited journeys anytime between Wellingborough and St Pancras, unlimited use of National Rail, London Underground, DLR and Elizabeth Line services in London fare Zones 1-6 and unlimited use of London Buses.

You don't say how many times a week you travel into London but let's assume you travel 4 days a week for 46 weeks of the year then the cost per day is £45.45 per day which is cheaper than the off-peak travelcard from Wellingborough to London Zones 1-6. It could be argued that this is still too expensive but it does put a slightly different context on it.

 

[furlong]

So it's not valid for 7days a week 52 weeks?

They will already have checked your claims against your touches in and out. (There is a long thread on here when Greater Anglia began to do this.)

Examples:

With the exception of days when there were strikes:

For each journey you claimed for, they will expect to see touches in and out at times that are consistent with the claim. Ideally a touch in showing you arrived at the station just before the train was originally scheduled to depart, but certainly showing you touched in prior to its actual departure. This includes any claims for travelling at weekends.

If you have been relying on online data to make these claims, rather than your own observations when actually travelling, then that'll put you in a rather weak position and you may come to the conclusion the best approach is just to pay the figure they have already put in front of you. (I think most of the people we heard from in the Greater Anglia cases ended up doing that rather than trying to negotiate.)

 

[AlterEgo]

The OP desperately needs to instruct a solicitor and cease publicly disclosing the mechanics of their - very sketchy - claims.

Stop posting here, get a solicitor, do not say anything in public or to the train company and allow your solicitor to handle everything if you plan on disputing the nature or extend of the offences you are accused of. Fraud is a very serious offence and you are in way over your head here.

 

[WesternLancer]

The OP desperately needs to instruct a solicitor and cease publicly disclosing the mechanics of their - very sketchy - claims.

Stop posting here, get a solicitor, do not say anything in public or to the train company and allow your solicitor to handle everything if you plan on disputing the nature or extend of the offences you are accused of. Fraud is a very serious offence and you are in way over your head here.

Or I assume just repay all the money as they are asking? That would seem to save the cost of a solicitor. The sacrifice being any correct claims the OP could negotiate that were correctly owed. But I suspect it’s not going to be easy to negotiate to keep any of those given what’s happened even if EMR were now prepared to consider them.

 

[Hadders]

The OP desperately needs to instruct a solicitor and cease publicly disclosing the mechanics of their - very sketchy - claims.

Stop posting here, get a solicitor, do not say anything in public or to the train company and allow your solicitor to handle everything if you plan on disputing the nature or extend of the offences you are accused of. Fraud is a very serious offence and you are in way over your head here.

I agree with this.

The OP needs to either pay up, or instruct a solicitor if they wish to fight this.

 

[Camsus]

I am struggling to understand how exactly the OP could have genuinely assumed they were able to submit DR claims for any and every delay/cancellation on their line of route? Apologies for being so direct, but it all just seems a tad far-fetched.
With 400 claims in 16 months, I'm completely unsurprised the TOC have made contact.

 

[swt_passenger]

I am struggling to understand how exactly the OP could have genuinely assumed they were able to submit DR claims for any and every delay/cancellation on their line of route? Apologies for being so direct, but it all just seems a tad far-fetched.
With 400 claims in 16 months, I'm completely unsurprised the TOC have made contact.

On the other hand, and it’s no help to the OP, but I’m surprised it’s taken them so long to detect?

 

[Camsus]

On the other hand, and it’s no help to the OP, but I’m surprised it’s taken them so long to detect?

I agree. You would think the claims would have flagged up to the TOC before now, especially with the OP having a smart card ticket

 

[AlterEgo]

I agree. You would think the claims would have flagged up to the TOC before now, especially with the OP having a smart card ticket

What is most likely is that the OP has been on the radar for some time with the level of claims. There will be CRM notes all over their delay repay file, and likely a flag. Certain customers at another TOC I worked for could only have their claims processed by a manager, for this reason.

Now, they have caught the OP making a single obviously fraudulent claim, a claim which they reference in their letter - likely somewhere they could never have been, owing to their detectable travel history. And now is the time to send a letter.

 

[pelli]

Hi,
My station just recently gone live with the gates earlier this year.. sometimes I arrived to the station waiting for the train..then they cancelled it...so waited for second on ...they cancelled again as a good example...then I decided to walk home (10min on foot) then 1h later back to station.. taking train...and guess what..train delayed 15+min.... So on that day I claimed for X2 cancellation+X1 15+ min delay as an example...or one more claim on my way back if they cancelled or delayed...

When you claim for a "cancellation" you still have to choose whether your delay was "15+ Mins", "30+ Mins", "60+ Mins" or "120+ Mins" as that determines how much money you get repaid. What time would you select for the two "cancellation" claims in this example, and why?

If you always selected the interval between services (30 mins at Wellingborough) for cancellations, and travelled on the next train without missing any trains while waiting at home, then you will have claimed approximately the correct amount of delay repay despite doing it in the wrong way. For example, with two cancellations and an hour delay on the next train that you actually travelled on you would have incorrectly claimed for "30+ Mins", "30+ Mins" and "60+ Mins" which adds up to the same amount (25% + 25% + 50% of the return cost) as a correct claim for the overall "120+ Mins" delay to your journey (100% of the return cost). However, due to the duration tiers in many cases splitting would end up with a larger amount, as for example claiming "30+ Mins" + "15+ Mins" yields 25% + 12.5%, but an overall 45-minute delay still falls in the "30+ Mins" tier so the correct repayment is only 25%. (I note that your average claim value £3917.97/448 = £8.75 is close to the "30+ Mins" value 25% * £7900/232 = £8.51, so it is likely you did make many "30+ Mins" claims.)

If this is how you claimed, and that's a big if, then in my opinion your mistake is understandable, and you have only been overclaiming a fraction of the total £4k amount, but the question is whether EMR can be convinced to agree (even with the help of an expensive solicitor). In the end, you appear to have made a vast number of incorrrect claims, and maybe the best option is to just pay the requested amount in full.

 

[island]

Now, they have caught the OP making a single obviously fraudulent claim, a claim which they reference in their letter

I don’t see any letter posted on the thread, so how can we know they referenced it?

 

[skyhigh]

I don’t see any letter posted on the thread, so how can we know they referenced it?

There was one yesterday. It's since been removed, probably because the OP did a very poor job of hiding their personal information.

 

[Iskra]

Yes. I recall that. Anglia case must have been one of the first big trawls identifying many. Perhaps over a hundred plus people. But the op’s explanation here is so incredible that I’m prepared to believe their misunderstanding could be genuine. But EMR believing it is another matter.

Perhaps the op needs to write to emr to say they have made a fundamental miss understanding and need to apologise and arrange to make a repayment. Or indeed seek legal advice on best way forward as previously suggested.

To be fair, that level of misunderstanding, is probably consistent with the type of person who thinks they can make several hundred delay repay claims, without recourse…