£10 Admin Fees: Bogus or not?

[Bletchleyite]

Mod Note: Posts #1 - #8 were originally in this thread.

Contact the original retailer and ask for a refund. They will probably deduct a £10 administration fee - bogus IMO but enforceable unfortunately.

What’s bogus about it? There has been a cost to both transactions.

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

What’s bogus about it? There has been a cost to both transactions.

A fixed cost, no matter the circumstances? Of £10?

I imagine the real cost of a refund is very much lower, but that the £10 fee is a nice way of discouraging refund requests for tickets where the effort of getting a refund makes it not worth it (or giving a 'negative' refund value), hence enabling them to keep the revenue in return for having provided no service at all.

 

[Bletchleyite]

A fixed cost, no matter the circumstances? Of £10?

No doubt there will be transactions for which the cost is higher and transactions for which it's lower.

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

No doubt there will be transactions for which the cost is higher and transactions for which it's lower.

So, why not a percentage cost? The fact that XC has stopped charging 'refund' fees on Advances shows that it's clearly just a money-making ruse.

 

[Bletchleyite]

So, why not a percentage cost?

Because it's up to a business how they implement their pricing model.

I'm happier with a flat £10, personally; I'm more bothered about losing chunks of a long distance Anytime than whether I can refund a £3 single to the next stop.

I don't support abolishing it for refunds as people will just speculatively buy and refund tickets which has a cost we all end up paying.

 

[Gareth Marston]

There are a number of people who basically "prat about". Constantly changing their minds and plans, they often need a lot of servicing so to speak and can cause queues at booking offices windows as they consume time. I can usually say to myself "they'll be back wanting a refund" and be right you get to know the sort. The £10 fee is grizzled about but presumably then acts as deterrent to them doing it again so hopefully makes things easier for other customers as staff are not tied up in dealing with them.

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

There are a number of people who basically "prat about". Constantly changing their minds and plans, they often need a lot of servicing so to speak and can cause queues at booking offices windows as they consume time. I can usually say to myself "they'll be back wanting a refund" and be right you get to know the sort. The £10 fee is grizzled about but presumably then acts as deterrent to them doing it again so hopefully makes things easier for other customers as staff are not tied up in dealing with them.

I agree totally with there being a fee for changes made in person. However, for changes made entirely electronically, for example of tickets not even picked up yet, I see no reason why these should be charged at more than the raw cost to the retailer of selling and subsequently refunding the ticket.

As an example, I was recently unable to travel on a ~£15 ticket booked months in advance (a refundable one though), as I was ill on the day of travel. I hadn't picked up the tickets yet as I was going to do this at the station just before boarding the train. So why is it fair to charge a £10 fee and only return £5?

I appreciate that the fare I was paying was significantly below the highest possible 'walkup' fare, but I nevertheless fail to see how it can possibly have costed the TOC I bought it from £10 to receive a £15 debit card payment and subsequently refund this again. Probably no more than 20p in reality, as no human contact was involved anywhere in the process.

 

[gray1404]

I personally think that the cost of a refund should be £5.00 so it is still enough to pull people off buying tickets then refunding them, yet still covers retailers costs.

 

[Starmill]

No doubt there will be transactions for which the cost is higher

Depends on how the cost is calculated, but these are likely to be very small in number indeed.

The costs that most online bookings would involve would probably be a few pence in card / insertion fees and then cancelling and refunding to card, plus the share of back office cost which will probably be near zero.

 

[bspahh]

I bought an off peak return from Ely to London with a Zone 1-6 travelcard. I ordered through www.eastmidlandstrains.co.uk with 1% cashback from Quidco and collected the tickets. I then had to travel on a peak train.

Ely ticket office would have been able to change a ticket just to Kings Cross, but not when it was a travelcard. If I had not collected the tickets, then I would have been able to get a refund from www.eastmidlandstrains.co.uk

Instead I had to post the tickets back to East Midlands Trains for a refund. However, they waived the £10 admin fee.

