Is the concept of Delay Repay bizarre?

Moderator note: Split from https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/barriers-to-claiming-delay-repay.197887

I will claim whilst the facility exists but in my opinion the whole concept is bizarre. If I travel by bus or coach or my own car and get held up then its tough I can not claim from Highways England. Do not really see why rail is different, it is a transport service and they get delayed or cancelled sometimes. I would however agree that you should be delivered to your destination at the TOC expense.

packermac said:

I will claim whilst the facility exists but in my opinion the whole concept is bizarre. If I travel by bus or coach or my own car and get held up then its tough I can not claim from Highways England. Do not really see why rail is different, it is a transport service and they get delayed or cancelled sometimes.

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Delay Repay is a result of the noise that rail users make about delays, something which road users are pretty quiet about. On the other hand road users make much more noise about the costs of travel compared to rail users, hence the below inflation price increase of petrol compared to the higher increase in rail fares.

packermac said:

I will claim whilst the facility exists but in my opinion the whole concept is bizarre.

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Rail fares are expensive enough and every opportunity should be made to make a claim, in my opinion.

Bus companies also provide compensation for delays to services sometimes. If they've made a mistake which has caused a problem for a customer, such as a bus breakdown which then creates delay to the passenger's journey, the bus company will be on the hook for compensation under the Consumer Rights Act in much the same way as a train company.

The difference is that a lot of bus tickets cost so little that it would barely be worth trying to make a claim, and that politically bus delays aren't a hot potato. The government has far less influence in the commercial terms offered by bus operators too. This doesn't mean however that they don't provide any compensation at all, or that some companies, such as Arriva, don't provide enhanced compensation, such as Sapphire.

Operators of tramways and ferries also provide compensation for delays they caused in some circumstances. The airline industry is subject to specific legislation on compensation, which is quite strict.

It's far from unique to the railway.

Starmill said:

Bus companies also provide compensation for delays to services sometimes...

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Indeed ths is true.

packermac said:

If I travel by .... my own car and get held up then its tough I can not claim from Highways England.....

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If we are going for a Highways Agency vs Network Rail comparison/analogy, then I can assure you that the operators of a train that is delayed by a cause attributed to Network Rail will be compensated by Network Rail.

This happens regardless of whether or not Delay Repay schemes exist or not.

The problem with analogies is that it's difficult to get the analogy right Though it maes a change from supermarkets

packermac said:

I will claim whilst the facility exists but in my opinion the whole concept is bizarre. If I travel by bus or coach or my own car and get held up then its tough I can not claim from Highways England. Do not really see why rail is different, it is a transport service and they get delayed or cancelled sometimes. I would however agree that you should be delivered to your destination at the TOC expense.

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Rail is different from road in that most delays are under the control of the TOC or Network Rail. Compensation used to exclude those delays not under their control, but that caused so much faff and argument that it was felt easier just to always compensate as it is then a simple matter of fact.

Bletchleyite said:

Rail is different from road in that most delays are under the control of the TOC or Network Rail. Compensation used to exclude those delays not under their control, but that caused so much faff and argument that it was felt easier just to always compensate as it is then a simple matter of fact.

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The predomant cause of delays on the roads, including delays to bus services, is the volume of traffic on them*, thus the concept of compensating motorists for the delays that they themselves contribute to would be absurd.
*Unless of course it is the government's responsibility to provide infinite road capacity so that every motorist gets a clear road irrespective of when they choose to take their vehicles out.
With rail, there is an advertised timetable which in contractual terms is the expected norm. The main weakness in peak hours is the finite capacity of the railway available to deliver service to an uncontrolled volume of passengers.

Why do I get the feeling that only a rail enthusiast would object to something like Delay Repay?

I am not a rail enthusiast and whereas I do not support the concept of Daily Repay, the OP's word "bizarre" seems a bit excessive. The administration costs of the scheme are surely horrendous insofar as (for example) your Delay Repay claim for £8.50 may well have cost the TOC the same again in adjudicating your claim and then sending it to you.

Bletchleyite said:

Rail is different from road in that most delays are under the control of the TOC or Network Rail. Compensation used to exclude those delays not under their control, but that caused so much faff and argument that it was felt easier just to always compensate as it is then a simple matter of fact.

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If road was delay repay... would we claim off the insurance of the person who’s had a bad accident? Highways?

Is it because a TOC gives a specific arrival time, say 14:05 at Manchester Piccadilly on the 12:00 from London Euston then if you arrive an hour late then you can, quite rightly, claim because for whatever reason the TOC has failed to get you to Manchester at the time it says it would. Its also not unreasonable to plan around that arrival time, for a meeting or afternoon theatre maybe.

