Agree 100%, though I know many here don’t. There has to be some give and take, and I feel if your train is cancelled you should get on the next available and suitable service to your destination or forfeit the rights to delay repay (not ignoring factors where the next service is too full to board of course). However, I think there should be some leeway as to what the next service is and how much knowledge the passenger needs to have in finding it. If there’s a half hourly service but there’s an hourly journey that allows a change that saves 5 minutes I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the passenger to know about it. Let’s face it, many railway staff won’t be able to think fast enough to present that as an option to them so it’s unfair to penalise the passenger for not doing something that staff aren’t able to advise. Of course, we see here that this is exactly what the railway IS doing.
A little reminder that fraud is a serious offence and the punishments are severe, but the threshold is also high. Claiming delay repay when you should have claimed a refund is not fraud, claiming delay repay when you got the next direct service instead of a more convoluted route saving 5 minutes is not fraud, tapping in to get the 1730 and claiming for the 1630 because you’re told to stay on the concourse and don’t know the platform number is not fraud, these would almost certainly be thrown out of court or likely would never get there, unless someone in court and senior GA staff play golf together of course. The trouble is, GA don’t need to provide evidence of fraud, they only need to provide the threat to get their money.
THE REALITY IS, GA could contact ANY of its passengers it has details for, ANY single one of them and ask for £1000 to stop them reporting them to the BTP, and there is nothing to stop them doing this. They don’t need an ounce of evidence to show this person has done a single thing wrong because they don’t NEED to report anyone to the BTP because many people would just pay up. I could send letters to each of my clients from the last
2 years saying they haven’t paid an invoice, and if they don’t pay it and an admin fee I’m going to the police, some would just pay up. This event is of course not quite as ridiculous, many (most) people have done wrong (be it fraud or not) so there is at least some reason to contact them and in many (most) cases a need to obtain money from them which makes the probability of being paid much higher, even if it’s not due.