Scam or not? East Midlands Railways demand for recovery of overpayment of duplicate Delay Repay 2019

[LowLevel]

Hi

My concern is the bank account and me releasing my bank details on line. Is it usual for for EMR revenue protection request payment online only? That's the bit that makes me very nervous.

Hopefully a phone call to EMR customer services tomorrow will resolve this one way or the other.

If this is legitimate passenger revenues must be very down for it to be worth while pursing these kinds of claims given the recovery costs.

The telephone line is the usual one. It is printed on the back of EMR unpaid fares notices. If it would put your mind at rest I'm happy to attach a photo of one.

 

[WesternLancer]

Hi

Thanks for all the replies.

So this is where I've got to.

I don't recall this journey but it was over two years ago. At this time my Mum was ill and so I was making regular trips back and forth to London from Leicester sometimes more frequently but at least weekly.

My suspicions are arroused as I wonder if the could be similar to the Post Office missed delivery scam that's rife at the moment. In this scam you get a notice for a missed delivery claiming that you owe a small amount relating to a deficit in postage costs. You are invited to make a payment online to secure delivery to make up the costs and then once they have your bank account details your account is drained. This is described on WHICH and MoneySavingExpert and Citizens Advice websites.

1. A redacted version of the letter supposedly from EMR is attached here as a PDF. The circles on the letter are me picking out the formatting errors.
2. The journey in question is stated as occurring on 26th September 2019 and my bank account shows payments into my account on 30th Sept 19 for £14.50 and £14.38 on 8th Oct 19. There are no other payments into my account from EMR between the 8th Oct 19 and today. Plenty going out of my account to EMR, but no others coming in! There are no duplicate payments for the amount they claim ie.£14.38
3. My apologies but I got the Fraud Analyst's name wrong in my OP-it was late and I was angry! I OP'd it as Jessica Hemming when rereading the letter I see that it is Jessica HERRING.
4. I now see in their letter that they have also got my surname wrong, close but wrong.
5. The bank account details in the letter and the account name match but are they legitimate?

I intend to contact EMR Customer Services tomorrow morning to query the veracity of this letter and hopefully speak to the elusive Jessica at Nottingham Staition if she exists.

I only make the a Delay Repay claim when its legitimate and the delay forefills the requirements for a claim. As other respondents have suggested the only circumstances where I can imagine that there might have been a duplicate claim it could be if I filled in a claim form and then EMR's automatic processes filed a claim as well. If that would be the case why is there only one payment for £14.38 not two?

I'm lucky to be in a fairly decent job and so I don't need to make decitful Dealy Repay claims to bolster my income. While its very historic I am prepared to make a repayment if I have been paid twice but I am clear that I did not and would not initiate a second claim. I am in a job where if I am prosecuted criminally, I loose my job and frankly £14.38 isn't worth my job!

Otherwise any other comments or observations about how I might take this forward and check if its legitimate?

Thanks again for the comments and feedback so far!

Thanks for updating

Whilst wise to check all this carefully as you are doing, I note there are typos you have not circled (Your Sincerely) some of the others might have mailmerged in from the claim software eg AT in capitals (which is never going to be checked if they have a run a batch of hundreds of these letters say) and I have a devil of a job at work getting my letters to commence my e-mail address with lower case on some templates provided by my employer! So poor old Jessica might have to suffer that.

Still, wise to check as you are doing.


But I reckon the other slightly odd thing is that given this is likely to be journey(s) between Leicester and your mum's it's hard to see why the DR payment would be different by a few pence (38p vs 50p) tho I suppose this is potentially possible given the DR formula and the varying levels of Advance fares you may have paid. If you cite stations to and from someone here would no doubt look at fares database and check that possibility.

I reckon def worth ringing. If you can't get through i would guess best to e-mail her and say "thanks for letter but my own records do not seem to show a duplicate claim so please can they ring you to discuss it, but if I am mistaken I will of course be happy to make a repayment to EMR of any sum we agree is owed". Strikes me that this would help cover you if the matter escalated to court action or some such without them replying.

Hi

My concern is the bank account and me releasing my bank details on line. Is it usual for for EMR revenue protection request payment online only? That's the bit that makes me very nervous.

