Delay Repay Advice - East Midlands Trains / Railway

[416GSi]

Hello,

Can some-one provide some advice on the next steps?

I was delayed due to a missed connection, at Stockport. The East Midlands Trains service was due to arrive at 14:25 but actually arrived at 14:45 so I missed the onward 14:39 having to wait a further hour for the next train. this gave me an overall delay to my journey of 1hour 17 mins (the following train was on-time but is a slower train). I did have a split ticket at Stockport and reservations for both trains.

I, therefore, made a claim against EMT (as it then was) expecting compensation for the ticket price for a delay of over an hour.
After around a month they denied my claim as the train to Stockport was only 20 mins late which I appealed. They then rejected my appeal, to quote EM(R):-

".......having reviewed your cases, unfortunately, our team with the new system were correct to deny you the refund on your tickets. Delay Repay applies to a journey made on a single ticket and cannot take into account multiple journeys on multiple tickets."

I responded and pointed out the National Rail Conditions of Travel, clause 14. They further responded:-

".....Therefore we are unable to compensate you on this occasion as you would of had to of been delayed 30 minutes of more from our train service....... Therefore as you where only delayed by 20 minutes we are unable to continue with your claim. "

I pushed this a bit further and they followed up with:-

"We will not be taking this any further as we have already explained that your claim was less that 30mins while operating under the East Midlands Trains Franchise and as you had chosen to split your ticket at Stockport station your journey where made under two separate journeys."

The timings do not appear to be disputed by EMR. It appears that they are only disputing if split tickets are considered a single journey or not. I should add the that the franchise changed, the delayed service was provided by East Midland Trains but the Delay Repay is now being provided by East Midlands Railways.

Can anyone advise how I should proceed with this?
Thanks for your help.

 

[Hadders]

Complain to the Ombudsman.

 

[LowLevel]

Oh dear. EMT were very proactive about correctly managing split ticket delay repay (the staff processing were issued a crib sheet breaking it down and explaining it).

On day one of the franchise however it was centralised by Abellio and the processing is now more automated, with appeals and necessary interventions managed by their office in Scotland.

 

[416GSi]

Thanks for the replies. As suggested I have complained to the Ombudsman. who very quickly came back with the reply

.....On review into the nature of your complaint, we have requested a response from the Rail Service Provider and will be in touch in due course with more information.
You do not have to do anything further at this stage.

So I will let you know how it goes.

Regarding the EMT, I only made a couple of claims on them, all with Split Tickets. I found them consistently very professional, prompt and courteous in how they dealt with things. So far I have found the East Midlands Railway to be the exact opposite of this.

I'm wondering if it's worth sending them a Letter Before Action? I'm not going to let this go bluntly they have antagonised me due to their approach and their apparent dishonesty.

 

[splashoutradio]

I've had this same issue with LNER, so will be very interested to find the outcome of this one

 

[ANDREW_D_WEBB]

Recently had a delay on a journey from Southall to Bath Spa splitting at Slough and Didcot Parkway. GWR didn’t quibble at all and paid out without question.

 

[Hadders]

Thanks for the replies. As suggested I have complained to the Ombudsman. who very quickly came back with the reply



So I will let you know how it goes.

Regarding the EMT, I only made a couple of claims on them, all with Split Tickets. I found them consistently very professional, prompt and courteous in how they dealt with things. So far I have found the East Midlands Railway to be the exact opposite of this.

I'm wondering if it's worth sending them a Letter Before Action? I'm not going to let this go bluntly they have antagonised me due to their approach and their apparent dishonesty.

If you’ve logged it with the Ombudsman then there’s no point in sending a letter before action. You’ve chosen to let the Ombudsman deal with it so you should let them do so.

 

[Ric 2013]

I've had this same issue with LNER, so will be very interested to find the outcome of this one

Same here. So far, LNER seems to think that because the LNER train was only delayed by 26 minutes, that's the end of the matter despite the fact that I missed the connecting service with result that my overall journey was delayed by more than half an hour. I queried this and received an automated reply and then nothing in spite of 10 working day assurances. Now used the Resolver website (as recommended by LNER) to make a formal complaint.

I didn't even have a split ticket.

