Less than 50% of delay repay being claimed

[trainophile]

The same happens on Cross Country at 5th New St axis - if a succession of trains towards there are running late by around 30 minutes the first drops back to the next departure from New Street and so on. This changes the destination as well, and so inconveniences passengers already on the train, but it contains the delay and so passengers beyond New St have a train that runs closer to on time; obviously there is one cancellation beyond New St but thereafter everything is back to time (ish).
Don't have an opinion about whether it should happen, but New St is where XC trains empty out and re-load. Not quite the same at Preston, but there is a fair amount of joining & alighting there.

Must make a bit of a shambles of the seat reservations.

 

[cambsy]

I did Delay repay for Avanti West Coast Euston-Glasgow return journey, think was about £114.00. The outward train was cancelled 07.30 Euston-Glasgow, so caught the 08.22, arrived over hour late, so got £70.00 delay repay, within a week, and didn’t affect day out too much, so meant only cost £44.00 in the end, which was a winner for me.

 

[TheGrew]

I only bother claiming for the longer, more expensive journeys which for me is typically WBQ to EUS and Avanti's system is pretty straightforward. Unfortunately sometimes a delay will mean I miss my connection to NLW but I am rarely on a through ticket in order to travel on advances (especially in peak).

 

[SussexSeagull]

I claim for everything and to be fair to Southern they pay up without a quibble.

Personal favourite was the time I was coming back from London to Durrington and the signaller for Hove to Angmering (or somewhere like that, experts can correct me) was taken ill and they had no replacements. It made me over two hours late to got the full refund but having got back to Brighton they insisted ticket acceptance was in place on the 700 bus back to Worthing.

Walked down to get the bus to be told by the driver that as it was late and become the N700 they wouldn't accept train tickets and it would cost me £5. So ended up getting a 100% refund plus £5 after I claimed for the bus as well.

 

[markymark2000]

I only bother claiming for the longer, more expensive journeys which for me is typically WBQ to EUS and Avanti's system is pretty straightforward. Unfortunately sometimes a delay will mean I miss my connection to NLW but I am rarely on a through ticket in order to travel on advances (especially in peak).

You can claim delay repay on split tickets as long as ths journey that you make is a through one and as long as the journey is valid in journey planners. The delay repay works off the delay to your overall journey.

 

[Adrian1980uk]

You can claim delay repay on split tickets as long as ths journey that you make is a through one and as long as the journey is valid in journey planners. The delay repay works off the delay to your overall journey.

Why would the TOC look at the whole journey in this case because split tickets should be able to claim both tickets surely, so late to the intermediate (if you were) then late to final destination. If the train was on time to the intermediate station the no delay on that ticket is valid and would only get delay on second ticket. Maybe not how it works but thats how I think it should work

 

[mad_rich]

It’s counterintuitive, but it really does work on the whole journey.

I was surprised to get an easy payout on split tickets recently, such that a 20 minute delay on a £13 Transpennine ticket York-Newcastle resulted in them giving me £30 because my whole journey was London-York-Newcastle.

This doesn’t seem ‘fair’ on TP, but them’s the rules and I’m happy to take their money! There are plenty of times when the boot is on the other foot and I feel hard done by.

 

[zero]

Why would the TOC look at the whole journey in this case because split tickets should be able to claim both tickets surely, so late to the intermediate (if you were) then late to final destination. If the train was on time to the intermediate station the no delay on that ticket is valid and would only get delay on second ticket. Maybe not how it works but thats how I think it should work

It’s counterintuitive, but it really does work on the whole journey.

I was surprised to get an easy payout on split tickets recently, such that a 20 minute delay on a £13 Transpennine ticket York-Newcastle resulted in them giving me £30 because my whole journey was London-York-Newcastle.

This doesn’t seem ‘fair’ on TP, but them’s the rules and I’m happy to take their money! There are plenty of times when the boot is on the other foot and I feel hard done by.

Split ticketing saves you money and saves the TOC money.

Assuming your £30 was a 25% compensation based on split tickets costing £120, if you had purchased one ticket for the full journey it might have cost £180, in which case TPE would have had to pay out £45.