 

[trentside]

There are a number of people who basically "prat about". Constantly changing their minds and plans, they often need a lot of servicing so to speak and can cause queues at booking offices windows as they consume time. I can usually say to myself "they'll be back wanting a refund" and be right you get to know the sort. The £10 fee is grizzled about but presumably then acts as deterrent to them doing it again so hopefully makes things easier for other customers as staff are not tied up in dealing with them.

My favourites were always those who’d want to buy a ticket costing about £11 (SDR/CDR) about two months in advance. You’d advise them it would be the same price on the day of travel and that they’d lose £10 should they change their mind. Some would, but most were definitely going and wouldn’t change their mind so you’d sell them the ticket. They’d be back in a couple of days saying they now couldn’t go so they needed a refund. Then you’d get the grumbling, even though you’d told them.

As clerks we did get to exercise discretion with the fee, and on our STAR system you could hit the ‘Clerk Error’ button to not charge the fee. It’s not something I did a lot, but it was useful in certain cases as a gesture of goodwill or when something genuinely bad had changed someone’s travel plans.

 

[Pseudonim]

I find that the crosscountry online system, which allows a change of dates/times on journeys between two stations without charging the admin fee, is very useful.

 

[Gareth Marston]

My favourites were always those who’d want to buy a ticket costing about £11 (SDR/CDR) about two months in advance. You’d advise them it would be the same price on the day of travel and that they’d lose £10 should they change their mind. Some would, but most were definitely going and wouldn’t change their mind so you’d sell them the ticket. They’d be back in a couple of days saying they now couldn’t go so they needed a refund. Then you’d get the grumbling, even though you’d told them.

As clerks we did get to exercise discretion with the fee, and on our STAR system you could hit the ‘Clerk Error’ button to not charge the fee. It’s not something I did a lot, but it was useful in certain cases as a gesture of goodwill or when something genuinely bad had changed someone’s travel plans.

We get some folk having hospital treatment in London or Birmingham on a regular basis, they need flexible tickets but often have appointments cancelled at short notice. The ability to use discretion is exercised.

 

[Haywain]

What about those people who 'accidentally' buy a ticket from a TVM and then realise they have already got a ticket? Full refund and a receipt for the 'unintended' purchase, or a £10 fee?

 

[GaryMcEwan]

Advising the TOCs that you will raise a chargeback with your card provider in order to get a full refund usually changes their tune and they send the refund back including the £10 the would have taken.

Never been charged a £10 'admin' charge yet...

 

[Bletchleyite]

What about those people who 'accidentally' buy a ticket from a TVM and then realise they have already got a ticket? Full refund and a receipt for the 'unintended' purchase, or a £10 fee?

If you ask for a non-issue on the spot a fee tends not to be charged.

 

[ainsworth74]

If you ask for a non-issue on the spot a fee tends not to be charged.

Yes I once bought a ticket from a TVM and missed the train I was going to catch (remember being late is no excuse for not having a ticket! ) took it to the ticket office and they agreed to refund it with no admin fee (the ticket was only a couple of quid anyway so an admin fee would have wiped out the refund!). Can't recall how I got home. Might have taken a bus instead.

 

[gray1404]

Advising the TOCs that you will raise a chargeback with your card provider in order to get a full refund usually changes their tune and they send the refund back including the £10 the would have taken.

Never been charged a £10 'admin' charge yet...

Do you mean you do this under all circumstances? It is an "interesting" approach.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Do you mean you do this under all circumstances? It is an "interesting" approach.

If I were in charge of the TOC I'd say "so go ahead then" and once the chargeback was processed send an £80 special (even though I doubt any prosecution would succeed).

Like with a reversed direct debit, it doesn't mean the money is not owed if it is reversed successfully.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes I once bought a ticket from a TVM and missed the train I was going to catch (remember being late is no excuse for not having a ticket! ) took it to the ticket office and they agreed to refund it with no admin fee (the ticket was only a couple of quid anyway so an admin fee would have wiped out the refund!). Can't recall how I got home. Might have taken a bus instead.

The LM ticket office at Euston once decided they preferred to do a non-issue and sell me a new ticket than do a zero fare overdistance excess (this is for a ticket sold at Bletchley)...