We all know that a similar journey by car could take about 4 hours or maybe 5 hours but any delay is not attributed to any company say, Highways Agency' because a specific arrival time has not been agreed upon. In the car you hope it goes well but if you arrive later than you thought you might, well, that's just the way it goes. I don't think a driver could make a firm plan for a meeting etc at say 16:15 if they left London by car at 12:00 and then hope to claim some sort of compensation from, well who?, for missing the meeting.

TUC said:

Why do I get the feeling that only a rail enthusiast would object to something like Delay Repay?

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So true!!!

Anything that makes public transport more attractive is a good thing.

Of course the key difference between roads and railways is that railways are a completely closed system. Network Rail know what the capacity is, and they allow the TOCs to run a specific number of trains to fill that capacity. The TOCs publish the timetable, and contract with their customers based on that timetable.

If the railway shove too many trains on a line or fail to staff them properly, then the argument goes that they should have known better and as a result, and as a result it's reasonable to expect compensation paid to the customers who have contracted according to a timetable. If too many people use the road at some given time, well that's kinda their own fault given that a vast amount of information is available to help people choose the best time to travel.

If there is an incident on the railway, then the argument goes that it is a closed system - it is or should be a secure environment where Network Rail's responsibility is to keep out external influences and manage the system so that it runs optimally in any given scenario. Anyone and anything permitted on the railways must meet extremely strict criteria, defined by Network Rail to ensure safety and optimum running. Therefore if they fail to do that, it's reasonable to expect compensation. The roadways are not a secure environment. Anybody can use them, using almost any method and there is almost never anything stopping them. There are published requirements for minimum safety standards, but individual drivers are responsible for meeting them on a day to day basis. In an open system, it's unreasonable to expect compensation if you are delayed because something that can't be stopped has happened.

Potentially, the only similarity that could be argued is that if Highways England fail to maintain the roadways in poor weather compensation might possibly be due, but it would probably be unreasonable given that there is no way to know who would or would have been travelling and the cost of any such scheme would be insane compared to any benefits... It's just not practical in an open system.

tom73 said:

I am not a rail enthusiast and whereas I do not support the concept of Daily Repay, the OP's word "bizarre" seems a bit excessive. The administration costs of the scheme are surely horrendous insofar as (for example) your Delay Repay claim for £8.50 may well have cost the TOC the same again in adjudicating your claim and then sending it to you.

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As I was the OP that used the word bizarre I will say why.
1) It creates a paper chase & fuels a blame culture that will in the end lead to higher ticket prices for all and more inefficiency. I have seen this in the airline I spent my career at, it claimed to be following a no blame culture but actually spent hours trying to apportion (argue?) a couple of delay minutes to another department rather than actually getting on with the job.
2) It is badly publicised to non regular rail users and often not explained to passengers when disruption is happening.
3) It as others have said nothing more than some government attempt (of any colour) to make the public think they are cared about.
4) It would seem that the moment it involves multi TOC's on a journey then it becomes in the "too difficult column" so reject it and hope the claimant goes away.

Maybe I am just too old (67) but when I was a kid London Bus timetables had a line at the bottom that read something like London Transport do not guarantee buses will run in accordance with this timetable or at all. (I can not find the exact words as my main computer where I have an old timetable stored is currently u/s)
That always seem to make things clear very to me.

On a slight drift the XC passenger charter I notice says if you are heading for an airport or ferry terminal they will only look after you in terms of alternative transport to your destination if your arrival was planned for at least two hours before your scheduled departure. Seems bit odd if they are paying repay earlier than that there are two levels of customer care.

The service provided by Highways England of a well maintained and high-availability national trunk road network is not agreed by contract with individual road uses. Highways England's service level is specified by the Government, who pay accordingly.

The Railway could be run a similar way, with services specified and paid for in full by the Government, in a similar fashion to how Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois will operate. If this were the case, consumers wouldn't be able to claim compensation for delays.

Conversely, Highways England could operate by contract with motorists, charging them dynamically for the right to travel on a road at a particular time, in a similar way to how the M6 Toll operates. If this system of contracts were in place, motorists would be entitled to make claims to Highways England if they were delayed against their expectations set when they paid the toll.

Either way the key elements are preserved, albeit in different models of operation. Delays due to traffic or other problems, or road closures on the M6 Toll are very uncommon, but I'd be interested to know if anyone has ever experienced one personally? If you did, did you make a claim for compensation?

Goldfish62 said:

Anything that makes public transport more attractive is a good thing.

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I don't agree with them paying out claims for things like suicides or poor weather but I accept it might be more costly to exclude them.

Saying that some companies do exclude such things and some companies try to get out of paying, so maybe it's not so costly compared to the status quo of including anything

Under the same token, I wouldn't agree with Network Rail paying compensation for weather related delays. Of course if it was shown that the weather problem was caused by poor maintenance to protect against weather events that would be different. Again that might be too difficult to implement iand make it more costly. Thus again the Status Quo may be the best

I agree with compensation otherwise.

infobleep said:

I don't agree with them paying out claims for things like suicides or poor weather but I accept it might be more costly to exclude them.