 

[TUC]

Please delete if there's another thread about this...

Minority of affected passengers seeking delay repay compensation, union says

Fewer than half of eligible rail passengers who are entitled to compensation under the delay repay scheme are putting in a claim, a new report claims. Research by the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) suggested that only 47% of passengers are putting in claims with rail companies when...

nation.cymru

Caught this on the radio news briefs in the small hours of this morning. Was quite surprised that it's the RMT who have flagged this up (how would they know?), and wondered what their point was.

My theory is that the TOCs make it far too fiddly to claim, so a lot of people simply can't be bothered, which is all wrong. I always claim out of principle, and also because "every little helps", but it is a faff sometimes.

Is that 47% of potential claims or 47% of the potential value of them? If the RMT has estimated the £100m from the 47% claimed that is a questionable methodology as those that have bern claimed are more likely to be of higher value.

 

[LickeyIncliner]

Is that 47% of potential claims or 47% of the potential value of them? If the RMT has estimated the £100m from the 47% claimed that is a questionable methodology as those that have bern claimed are more likely to be of higher value.

It's 47% of potential claims, and yes, that percentage is higher for passengers delayed when travelling on high-priced tickets and lower for low-priced ticket (https://assets.publishing.service.g...-delays-and-compensation-2023-full-report.pdf, Table 4.8, p31). I don't think RMT have published anything about how they got from that DfT/Transport Focus survey report to the £100m figure.

 

[Phil56]

I travel around frequently by rail on business; when I started this job my colleagues would usually claim delay repay where it was due, but several years ago my employer added a line to our business expenses policy to say that any delay repay should be claimed as travel vouchers and then posted off to our travel agents to be credited against our account… shockingly enough very few of us bother to claim any more because it’s just a bunch of admin to do on top of the inconvenience of having been delayed travelling.

Yep, this! Our son has started having to do a lot of business journeys. He usually has to pay himself and then reclaim via travel expenses reimbursement claims. There's nothing in it for him if he claims delay repay as the terms of the contract of employment and expenses reimbursement policy are that he has to repay any delay repay claims he makes back to his employer. So he doesn't bother claiming. Employer never even questions why there are no reimbursements, even when he's had to cancel meetings etc due to train delays. Obviously, he could claim himself and just not repay his employer, but then if he got found out, he'd be in trouble for theft, whereas if he just doesn't claim, he's not "stealing" from his employer.

 

[317 forever]

I've never claimed. I know it's irrational, but I can't shake off the idea that claiming Delay Repay is scrounging.

I qualified for a Delay Repay of around £3.25 with SWR in 2021 but quietly made do without.

Last March I qualified for around £48 Delay Repay with GWR and this claim was accepted.

Then last June Avanti only repaid me 50% instead of 100%, meaning £19 missed out on.

Then last September Northern paid me nothing for a 3 hour delay on a £48 fare. They blamed me for not travelling using a quicker route on which the ticket was not even valid! For good measure they rejected my appeal too.

So, when in July I qualified for a Delay Repay around £4 with TPE I did apply. Although a split ticket (Advance Single plus Return leg of an Off-Peak Day Return) they did pay in full, even though they were only my operator for the latter ticket.

Had the Railway not been so insulting last June, and in particular September, I may well not have bothered claiming in July.

 

[Starmill]

I qualified for a Delay Repay of around £3.25 with SWR in 2021 but quietly made do without.

Last March I qualified for around £48 Delay Repay with GWR and this claim was accepted.

Then last June Avanti only repaid me 50% instead of 100%, meaning £19 missed out on.

Then last September Northern paid me nothing for a 3 hour delay on a £48 fare. They blamed me for not travelling using a quicker route on which the ticket was not even valid! For good measure they rejected my appeal too.

So, when in July I qualified for a Delay Repay around £4 with TPE I did apply. Although a split ticket (Advance Single plus Return leg of an Off-Peak Day Return) they did pay in full, even though they were only my operator for the latter ticket.

Had the Railway not been so insulting last June, and in particular September, I may well not have bothered claiming in July.

Exactly. The more you treat your repeat customers poorly, the more you make who will claim £1 out of principle.