Hopefully a phone call to EMR customer services tomorrow will resolve this one way or the other.

If this is legitimate passenger revenues must be very down for it to be worth while pursing these kinds of claims given the recovery costs.

You could always post them a cheque . In some cases I have started to revert to this as a simple way of preventing the scams that relate to invoice fraud etc. Of course they don't like it as traders are being charged higher sums by banks to handle each cheque but...

 

[Moonpie]

I don't think any type of automatic delay repay system is processed without some action from the person claiming. When I have had them before, I got an email saying something like " we think your journey was delayed and could be entitled to delay repay. Click here to confirm these details are correct and you wish to make a claim" or something similar. You actually have to confirm you want to claim.

 

[A Challenge]

If the OP can provide the bank account details the letter writer wants the refund paid into, it is possible someone on this forum can say whether it is a genuine bank account.

The bank details given in the letter as being for Abellio East Midlands Railway (30-80-12 192133468) pass my bank's confirmation of payee (it sounds like you may have already have checked this @Slowtrain, but thought you may appreciate the confirmation).

 

[island]

But I reckon the other slightly odd thing is that given this is likely to be journey(s) between Leicester and your mum's it's hard to see why the DR payment would be different by a few pence (38p vs 50p) tho I suppose this is potentially possible given the DR formula and the varying levels of Advance fares you may have paid.

It could quite easily be the same claim just one of the payments was rounded up.

 

[DanNCL]

I would double check your bank statements to see if you were paid two payments of £14.38 in 2019 from them. If you have only recieved one payment, or haven't received any payment at all from them, then even if this letter were legitimately from EMR they wouldn't be entitled to a penny from you.

I recognise that it was two and a half years ago so may be difficult to do so, but can anybody confirm if there actually was an 18:19 from St Pancras to Market Harborough on 26/09/2019? If there wasn't then this would clearly be a scam.

A delay repay amount of £14.38 can be for a 30-59 minute delay on a ticket that cost £28.75, or for a 15-29 minute delay on a ticket that cost £57.50. It isn't possible for this to be an amount for a delay of 60 minutes plus as that would be the cost of the full ticket, which is always rounded to the nearest 5p.

 

[Slowtrain]

It could quite easily be the same claim just one of the payments was rounded up.

Interesting. What a weird way to do business. All those rounding errors must cost them a fortune if the round against themselves?

 

[100andthirty]

Hi

My concern is the bank account and me releasing my bank details on line. Is it usual for for EMR revenue protection request payment online only? That's the bit that makes me very nervous.

Hopefully a phone call to EMR customer services tomorrow will resolve this one way or the other.

If this is legitimate passenger revenues must be very down for it to be worth while pursing these kinds of claims given the recovery costs.

If you do pay by bank transfer from a computer or phone into their account, you enter their sort code, account number account name and reference number. They don't see your bank details, just your name and reference number.

 

[WesternLancer]

I would double check your bank statements to see if you were paid two payments of £14.38 in 2019 from them. If you have only recieved one payment, or haven't received any payment at all from them, then even if this letter were legitimately from EMR they wouldn't be entitled to a penny from you.

I recognise that it was two and a half years ago so may be difficult to do so, but can anybody confirm if there actually was an 18:19 from St Pancras to Market Harborough on 26/09/2019? If there wasn't then this would clearly be a scam.

A delay repay amount of £14.38 can be for a 30-59 minute delay on a ticket that cost £28.75, or for a 15-29 minute delay on a ticket that cost £57.50. It isn't possible for this to be an amount for a delay of 60 minutes plus as that would be the cost of the full ticket, which is always rounded to the nearest 5p.

All fair points but the OP has stated their are no duplicate payments of £14.38 into their bank account (I assume they checked and double checked of course) - but one of £14.38 and one of £14.50 on close but different dates.

The letter from EMR posted does not claim that they made duplicate payments (as I read it) but that duplicate claims were made for the same journey resulting in an "overpayment" (one claim being manual and one being "automatic" whatever that means (but could eg be a on line claim and a paper form claim for example)).

Now you would expect some part of the process at EMR's end to prevent such claims at audit or processing stage, but as stated by @LowLevel D-R was v recent at that time for EMR and thus systems not fully worked up well or it may well be that said 'audit' is only happening now, probably after a DfT missive or official has told them to trawl through the files for fraud and error and seek to reclaim it.

