I recently used Seatfrog to upgrade myself and my 1 year old daughter to first class for a Plymouth to Bristol trip with CrossyCountry, in order to have a more comfortable experience (I’m really not a fan of CrossCountry). There was no catering offered which was disappointing. We had enough food / water with us but I was hoping for a cup of coffee and a biscuit
I assume there’s no entitlement to catering and that it’s just luck if it’s available? On previous trips elsewhere on CrossCountry we’ve been very generously looked after in first class with more food offered than we could eat!
I think it is fairly easy to establish a contractual entitlement to catering, incorporated by virtue of the Consumer Rights Act.
Section 50(1) of the Act states:
(1) Every contract to supply a service is to be treated as including as a term of the contract anything that is said or written to the consumer, by or on behalf of the trader, about the trader or the service, if—
(a) it is taken into account by the consumer when deciding to enter into the contract, or
(b) it is taken into account by the consumer when making any decision about the service after entering into the contract.
When deciding whether to upgrade to first class, you might well be influenced by the benefits that XC advertise their first class as having. That would make the benefits a term of the contract.
The
page on their website regarding First Class states:
What is included with First Class train tickets?
While different train operators offer different levels of First Class service, at CrossCountry we like to make sure our First Class passengers can make the most of their journey. A First Class ticket comes with larger, more spacious seating, and complimentary refreshments.
Benefits of First Class Train Tickets
One of the biggest benefits of travelling First Class with CrossCountry is the
complimentary refreshments. Our
First Class Food & Drink offering is available on most First Class services, to help you stay refreshed and content throughout your journey.
They therefore recognise that the refreshments are a major part of the incentive for upgrading. Whilst their First Class Food & Drink page tries to qualify this by stating that:
**First Class catering is subject to, route, journey time and availability.
All items and offers listed are subject to availability, may change or may be withdrawn at any time.
I think they would very much struggle to convince a judge (if it ultimately came to it) that they would be in compliance with the implied term regarding catering by failing to provide any catering at all. That is, subject to it being a service where the timings and
catering map indicate that it will be provided.
Under the Act, a failure to comply with an implied term of the contract gives you the right to a 'price reduction', i.e. a partial refund, given that the other 'repeat performance' is not practicable in the context of a contract for travel where the journey has been completed.
In my experience, TOCs usually try to fob you off with platitudes, discount codes for future travel, or derisory "gestures of goodwill" when you complain about first class catering not being provided. Obviously it depends on how much you paid and how much of an appetite you have to complain and pursue it further, but I wouldn't take no for an answer.
Catering is pretty much always advertised as 'complimentary', meaning there's no entitlement to it.
This is a nonsensical argument often deployed by TOCs but it carries absolutely no weight. You don't need to pay separately for catering for it to be part of the advertised service and thus become incorporated as a term of the contract; see above.
In practice a few operators will issue a token refund or travel voucher if catering is unavailable, more so when it would normally be a substantial offering; but it's purely a goodwill gesture if they choose to do this
They will almost always couch it in those terms (as is the case for complaints in general), but I would argue it is your legal entitlement to get a partial refund, worked out as a percentage of the cost of upgrading, if you were on a service where catering was advertised as being available.
It's unrelated to SeatFrog.
Indeed. SeatFrog are effectively just the ticket retailer here. The liability for the failure to provide the service in accordance with implied terms lies with XC as the TOC.