 

[317 forever]

One of my trips from Manchester to London developed a 1 hour delay en route.
But I didn’t claim delay repay because I wasn’t in a rush and I enjoyed taking the slow scenic route around Birmingham.

You would still have been entitled to claim.

The fact that you preferred your imposed slow route was just your good luck. You would not have needed to admit that to the TOC!

 

[Krokodil]

You would still have been entitled to claim.

The fact that you preferred your imposed slow route was just your good luck. You would not have needed to admit that to the TOC!

But if you weren't inconvenienced then why bother to claim?

Say you were claiming for compensation in court. You'd need to demonstrate what loss you'd made.

 

[enginedin]

I put in a claim today, where if it's approved, I'll get 37p (out of principle, and because I submitted 3 Delay Repays in 1 go so was just in the zone of doing it - the other 2 claims total ~£100). My individual largest claim has been £350, for a 128 minute late Caledonian Sleeper service - although it was a work trip and got repaid to the work's credit card

 

[Starmill]

But if you weren't inconvenienced then why bother to claim?

Say you were claiming for compensation in court. You'd need to demonstrate what loss you'd made.

A technical point, but you usually wouldn't need to do that if you intended to rely on terms in the contract to reclaim part of your fees for a service. All you'd need to do is show that the term in the contract's conditions are met. This is all that's happening when one claims under the 'Delay Repay' schemes.

However, if you genuinely didn't want the money back then ultimately none of this would arise in the first place.

 

[vicbury]

Exactly. The more you treat your repeat customers poorly, the more you make who will claim £1 out of principle.

Exactly this. I've just submitted a claim that will be worth £1.50 after GWR left me stranded with completely incorrect information at the platform and no help whatsoever.

 

[zero]

Exactly. The more you treat your repeat customers poorly, the more you make who will claim £1 out of principle.

But if you weren't inconvenienced then why bother to claim?

Say you were claiming for compensation in court. You'd need to demonstrate what loss you'd made.

I've said it before but I will claim £1 even when I was not inconvenienced, because there are times when I am inconvenienced and I'm not eligible to claim. It roughly evens out over time.

Otherwise I shouldn't have claimed £100 from Avanti for being 2 hours late, because it was better for me to spend 2 hours on a warm, quiet train where I had a table and could work on my laptop without hundreds of people walking around, than 2 hours in the cold or a noisy crowded cafe where I would have had to buy a drink I didn't want

 

[125Spotter]

I find the GWR system easy to use from my phone, such that I've logged most of claims when the delay and its associated duration is obvious in the time it takes for the train to arrive and platform at the station. It helps I'm normally on e-tickets, although it's a faff they don't accept screenshots from my phone's wallet app – I always download the ticket via the retailer's app, so have to disappear to my email to find the PDF buried under several weeks of emails.

The thing is operators managed by First, and also Northern I've now found out, are shocking as they demand you sign up to their system and then become very hostile when you email and insist on a manual delay repay.

I had a claim/point of clarification on Delay Repay terms with one of the First-managed operators recently via Customer Services, which was handled slowly and meant I was eventually out of time to submit via the automated system when they advised I could claim. One email back to customer services resulted in the claim happily being forwarded and processed manually. I normally receive a BACS payment, but this time they sent a cheque in the post which surprised me a few weeks later.

I was surprised they figured out where to send it though; I don't recall giving them my address, I did not book the tickets through them, and my Delay Repay account with that TOC uses a different email address.

All experiences are valid, especially the negative ones with Delay Repay as it puts people off/incenses people, so don't want to diminish markymark's experience. I just wanted to point out cases where I felt treated fairly, even in a friendly and helpful manner, by the CS team.

Yep, this! Our son has started having to do a lot of business journeys. He usually has to pay himself and then reclaim via travel expenses reimbursement claims. There's nothing in it for him if he claims delay repay as the terms of the contract of employment and expenses reimbursement policy are that he has to repay any delay repay claims he makes back to his employer. So he doesn't bother claiming. Employer never even questions why there are no reimbursements, even when he's had to cancel meetings etc due to train delays. Obviously, he could claim himself and just not repay his employer, but then if he got found out, he'd be in trouble for theft, whereas if he just doesn't claim, he's not "stealing" from his employer.

