Apologies, this is me venting.
I am getting fed up with having to spend a couple of hours every 28 days submitting Delay Repay claims. I just want the trains to run on time, but that is rarely the case. Sadly, I am bloody-minded enough and brought up with an attitude that you don't let big organisations get away with shoddy service, and claim every penny. It would eat away at me if I didn't claim. I wish I wasn't like that, but I am cursed with it.
I have been doing Delay Replay claims for decades, so I know what I'm doing. It used to be the odd one every other month. Now, typically I'll have around four delayed journeys every month to claim. Because I travel with my husband on a Two Together Railcard, it's double that number in separate claims, because they invariably reject, or pay out for just one passenger, if you try to claim for multiple passengers on a single claim.
My claims are mainly with London Northwestern (LM) or Avanti, and I am often using split tickets.
Each month, LM reject around half the claims for spurious reasons, usually saying wrongly there was no delay or paying out for a shorter delay. You have to appeal, usually more than once, and sometimes involve customer services before a claim is finally accepted. The bureacracy and time involved is maddening, requiring a spreadsheet to keep track of everything. The initial two hours just to submit the month's worth of claims starts to grow substantially.
With Avanti, I have reported before how they reject claims for the same journey as duplicates, even though the claim for each passenger has unique ticket numbers. They previously advised me to change the passenger name on each claim, and that was working for a while. As of this month's claims, it seems that when you change the passenger name on the specific claim, their system updates the account name as well. So I now have a claim for a journey where the acknowledgement email says "Dear <my name>" but the subsequent correspondence for the same claim reference says "Dear <husband's name>".
For one journey, Avanti have approved the claim in my husband's name, but rejected the one in my name saying it's because I used split tickets and did not upload all the tickets. Except I did.
Talking to Avanti by phone, they claimed the rejection reason is incorrect, and it is because both claims for the same journey are in my husband's name, even though I have the original confirmation emails, one addressed to me, one addressed to my husband.
Their position was that they could not discuss my own Delay Repay account with me because it was in my husband's name. Unbeknownst to me, their system updated the account name when I changed the passenger name on the final claim. It seems their system is not distinguishing between the name on the specific claim and the account name. When you change one, the other is updated. Whether it was always this way, I don't know. I do know that this is the first month where changing the passenger name on a claim has caused an issue.
So fair enough, GDPR rules do not allow them to talk to me about my own account because it is now showing in my husband's name. But -- and this is the kicker -- after correcting the account details back to my name, i.e. the name it was in for all but 13 hours (and would have stayed in but for a bug/feature of their system), they still would not talk to me about my account, as my name does not match the previous name on the account! (Of course, if Avanti actually cared about GDPR, they would have a system that prevents name changes by the end user. Any decent system locks this down after account creation and requires proof of name-change to be submitted.)
Avanti's stated position today is that every single passenger travelling together must create a separate Delay Repay account and do their own claims from their own account. One person in the household is not allowed to take on the role of submitting the claims for every passenger on the journey, (although clearly they have no way of knowing who is signing into an account and submitting the claim). This means that the details for subsequent passengers on the same journey have to be entered from scratch in a different account. (When you are doing it on one account, the train journey from the previous claim is usually available to select and not re-key.)
It is pretty obvious, that the rail industry, well LM and VT at least, is trying to make the system of making Delay Repay claims as onerous as possible, and is incentivised to deny payments and cares not whether the reasons are valid. The time required to overcome all of the obstacles placed in your way is increasing each month in my own very frustrating experience.
I am getting fed up with having to spend a couple of hours every 28 days submitting Delay Repay claims. I just want the trains to run on time, but that is rarely the case. Sadly, I am bloody-minded enough and brought up with an attitude that you don't let big organisations get away with shoddy service, and claim every penny. It would eat away at me if I didn't claim. I wish I wasn't like that, but I am cursed with it.
I have been doing Delay Replay claims for decades, so I know what I'm doing. It used to be the odd one every other month. Now, typically I'll have around four delayed journeys every month to claim. Because I travel with my husband on a Two Together Railcard, it's double that number in separate claims, because they invariably reject, or pay out for just one passenger, if you try to claim for multiple passengers on a single claim.
My claims are mainly with London Northwestern (LM) or Avanti, and I am often using split tickets.
Each month, LM reject around half the claims for spurious reasons, usually saying wrongly there was no delay or paying out for a shorter delay. You have to appeal, usually more than once, and sometimes involve customer services before a claim is finally accepted. The bureacracy and time involved is maddening, requiring a spreadsheet to keep track of everything. The initial two hours just to submit the month's worth of claims starts to grow substantially.
With Avanti, I have reported before how they reject claims for the same journey as duplicates, even though the claim for each passenger has unique ticket numbers. They previously advised me to change the passenger name on each claim, and that was working for a while. As of this month's claims, it seems that when you change the passenger name on the specific claim, their system updates the account name as well. So I now have a claim for a journey where the acknowledgement email says "Dear <my name>" but the subsequent correspondence for the same claim reference says "Dear <husband's name>".
For one journey, Avanti have approved the claim in my husband's name, but rejected the one in my name saying it's because I used split tickets and did not upload all the tickets. Except I did.
Talking to Avanti by phone, they claimed the rejection reason is incorrect, and it is because both claims for the same journey are in my husband's name, even though I have the original confirmation emails, one addressed to me, one addressed to my husband.
Their position was that they could not discuss my own Delay Repay account with me because it was in my husband's name. Unbeknownst to me, their system updated the account name when I changed the passenger name on the final claim. It seems their system is not distinguishing between the name on the specific claim and the account name. When you change one, the other is updated. Whether it was always this way, I don't know. I do know that this is the first month where changing the passenger name on a claim has caused an issue.
So fair enough, GDPR rules do not allow them to talk to me about my own account because it is now showing in my husband's name. But -- and this is the kicker -- after correcting the account details back to my name, i.e. the name it was in for all but 13 hours (and would have stayed in but for a bug/feature of their system), they still would not talk to me about my account, as my name does not match the previous name on the account! (Of course, if Avanti actually cared about GDPR, they would have a system that prevents name changes by the end user. Any decent system locks this down after account creation and requires proof of name-change to be submitted.)
Avanti's stated position today is that every single passenger travelling together must create a separate Delay Repay account and do their own claims from their own account. One person in the household is not allowed to take on the role of submitting the claims for every passenger on the journey, (although clearly they have no way of knowing who is signing into an account and submitting the claim). This means that the details for subsequent passengers on the same journey have to be entered from scratch in a different account. (When you are doing it on one account, the train journey from the previous claim is usually available to select and not re-key.)
It is pretty obvious, that the rail industry, well LM and VT at least, is trying to make the system of making Delay Repay claims as onerous as possible, and is incentivised to deny payments and cares not whether the reasons are valid. The time required to overcome all of the obstacles placed in your way is increasing each month in my own very frustrating experience.