The OP has stated if the request from EMR is not fraud they are on balance minded to pay it since they may have employment issues if EMR can proove they are right and the issue escalates. I think this may be wise point of view (when matters checked with EMR) since we know from the vast thread about Abellio Greater Anglia Trains doing a massive fraud trawl of D-R claims / potentiality fraudulent claims last year that pretty soon people stared getting letters from the British Transport Police (BTP) inviting them into to discuss their claims.

Juts for OP's info - Abellio Greater Anglia is a sister franchise of Abellio East Midlands Railway - so it is possible they are now 'sharing best practice' in this sort of thing (as they would call it....)

Obv I'm not seeking to scare @Slowtrain into just paying up - just posting this for context. If the OP can defend their claims record with reasonable info I would strongly urge them to do so, as I would do that if it were me (but you may need a good filing system of on line and paper claim form copies from 2+ years ago to do that of course).

 

[STINT47]

I'm not sure why they ate perusing something that happened over two years ago and involves such a low amount. It would surely cost them more to investigate and process this than they'll recover?

Personally I would be tempted to eithet not reply or if I did I might refer them to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram".

 

[AlterEgo]

I'm not sure why they ate perusing something that happened over two years ago and involves such a low amount. It would surely cost them more to investigate and process this than they'll recover?

This letter will have taken about 20 seconds to generate and there is no investigation other than simply asking a computer to identify duplicate claims.

 

[LowLevel]

I'm not sure why they ate perusing something that happened over two years ago and involves such a low amount. It would surely cost them more to investigate and process this than they'll recover?

Personally I would be tempted to eithet not reply or if I did I might refer them to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram".

If they're pulling the data in bulk and doing a mail merge whilst this sum is trivial some might be 3 figures. Depending on volumes it could be a decent lump of money.

As I mentioned before I suspect DfT have asked them to look at all avenues regarding monies that might be owing.

 

[WesternLancer]

I'm not sure why they ate perusing something that happened over two years ago and involves such a low amount. It would surely cost them more to investigate and process this than they'll recover?

Personally I would be tempted to eithet not reply or if I did I might refer them to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram".

Having kept any eye on this thread at the time I'm really not sure I would do that.... eg see post #58 (and there were latter posts where a passenger uploaded a copy of the actual BTP letter they got IIRC, inviting them to come if for a friendly chat)

Advice Only for Greater Anglia - Delay Repay Fraud

I’ve had a letter from GA telling me that some delay repay claims look suspicious, with a list of 5 or 6 claims from February/March 2020 and asking for an explanation within seven days. 1) is it reasonable at this stage to ask them for details as to why they think the claims are suspicious? 2)...

www.railforums.co.uk

Ref the sum - if this was a mailmerged automatic letter to several thousand claimants with many small sums that they now wish to query, some of whome might just pay up without further question, it may be financially worthwhile (and the govt would justify it as 'protecting taxpayer's money invested int he railways' or some such). The total being asked fr int he letters could sum to many thousands of pounds after all.

Plus if a percentage of those cases got taken to court as fraud cases where I think the penalty can be quite high, it might be deemed worthwhile. Abellio Greater Anglia seemed to think so after all. Despite the poor publicity they received.

 

[stew]

First up, the letter has so many grammatical errors and not just as a consequence of mail merge operations (I’m sure someone will pick up on any mistakes in this message!).

I imagine the EMR delay repay system could easily flag any duplicate delays on the same train/same passenger name. It would be a simple process and they use other dupe fields (email, bank acc, value of refund). The OP states two separate payments were made and no dupes so likely to be the rounding difference.

it may be worth the OP searching emails if he files away DR confirmations and see if he has inadvertently claimed (manual and auto acceptance) for the same journey twice.

On a broader scale, the GA investigations seemed to relate to those using a “genie” app or had multiple claims (above the route average). Checking one-off duplicate payments for a relatively small amount seems to have reached another level and could be testing the water for another feature of the software being used by Abelio.

 

[SteveM70]

If its so easy for them to spot duplicate claims thirty months later, why can't they spot them at the time?