This is such a shame. Most of my travel in recent years that resulted in claims has also been for work purposes, but I've never been contractually required to repay the Delay Repay, nor would I likely bother to claim if I was asked. Historically, I would do lots of this travel to meetings and such in my own time, early morning or late evenings, for which no additional pay would be due – so I've always seen Delay Repay as my compensation for the interruptions to what would otherwise have been personal time, at no fault of my own.

I suppose, in cases where my travel is during work time, I can understand why an employer would not consider keeping the repayment to be fair (you were "on the clock" after all), but that rarely applied to my travel. Maybe a fairer system would be to apportion the compensation payment based on the delay time spent on/off the clock – I don't look forward to explaining that to accounts

other time were they adamant train was 29 minutes late (even though doors weren't released to get off until 30 minutes and few seconds (per station digital clock), so didn't get any money

On an SWR arrival into Waterloo, it was marginal what the delay would be so I recorded video of the door release immediately followed by the timestamped station clock to indicate it was, indeed, a 30 minute delay (30:15 or something, I believe). I normally take photos of the station clocks on delays too. I've never needed to use any of this 'evidence', and I recognise it's not reasonable for the average punter to collect it, but it also helps me to remember which claims to make.

I do consider time to door release/first passenger on platform is the cut-off time for Delay Repay, at least the one that seems fair, but not sure what the TOCs believe. From Snow's experience, it seems the TOCs say "computer says no" in these marginal cases, but would be curious what would happen if actually appealed with evidence of extended delay to platform post-TC activation, or whatever.

So much single line and disruption occurs on the Exeter to Waterloo route. I typically use GWR to get to London, but of the SWR trips I've done, I cannot recall the last time I, or many people I know, have travelled this line without at least some sort of Delay Repay. We all tend to claim it too.

 

[YorksLad12]

On an SWR arrival into Waterloo, it was marginal what the delay would be so I recorded video of the door release immediately followed by the timestamped station clock to indicate it was, indeed, a 30 minute delay (30:15 or something, I believe). I normally take photos of the station clocks on delays too. I've never needed to use any of this 'evidence', and I recognise it's not reasonable for the average punter to collect it, but it also helps me to remember which claims to make.

I do consider time to door release/first passenger on platform is the cut-off time for Delay Repay, at least the one that seems fair, but not sure what the TOCs believe. From Snow's experience, it seems the TOCs say "computer says no" in these marginal cases, but would be curious what would happen if actually appealed with evidence of extended delay to platform post-TC activation, or whatever.

I usually go by what RTT says - the conductors-guards tend to just say you can claim delay repay and give a guestimate of how late we are. Recently I was on a train that arrived 60 down but had a layover so it was 57 late on departure. A screen shot of RTT is a good backup, even though it's using the same industry info that the Delay Repay team will be using. Plus, I'm late, and don't want to waste even more time hunting down a clock or platform display!

 

[enginedin]

Most of my travel in recent years that resulted in claims has also been for work purposes, but I've never been contractually required to repay the Delay Repay [...] I've always seen Delay Repay as my compensation for the interruptions to what would otherwise have been personal time, at no fault of my own.

this is exactly the (unwritten) rule in my bit of the organisation I work for (whether it's the organisation's official line is unclear - it's not in the expenses policy, and we're quite an autonomous part of the overall organisation). Delay Repay is compensation for our time - and even if it's in work-time it makes up for the fact we can't claim TOIL for other journeys we make that happen outside of 9-5 (I recently had to do a London-Scotland day trip for a meeting, and got no TOIL / overtime pay for that....)

 

[ivanhoe]

I suspect that many of potential delay pay claimants will take the view that,
" Well I got there" or Well I got home" and "these things happen". I'm probably like that myself . Does the possibility of paying out for delays change behaviour on the railways? I don't know . Jury's out for me.

 

[mad_rich]

Out of interest does Delay Repay apply if a passenger heeds advice to delay travel until the following day?

