Birmingham to Bournemouth ticket: what are my rights?

[Kettledrum]

I booked my Birmingham to Bournemouth tickets before the land slip and I've had no contact at all from Cross County trains to forewarn me of the travelling chaos that I now face.

- Will they refund my advance ticket (normally non refundable) as the service I booked is no longer running as advertised and the bus substitution will make me over 1 hour late?
- was there an option of catching an earlier train so I could arrive in Bournmouth before midnight? (normally my ticket would only be valid for the 20.04 train from Birmingham?
- is there an option of an alternative route via London with my ticket?

Why haven't XC trains told me anything?

 

[yorkie]

I booked my Birmingham to Bournemouth tickets before the land slip and I've had no contact at all from Cross County trains to forewarn me of the travelling chaos that I now face.

- Will they refund my advance ticket (normally non refundable) as the service I booked is no longer running as advertised and the bus substitution will make me over 1 hour late?

Yes, if you choose not to travel you will be fully refunded.

From RailUK Fares & Ticketing Guide - Section 9 - Transactions & Compensation - 9.7 Refunds:

9.7.2 Refunds due to Disruption

If your journey is disrupted and you choose not to travel, you can obtain a refund with no administration fee if you surrender your ticket to any Train Company's ticket office at that time (this does not apply if you knew about the disruption when you purchased your ticket) or to the point of purchase at any time within 28 days of the date of travel.

- was there an option of catching an earlier train so I could arrive in Bournmouth before midnight? (normally my ticket would only be valid for the 20.04 train from Birmingham?

Yes

- is there an option of an alternative route via London with my ticket?

As mentioned in other threads, the advice seems to be constantly changing. Sadly there is nothing on NRE to say ticket acceptance is currently in place at present.

You do have the option of getting a full refund and re-booking alternative tickets, or you can depart on time and claim Delay Repay, or you can depart earlier at no extra cost.

Why haven't XC trains told me anything?

Did you book with them? If so, I guess they probably don't have a mechanism/algorithm for identifying bookings that will pass through the affected area.

 

[bnm]

Ticket acceptance for alternative routes with other operators was only in place until CrossCountry could organise a consistent rail replacement bus service.

The only remaining ticket acceptance is as follows:

South West Trains between Basingstoke and Bournemouth
First Great Western Reading/Oxford - Banbury and Reading - Basingstoke
CrossCountry and Chiltern Railways have mutual ticket acceptance in place.

There's no longer acceptance for alternative routes such as via London or Bristol unless those routes are already allowed by a ticket's usual permitted routes.

Sadly, neither CrossCountry or National Rail Enquiries have put this information in the public domain. It's only on staff only information sources.

Chiltern Railways have been much better at keeping their customers informed, with a dedicated webpage giving all necessary information:
http://www.chilternrailways.co.uk/landslipleamington

 

[DeeGee]

During the disruption caused by the landslip at Hatfield and Stainforth a while ago I had a number of Advance Tickets which had been booked prior to the disruption. As the timings on my journeys weren't critical, I opted to travel as normal, suffer the disruption and the lateness. As such, I claimed for the delays and spent much of the rest of the year travelling for free

Which was nice.

I did have the option of returning for a full refund, which I also did on a couple of occasions, which was also handy as those had been booked to get the rock-bottom price before I could be sure of being able to secure a lift. Effectively they became flexible tickets.

 

[Llanigraham]

Kettledrum,
Have you actually contacted CrossCountry Trains before you came on here?
If so, what have they said?

 

[Kettledrum]

I just wanted to say how impressed I am once again with the breadth of knowledge of the contributors to this forum. Thanks for all your thoughts on this.

I did email XC trains before the original day of travel, and simply received a standard holding reply from XC saying they will get back to me within 14 days - by which time it would have been too late. Perhaps they have been inundated with delay repay claims and the like. Assuming I get a more detailed reply, I'll update the Board once received..
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I just wanted to say how impressed I am once again with the breadth of knowledge of the contributors to this forum. Thanks for all your thoughts on this.

I did email XC trains before the original day of travel, and simply received a standard holding reply from XC saying they will get back to me within 14 days - by which time it would have been too late. Perhaps they have been inundated with delay repay claims and the like. Assuming I get a more detailed reply, I'll update the Board once received..

After waiting only a few days, this is now resolved.

XC trains replied to my email, just needing to know the booking reference number. They could check from the number that we hadn't collected our tickets and hadn't travelled, and organised a refund.

We didn't travel in the end, as we didn't fancy the delay and uncertainty that late at night, with multiple changes and arrival in the early hours of the morning.

We had booked the tickets before the land slip, and we had not had any other contact from XC before-hand, so we didn't really know what other options might have been available. Catching an earlier train might have worked if it had been an option, as there might have been better connections, and the arrival in Bournemouth would have been before mid-night.