 

[horizonflame]

GTR too guys...

Hi there, the team have got back to us saying that you have claimed for a whole journey but not provided one full ticket to complete the journey. If you refer to our website, It states that we require a 'through' ticket when processing delay repay claims.

Suffice to say I’ve appealed their nonsense

 

[Hadders]

Oh dear. I was under the impression, and was recently stated by Barry Doe in his Rail Magazine column that TDG had clarified that the use of a combination of tickets is allowed for delay repay.

It’s appalling if train companies are up to their old tricks again.

Bear in mind these are the same train companies who want to simplify ticketing, remove regulated fares, simplify routeing by removing passenger flexibility etc....

 

[LowLevel]

EMT's policy, to be specific, was that it paid delay repay for the split ticket where the delay was caused and any subsequent split legs. It generally refused it for any legs prior to the one where the delay was incurred.

So as an example if you had a split Manchester to Nottingham, Nottingham to Peterborough, Peterborough to Norwich ticket and you happened to be on a through service which arrived on time into Nottingham but which was subsequently cancelled due to a train fault, EMT would compensate the Nottingham to Peterborough and Peterborough to Norwich tickets. They would not compensate Manchester to Nottingham as it was held to be the case that that ticket had been fulfilled in full, as booked, on time.

Unfortunately as I mentioned above delay repay isn't dealt with by people in the same team or even by EMR itself anymore.

 

[416GSi]

A quick update.

EMR agreed to pay the claim and apologised, an extract of their email below:-

....(I) would like to apologise for the inaccurate explanation provided about Delay Repay......our customers are able to claim Delay Repay when using split tickets to carry out one journey.

.....I am sorry that you were provided with the wrong information about our delay repay process. I can appreciate your frustration caused by the inaccurate information......

......To ensure this does not happen again, I have passed the details of your experience to the relevant management team so they can find out what went wrong and take appropriate action.

I must stay that I was impressed by this reply. I can understand that things sometimes go wrong and especially taking into account that it was a Franchise changeover period. But how they managed it was very good They took this issue seriously, admitted that they as a company were in the wrong and let me know how they were intending to put it right so others aren't impacted.

Well done East Midlands Railway!

 

[Hadders]

A good reply from EMR. It would be good if other TOCs could do likewise.

 

[WesternLancer]

A quick update.

EMR agreed to pay the claim and apologised, an extract of their email below:-


I must stay that I was impressed by this reply. I can understand that things sometimes go wrong and especially taking into account that it was a Franchise changeover period. But how they managed it was very good They took this issue seriously, admitted that they as a company were in the wrong and let me know how they were intending to put it right so others aren't impacted.

Well done East Midlands Railway!

Yes, a good test will be to see how often such situations arise again with EMR and split ticketing related refunds on the forum!

 

[Belperpete]

Regarding the EMT, I only made a couple of claims on them, all with Split Tickets. I found them consistently very professional, prompt and courteous in how they dealt with things. So far I have found the East Midlands Railway to be the exact opposite of this.

I am fairly certain that EMR are using the same customer services staff as EMT, at present at least. That doesn't mean they are applying the same policies of course, but I always found the EMT customer services staff very helpful.

I made a claim to EMT for a split-ticket journey from Porthmadog to Belper, because the last train of the leg from Derby to Belper was cancelled. As this was a Sunday, the next train wasn't for another two hours. I made the claim on-line, and clearly explained the circumstances. A few days before the franchise handover, I received an email from EMT saying that they had passed the claim onto TFW! I quickly emailed back querying this, but heard nothing back from either EMT/EMR or TFW.

After a month, I decided to ring the customer services number given on the EMT email. I was half-expecting the number to be disconnected, or to get a recorded message saying EMT were no more, but I was pleasantly surprised that the phone was reasonably quickly answered by someone answering as EMR customer services (but whose voice I am sure I recognised from previous dealings with EMT). She was able to look-up the EMT reference number, and when I explained the details of the claim, quickly agreed to pay it. I explained that I had travelled on split tickets, and she agreed that the claim would be paid based on the total fare paid. And within a couple of days I received an email from Paypal saying that I had received a payment from EMT. A good resolution.