For example, if I was due to be travelling on the ECML today. I could take one of the few running LNER trains over the diversionary route (and claim DR), avail of ticket acceptance on other operators (and claim DR), take a refund (obviously no DR), or use my ticket tomorrow when things are back to normal.

However I travel, I'd be delayed. So if I choose to delay till tomorrow, it that still a valid claim?

(Theoretical only, I'm not travelling today.)

 

[TUC]

this is exactly the (unwritten) rule in my bit of the organisation I work for (whether it's the organisation's official line is unclear - it's not in the expenses policy, and we're quite an autonomous part of the overall organisation). Delay Repay is compensation for our time - and even if it's in work-time it makes up for the fact we can't claim TOIL for other journeys we make that happen outside of 9-5 (I recently had to do a London-Scotland day trip for a meeting, and got no TOIL / overtime pay for that....)

The position where I work is clear that Delay Repay should be used in lieu of purchasing future tickets for work-related journeys, and that vouchers therefore give a better audit trail than cash. That seems fair enough to me.

 

[enginedin]

should be used in lieu of purchasing future tickets for work-related journey

Hah, that would actually contradict something that is explicitly stated in our expenses policy: that our contracted external travel agency be used for all train bookings

 

[TUC]

Hah, that would actually contradict something that is explicitly stated in our expenses policy: that our contracted external travel agency be used for all train bookings

That would normally be the case for us too, but it is interpreted as meaning any bookings that will cost the employer money, not ones covered by Delay Repay.

 

[LickeyIncliner]

Out of interest does Delay Repay apply if a passenger heeds advice to delay travel until the following day?

For example, if I was due to be travelling on the ECML today. I could take one of the few running LNER trains over the diversionary route (and claim DR), avail of ticket acceptance on other operators (and claim DR), take a refund (obviously no DR), or use my ticket tomorrow when things are back to normal.

However I travel, I'd be delayed. So if I choose to delay till tomorrow, it that still a valid claim?

(Theoretical only, I'm not travelling today.)

I don't know what the official rule or policy is, but I've certainly had a claim accepted without question after following the advice to delay travel to another day.

 

[Tony2]

I’ve just made four separate claims to Avanti, for 2 outward and 2 return journeys. The outward was cancelled so we got the next train 2 hours later. The return was delayed for 114 minutes behind 4S43 which failed on the ascent of Beattock bank.

My wife booked for both of us against the same booking reference, I uploaded all of the tickets separately showing the different seat numbers but obviously quoted the one reference.

I’ve had 1 successful claim, 1 still under consideration but 2 unsuccessful as I’ve been accused of making duplicate claims!

I’ve appealed and taken a new photograph showing both tickets in the one photo against each unsuccessful claim.

This is my first claim online for delay repay.

For my future reference and asking someone out there with more experience of these claims, is there anything else I should have done to make it clearer that there were two tickets? I couldn’t see anything in the claim software myself to make this clear.

I’m astounded the software doesn’t check the seat reservation numbers which are different or even the original booking to show that 2 outward and 2 return tickets were purchased!

Thanks for any advice.

 

[cb a1]

I’ve just made four separate claims to Avanti, for 2 outward and 2 return journeys. The outward was cancelled so we got the next train 2 hours later. The return was delayed for 114 minutes behind 4S43 which failed on the ascent of Beattock bank.

My wife booked for both of us against the same booking reference, I uploaded all of the tickets separately showing the different seat numbers but obviously quoted the one reference.

I’ve had 1 successful claim, 1 still under consideration but 2 unsuccessful as I’ve been accused of making duplicate claims!

I’ve appealed and taken a new photograph showing both tickets in the one photo against each unsuccessful claim.

This is my first claim online for delay repay.

For my future reference and asking someone out there with more experience of these claims, is there anything else I should have done to make it clearer that there were two tickets? I couldn’t see anything in the claim software myself to make this clear.

I’m astounded the software doesn’t check the seat reservation numbers which are different or even the original booking to show that 2 outward and 2 return tickets were purchased!

Thanks for any advice.

Similar experience when I booked tickets for me and two pals.
Advised that delay repay is recompense for an individual therefore each of us had to separately make a claim.