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Most good companies permit automatic donation to charity in such circumstances.

packermac said:

Moderator note: Split from https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/barriers-to-claiming-delay-repay.197887

I will claim whilst the facility exists but in my opinion the whole concept is bizarre. If I travel by bus or coach or my own car and get held up then its tough I can not claim from Highways England. Do not really see why rail is different, it is a transport service and they get delayed or cancelled sometimes. I would however agree that you should be delivered to your destination at the TOC expense.

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Very much a matter of person opinion, however I agree.

I don't see why farepayers should effectively subsidise payments to other farepayers for incidents which are beyond the control of the railway. And with the advent of facilities like RTTT I bet there's quite a few fraudulent claims, with non-train-specific tickets this must be pretty easy to do.

All part of the distasteful modern compo culture IMO.

AM9 said:

The predomant cause of delays on the roads, including delays to bus services, is the volume of traffic on them*, thus the concept of compensating motorists for the delays that they themselves contribute to would be absurd.

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Would it, however, be absurd to compensate motorists off insurance policies for situations where someone's negligence has contributed? For example a breakdown where the motorist has failed to adequately maintain their car, or failed to correctly respond to a warning indication and missed an opportunity to get off the road without causing a blockage? Naturally I realise this would all be *very* difficult to administer, but the concept in itself isn't unreasonable.

AM9 said:

*Unless of course it is the government's responsibility to provide infinite road capacity so that every motorist gets a clear road irrespective of when they choose to take their vehicles out.
With rail, there is an advertised timetable which in contractual terms is the expected norm. The main weakness in peak hours is the finite capacity of the railway available to deliver service to an uncontrolled volume of passengers.

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I don't have a problem with people being compensated where the industry has failed in some way. However I rather begrudge the notion of compensation being paid out for the various iterations of delays caused by passengers, or even third-parties. Suicides being a prime example, as well as all the other things passengers do.

bramling said:

Very much a matter of person opinion, however I agree.

I don't see why farepayers should effectively subsidise payments to other farepayers for incidents which are beyond the control of the railway. And with the advent of facilities like RTTT I bet there's quite a few fraudulent claims, with non-train-specific tickets this must be pretty easy to do.

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How much stuff is genuinely outside the control of the railway?

I'd say suicides/trespass and the most extreme weather (heat, snow and wind), and that's about it. Which, whilst these incidents tend to be highly disruptive in themselves, probably make up a relatively small % of delays overall. And the option to donate vouchers to the Samaritains etc is a good initiative.

Very rare that any claim I make is more than a few quid. The only significant claim I've made in the last 5 years was for around £50 after a tree fell* on the line, and the 2 hour delay caused no end of headache sorting childcare until I got home.

*Arguably NR's fault through vegetation management.

bramling said:

Would it, however, be absurd to compensate motorists off insurance policies for situations where someone's negligence has contributed? For example a breakdown where the motorist has failed to adequately maintain their car, or failed to correctly respond to a warning indication and missed an opportunity to get off the road without causing a blockage? Naturally I realise this would all be *very* difficult to administer, but the concept in itself isn't unreasonable.

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A) Ridiculously hard to prove (e.g. a car having a valid MOT would be a reasonable defence)

B) Such incidents are rarer than hen's teeth in the context of the number of road journeys made every day

bramling said:

Would it, however, be absurd to compensate motorists off insurance policies for situations where someone's negligence has contributed? For example a breakdown where the motorist has failed to adequately maintain their car, or failed to correctly respond to a warning indication and missed an opportunity to get off the road without causing a blockage? Naturally I realise this would all be *very* difficult to administer, but the concept in itself isn't unreasonable. ...

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Aside from the impossibility of calculating the true cause of so many road delays, many of them can be attributed to moderate delays elsewhere causing other routes to be overloaded. Then there's the problem of speeding where some motorists feel entitled to speed irrespective of the posted limit - and that's before weather, surface and traffic conditions are considered. Then there are impatient and self-important motorists who pressurise other road users to make unnecessary moves which can start a chain of events that result in serious delays. So however some might think that they are entitled to compensation for delay to an unscheduled journey, if there was ever sufficient monitoring of motorists' behaviour including roadside devices and in-car telematics, there are many who should be careful of what they wish for.

bramling said:

... I don't have a problem with people being compensated where the industry has failed in some way. However I rather begrudge the notion of compensation being paid out for the various iterations of delays caused by passengers, or even third-parties. Suicides being a prime example, as well as all the other things passengers do.

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As somebody else posting in this thread has commented, there are instances where NR and the TOCs aren't responsibe for delays but payment is made as the additional cost of seperating those events from all the others would exceed any saving.

Starmill said:

Most good companies permit automatic donation to charity in such circumstances.

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I hadn't realised this.