 

[30907]

But DelayRepay payments, which can be as little as one-eighth of a fare, are not necessarily so rounded.

Apologies, didn't think of that. Post amended.

 

[stew]

Looking online, there was a “defective piece of track” affecting EMR services on that date.

On another point, if you chose to donate one of your payments to EMR’s charity (currently The Samaritan’s), it would obviously not show in your bank twice.

 

[Mak1981]

Also worth noting duplicate claims doesn't necessarily mean duplicate payout amounts, ie a claim paying put 50% correctly in addition to automatic claim paying out 100% incorrectly

 

[30907]

It's appallingly poorly formatted if genuine.

I am afraid that's not surprising - I've had just as poor from government departments, local authorities, banks.... - but it is at least understandable.

If its so easy for them to spot duplicate claims thirty months later, why can't they spot them at the time?

Perhaps because the facility wasn't then available, perhaps because there were rather more claims back in normal times.

 

[stew]

Does anyone have a copy of the whole delay repay terms and conditions?

I was looking at something which specifically says you must arrive at your intended destination by train to use delay repay. As opposed to train was delayed, got a lift/non-replacement bus to the intended station.

 

[SteveM70]

Perhaps because the facility wasn't then available, perhaps because there were rather more claims back in normal times

Any basic database could provide that data. It really isn't complicated

 

[Zooty]

Just a thought, but were the claim references shown (redacted) in the letter used for the payment references on the bank transfers?

 

[30907]

Any basic database could provide that data. It really isn't complicated

In which case it's probably the second of my suggestions.

 

[stew]

Just a thought, but were the claim references shown (redacted) in the letter used for the payment references on the bank transfers?

Each claim is given a separate reference number so presumably if two claims/payments were made for the same journey they would have two differing references.

For manual claims, you need to submit a “ticket number”. If you submit two manual claims, one claim would surely get rejected as a duplicate. It appears that the auto-DR does not use this value?

 

[robbeech]

It's appallingly poorly formatted if genuine.

Fairly standard to find people who have the job of creating letters to be hopeless at creating letters. That is certainly not limited to the railway.

I don't think any type of automatic delay repay system is processed without some action from the person claiming. When I have had them before, I got an email saying something like " we think your journey was delayed and could be entitled to delay repay. Click here to confirm these details are correct and you wish to make a claim" or something similar. You actually have to confirm you want to claim.

I’m not sure how EMR’s system works but there are automated systems where if you buy an advance ticket from the operator and that service qualifies for delay repay it is handled completely automatically. I’m not sure if it works on flexible tickets where you have generated an itinerary or not.

Now you would expect some part of the process at EMR's end to prevent such claims at audit or processing stage,

Why? Whilst it’s not clear if this is about to happen here, threatening a passenger with fraud charges months or years later unless they pay £1000 is much much more appealing financially.

If its so easy for them to spot duplicate claims thirty months later, why can't they spot them at the time?

I think the idea that the DfT have put pressure on is quite plausible.

 

[Paul Kelly]

If its so easy for them to spot duplicate claims thirty months later, why can't they spot them at the time?

They might have upgraded to a new computer system in the meantime, which has the facility to detect them?

 

[Elecman]

i don’t think banks transmit your bank details on a bank transfer just the Payees name and any reference you give to the payment

 

[WesternLancer]

Does anyone have a copy of the whole delay repay terms and conditions?

I was looking at something which specifically says you must arrive at your intended destination by train to use delay repay. As opposed to train was delayed, got a lift/non-replacement bus to the intended station.

I think this is best posted in a new thread really. It's been debated on other threads with D-R related queries and disputes too I think. Don't think this relates to the OP's query in this thread.

 

[island]

i don’t think banks transmit your bank details on a bank transfer just the Payees name and any reference you give to the payment

They do (although I don't think they're visible to the recipient, only to bank staff).

 

[mmh]

They do (although I don't think they're visible to the recipient, only to bank staff).

The details aren't transferred to the merchant, but a transaction ID is used, which is what allows a merchant to automatically refund something. They don't have any visibility of where the payment came from, just that their payment processor received a payment, and the ID. That's why you need to give a reference number or description if you make a random online payment from your bank account, without that the recipient would have no indication where it came from.