 

[GaryMcEwan]

Do you mean you do this under all circumstances? It is an "interesting" approach.

Only if they try and get tricky. Only had to do it on a handful of occasions.

 

[gray1404]

I don't think there is any justification in issuing an "£80 special" because a customer uses the charge back process or raises a Visa dispute. In accepting credit/debit card payments the retailer has to take part in any due process and the customer cannot be discriminated against for a decision made by the bank. In such circumstances the TOC would have to then made representations to that bank to prove why they were entitled to keep £10 of the fee i.e. the contract formed at time of sale.

 

[GaryMcEwan]

If I were in charge of the TOC I'd say "so go ahead then" and once the chargeback was processed send an £80 special (even though I doubt any prosecution would succeed).

Like with a reversed direct debit, it doesn't mean the money is not owed if it is reversed successfully.

Not applicable in Scotland so us Scots are protected even more...

 

[Bletchleyite]

I don't think there is any justification in issuing an "£80 special" because a customer uses the charge back process or raises a Visa dispute. In accepting credit/debit card payments the retailer has to take part in any due process and the customer cannot be discriminated against for a decision made by the bank. In such circumstances the TOC would have to then made representations to that bank to prove why they were entitled to keep £10 of the fee i.e. the contract formed at time of sale.

I suppose a direct debit is a bit different in that because that method has almost no security worth speaking of the DD guarantee basically means your bank will reverse a DD on request for any or no reason. But reversal (or DD cancellation, even) does not mean the money is not still owed - people get caught out on that with gym memberships and the likes all the time.

Talking of refunds, though, I wonder if the new ticket format that makes it clear which tickets are refundable/changeable has increased the number of people doing refunds/changes? I bet most laypeople would think train tickets were not refundable just as most flights aren't.

 

[gray1404]

Not applicable in Scotland so us Scots are protected even more...

Do you only do this when the TOC tries to charge the £10 admin fee when they shouldn't or do you do it in all circumstances when the £10 is charged regardless of the reason?

 

[GaryMcEwan]

Nah only when they try and charge it. Had an argument with Scotrail not so long ago about them only refunding me £7.45 of a £17.45 fare after I couldn't travel due to ill health.

I believe the £10 Is definitely bogus and there is no real reason for TOCs to charge it.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Nah only when they try and charge it. Had an argument with Scotrail not so long ago about them only refunding me £7.45 of a £17.45 fare after I couldn't travel due to ill health.

I believe the £10 Is definitely bogus and there is no real reason for TOCs to charge it.

Do you not acknowledge that there is a cost, maybe not £10 but a cost nonetheless, to processing your refund which is for no fault of the TOC's? (If it is their fault the £10 is not charged).

 

[GaryMcEwan]

Do you not acknowledge that there is a cost, maybe not £10 but a cost nonetheless, to processing your refund which is for no fault of the TOC's? (If it is their fault the £10 is not charged).

Absolutely not. Any other retailer out there don't charge admin costs when trying to return an item so why do TOCs think it's acceptable?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Absolutely not. Any other retailer out there don't charge admin costs when trying to return an item so why do TOCs think it's acceptable?

Plenty of retailers won't accept returns for a refund (rather than an exchange or credit note) at all, they do not have to if the product is not defective or mis-sold. Free non-defective returns are a discretionary matter which is done to encourage return custom.

Plenty of other retailers (online IT equipment discounters are a common one here) charge a re-stocking fee for non-defective returns.

Actually there's an interesting option - £10 for a cash/card refund, perhaps it could be £5 for an RTV?

 

[gray1404]

I think it is fair to say that most high street and many online retailers to offer a change of mind refund policy within 28 days. I can therefore understand why to many customers charging £10 seems very unreasonable when the customer has received nothing, save for a little paper ticket which the train company can sell in unlimited numbers anyway.

I seem to remember too that under the old ticket types Super Advance tickets used to be refundable for an admin fee (which was £5 at the time per ticket) but Apex tickets were non refundable. Nowadays Advance tickets are non refundable at all if the customer changes their mind.