SWR Delay repay - split ticket between Season and day return

I am struggling to make a claim for a journey I make semi-regularly and am likely to need to claim for again.
I live in Eastleigh and work in Winchester so have a season ticket (on smart card). I often go to Southampton in the evening so travel Winchester - Eastleigh on my season ticket and then stay on the train until Southampton using either a paper or e-ticket (bought earlier in the day to avoid any issues of ticketless travel!).
I know it will never be a huge amount of money when I claim but it really isn't made easy.

I assumed I should make 2 claims but they were rejected as the tickets weren't valid for the journey.
If I make one claim I have to fudge it and either say it is a season or return ticket and either way I cannot give the value as they are worked out differently. This is what the call centre advised to do when I asked it as a follow up to a different question but when I called again with the online form actually in front of me they couldn't advise how to do it.

I did fudge it into one claim on appeal and it has been approved but at a rate lower than I expected (just over 12.5% of one of the legs).

Any ideas?

Since it is for 1 journey only one claim should be made but as you've discovered the form does not make this easy.

I think the easiest way would be to email swr customer services directly stating the journey made, the delay experienced, the details of both and the amount of delay repay due - this would be the sum of that due for the appropriate delay length for 1 journey on the season ticket and for the paper ticket - and to attatch a photo clearly showing your paper ticket and photocard.

As I see it using the online form there is not the option to provide all the details required to process such a claim correctly first time - you only get space to add this on appeal, although I would hope that at that stage it would be dealt with correctly - so the above method would seem to hopefully be a way to avoid having to both submit both the claim and appeal everytime

Emailing SWR worked for me on a split ticket delay repay claim, so hopefully it will work for you. I was only offered a cheque or rail travel vouchers though having emailed it in - wasn't an issue for me.

I once had a complicated delay repay claim with LNER that needed explanation, but didn't feel like emailing customer services as is always recommended on this forum, so instead I circumvented the lack of explanation space in the delay repay form by submitting a photo of the explanation and tickets together as the "image/scan of your ticket".

Specifically, I had a split between an advance single and a (started-short-on) season, so I made up a suitable price according to a calculation I thought was fair (adding a fraction of my season ticket to the advance single price), printed an explanation (intended itinerary, actual itinerary, delay minutes, and price calculation) on an A4, placed the tickets below, and took a picture of the whole thing. (I guess I could've saved some paper by just taking a picture of the tickets and adding the explanation in MS Paint.) I thus submitted a claim for a single journey, with my made-up price as the ticket price (and the ticket number of the advance single as the ticket number). LNER took three days longer to process it than a simple claim I submitted at the same time, presumably as it needed to be looked at it more detail, but they then paid out according to my calculation without questions (via BACS directly into my bank account as I had requested in the delay repay form).

Your case is made more complicated by the season ticket being on a smartcard so maybe a direct email is the way to go, but if you wanted to try the delay repay form then I'd recommend including at least the following:

"Smartcard annual season ticket Winchester - Eastleigh price: £XXX.XX, equivalent day return price: £XXX.XX/232 = £YY.YY
Return ticket Eastleigh - Southampton Central price: £ZZ.ZZ
Total equivalent return price: £YY.YY + £ZZ.ZZ = £WW.WW"
You can find the correct number to divide your season ticket cost by here: https://www.southwesternrailway.com/contact-and-help/refunds-and-compensation/delay-repay
"Intended itinerary: Winchester XX:XX - Southampton Central XX:XX (passing non-stop through Eastleigh as allowed by the National Rail Conditions of Travel section 14.2)" if indeed you train didn't stop at Eastleigh.
"Delay: XX minutes"

And double-check that the picture contains all the information and physical items (smartcard, photocard, smartcard number, potentially smartcard receipt, ticket, etc.) SWR ask for both for a smartcard claim and for a paper/e- ticket claim.

Thanks for all the advice

pelli said:

I circumvented the lack of explanation space in the delay repay form by submitting a photo of the explanation and tickets together as the "image/scan of your ticket".

Click to expand...

I might try something like this. On a recent London trip I put all the photos and pass in a photo and that seemed to work, maybe I'll add a note giving the return ticket value of my pass (using their maths) and add that onto any real return tickets I've added to give a total!