Compensation and connecting services

[BRX]

I'm wondering what chance I have of claiming compensation under the passenger's charter for the following:
I have an Inverness to London super off peak return.
On my return leg I broke my journey overnight at Glasgow. The intention was then to continue to Newcastle (and break my journey again there) on the 0900 service this morning. I took a scotrail service from pollockshaws east (where I was overnighting) due into glasgow central at 0839 to connect with the 0900 departure. However, the scotrail service was heavily delayed and didn't get into glasgow central until 0922. I therefore missed my connection, and the next train to newcastle was not until 0950 and would have gotten me there 57 minutes late. This meant that my planned stop in newcastle was no longer worthwhile so I decided to abandon it and get on a london-bound pendolino.
Do I have any grounds to claim compensation from scotrail on the basis that I would have been delayed by about an hour to my intended destination? Or would I have had to actually go there? If I am entitled, how would the amount be calculated - would it be a percentage of a proportion of my ticket cost based on the length of that part of the journey?
Or would they just laugh at me and tell me to bugger off?

 

[glynn80]

I'm wondering what chance I have of claiming compensation under the passenger's charter for the following:
I have an Inverness to London super off peak return.
On my return leg I broke my journey overnight at Glasgow. The intention was then to continue to Newcastle (and break my journey again there) on the 0900 service this morning. I took a scotrail service from pollockshaws east (where I was overnighting) due into glasgow central at 0839 to connect with the 0900 departure. However, the scotrail service was heavily delayed and didn't get into glasgow central until 0922. I therefore missed my connection, and the next train to newcastle was not until 0950 and would have gotten me there 57 minutes late. This meant that my planned stop in newcastle was no longer worthwhile so I decided to abandon it and get on a london-bound pendolino.
Do I have any grounds to claim compensation from scotrail on the basis that I would have been delayed by about an hour to my intended destination? Or would I have had to actually go there? If I am entitled, how would the amount be calculated - would it be a percentage of a proportion of my ticket cost based on the length of that part of the journey?
Or would they just laugh at me and tell me to bugger off?

First Scotrail's Passenger Charter states the following:

As a rough guide, if your train is delayed for more than 30 minutes on a First ScotRail service, or causes a 30 minute or more delay to your journey, you can normally expect National Rail travel vouchers to the value of 50% of that journey. If you are delayed for more than one hour, you will receive travel vouchers to the value of 100% of that leg of the journey.

Well seeing as you were over 30 minutes delayed into Glasgow Central, you can claim 50% of your return leg in compensation. This is 25% of the full ticket value.

However you cannot claim for journeys you have not made. If that were allowed, passengers could claim every time there was a high profile delay, that they "intended" to travel (but didn't due to the delays) and claim compensation because of that.

Also in this case you would have not been delayed an hour but 57 minutes meaning it still would have been 50% of the return leg. About an hour is again not "an hour", they are very strict on details like this.

 

[yorkie]

If this was a weekday then the WCML would be faster, so no delay overall, so I can't see how you could claim a delay for this as you are going out of your way having stayed at Glasgow (which itself is out of the way but understandable if no train forward from Edinburgh that night). I suppose they may allow you to claim on the rtn portion of the Glasgow-Newcastle leg, which is about 20% of the overall rtn portion, so you are effectively claiming on 10% of the ticket price and you are - theoretically - entitled to 50% of that, so 5% of the overall ticket price, which is approx £6 assuming SSR with no Railcard, BUT I am not really sure you have a claim at all to be honest.

 

[glynn80]

If this was a weekday then the WCML would be faster, so no delay overall, so I can't see how you could claim a delay for this as you are going out of your way having stayed at Glasgow (which itself is out of the way but understandable if no train forward from Edinburgh that night). I suppose they may allow you to claim on the rtn portion of the Glasgow-Newcastle leg, which is about 20% of the overall rtn portion, so you are effectively claiming on 10% of the ticket price and you are - theoretically - entitled to 50% of that, so 5% of the overall ticket price, which is approx £6 assuming SSR with no Railcard, BUT I am not really sure you have a claim at all to be honest.

Ah yes yorkie is right. Your ticket is from Inverness to London is not valid to break your journey at Pollockshaws East and then return back into Glasgow Central (as you would be doubling back), so you could only claim for the ticket you purchased to get yourself from Glasgow Central to Pollockshaws East and you would get 25% of that ticket as compensation.

 

[yorkie]

You can combine tickets to make them "one journey", but if you deliberately break your journey (twice!) and the additional ticket is to cover you doubling-back, then really you are on flaky ground!

The rules on refunds appear to assume you are not breaking your journey. I really wouldn't try to get refunds in situations like this as it's only going to make the TOCs want to try to restrict break of journey even further, and they are probably entitled to not give you a penny.

The forms ask you what journey you were doing, so what do you put? Pollockshaws to Newcastle? If then enclosing Inverness to London tickets, and then stating you got a Pendolino along the WCML it really would seem a bizarre claim.

In effect, you are not claiming for a delay - you are claiming for having to take a quicker route from Glasgow to London, and I really think there's no case.

I agree with Glynn80 that you can get the Pollockshaws-Glasgow fare refunded, as you stayed overnight there is no return fare so I think you must have got 2x SDSs (£1.70), you were delayed on one of them, so 50% of £1-70 is 85p.

£6 max for the other ticket if they are lenient but the more I think about it the more I think it can't be justifed. The compensation rules don't cover events like this.

 

[BRX]

I suppose that what i would put on the form would be that i was travelling from pollockshaws east to newcastle and would enclose the two tickets which combined were valid for this journey. I could then say that this journey was delayed by 57 minutes. Of course this would technically be lying because in the end I didn't make that journey, although there would be no way of them knowing that.
More honestly, I could state that the delay was such that I chose to abandon my journey. I'm not sure what the procedure would be in that case, seeing as I then used the ticket to make an alternative journey.
I'm aware that this would be a rather tenuous claim. I was just interested if there is any proper way to deal with this kind of situation, or whether it's effectively a grey area subject to scotrail's interpretation/discrimination.

 

[glynn80]

I suppose that what i would put on the form would be that i was travelling from pollockshaws east to newcastle and would enclose the two tickets which combined were valid for this journey. I could then say that this journey was delayed by 57 minutes. Of course this would technically be lying because in the end I didn't make that journey, although there would be no way of them knowing that.
More honestly, I could state that the delay was such that I chose to abandon my journey. I'm not sure what the procedure would be in that case, seeing as I then used the ticket to make an alternative journey.
I'm aware that this would be a rather tenuous claim. I was just interested if there is any proper way to deal with this kind of situation, or whether it's effectively a grey area subject to scotrail's interpretation/discrimination.

I would beware stating that you caught services you didn't, I don't want to post them on here, but there are hints that will tell TOCs that you have travelled a particular route or not.

If I was you I would write a nice email to Customer Services stating all the facts and see what they say, in my opinion I'd say you'll get a £10 Rail Travel Voucher for the inconvenience caused.