If the connection is made then I guess we enter the territory of actual arrival time at destination and which TOC caused the delay... which it seems is not as clear cut as it could be!
The issue here is that there are two potential arguments:
1) Avanti caused the delay because,
in theory Northern
could have run the 1903 to Wigan (which they didn't)
2) Northern caused the delay because there was no train service provided by Northern from Wigan to Southport in the entire time between the passengers booked arrival into Wigan and the time they actually departed (1938)
There appears to be other arguments which have the same outcome as option 1, along the lines of: the customer may not have known Northern had cancelled various trains (fair point, but it doesn't change the fact they did) and the first train to be late should be deemed liable
even if an onward train would
not have been caught if that train was on time. I do understand these points of view but they don't appear to be consistent with what I have read about the principles of Delay Repay.
I can understand why people disagree with me but if it is as "simple" as claimed why do more* people agree with me than disagree?
(* Based on the Twitter poll linked to by another member earlier in the thread)
In my opinion there is no clear cut answer to this as I can't find a clearly defined set of rules for this scenario. All I have to go on is the claim, which is often made, that the first company that actually causes a delay, is deemed liable.
However some are suggesting that the company operating the first train to be delayed may still be deemed liable even if that didn't cause a connection to be missed. They may be correct. But if they are correct, it's not obvious they are correct, it's not simple and it's not documented anywhere that I can find.
I'm happy for people to say that the rule is different to what I have read it to be, but I refuse to accept it is obvious, simple or clear.
