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Delay Repay can be a very slow process

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johntea

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Something that annoys me about disruption is not particulary the disruption itself, but the incredibly slowwwww system of delay repay afterwards!

As an example if I'm delayed I'll often submit my claim as soon as I complete the journey so it is fresh in my head and I don't forget

My most recent delay was May 7th, which took Northern until May 13th to acknowledge / process it, advised my free tickets would be dispatched and here I am May 26th still awaiting those...
 
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Chris M

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Something that annoys me about disruption is not particulary the disruption itself, but the incredibly slowwwww system of delay repay afterwards!

As an example if I'm delayed I'll often submit my claim as soon as I complete the journey so it is fresh in my head and I don't forget

My most recent delay was May 7th, which took Northern until May 13th to acknowledge / process it, advised my free tickets would be dispatched and here I am May 26th still awaiting those...
Keep waiting. My one experience of delay repay with Northern was for a journey in April (2018 or 2019 I think). I got my cheque in November.
 

Hadders

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Northern are particularly slow. Most other TOCs are more efficient when it comes to processing delay repay claims.
 
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Something that annoys me about disruption is not particulary the disruption itself, but the incredibly slowwwww system of delay repay afterwards!

As an example if I'm delayed I'll often submit my claim as soon as I complete the journey so it is fresh in my head and I don't forget

My most recent delay was May 7th, which took Northern until May 13th to acknowledge / process it, advised my free tickets would be dispatched and here I am May 26th still awaiting those...
With LNER money in my account in 3 days
 

roversfan2001

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I made two claims to Northern in mid to late April and received my RTVs/free tickets within 10 days. It used to take months and months back in 2018/19.
 

_toommm_

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It used to take months and months back in 2018/19.

THat'll be down to the absolutely horrific May 2018 TT change, and the staff shortages over Christmas. There was a period where I travelled nearly for free for about two months over Christmas.
 

johntea

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I should complain on here more often, they arrived shortly after posting this rant :D
 

davews

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SWR seem to manage it in a couple of days, sometimes less than one. Maybe the only thing they do get right..
 

CreamNCookies

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With LNER money in my account in 3 days
Early may I had a train booked with LNER, it was cancelled. So popped into Newcastle ticket office to ask for a seat reservation on the next train down to Kings Cross.

Had an email before the new reservation arrived on the platform saying that I was entitled to delay repay and to click to confirm.

Clicked the link and the payment back on my card the next day. I was amazed - if only it was that simple for all TOCs.
 

Wolfie

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Something that annoys me about disruption is not particulary the disruption itself, but the incredibly slowwwww system of delay repay afterwards!

As an example if I'm delayed I'll often submit my claim as soon as I complete the journey so it is fresh in my head and I don't forget

My most recent delay was May 7th, which took Northern until May 13th to acknowledge / process it, advised my free tickets would be dispatched and here I am May 26th still awaiting those...
19 days in what is still a pandemic is hardly "incredibly slow".
 

skyhigh

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But offices may still be short-staffed and so slower than usual.
I believe someone is going into the office and processing the paper vouchers roughly once a week at the moment, so say it takes a week to process the claim, you just miss the cutoff then it has to be posted out - 19 days sounds about right.
 

packermac

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Swanage
Something that annoys me about disruption is not particulary the disruption itself, but the incredibly slowwwww system of delay repay afterwards!

As an example if I'm delayed I'll often submit my claim as soon as I complete the journey so it is fresh in my head and I don't forget

My most recent delay was May 7th, which took Northern until May 13th to acknowledge / process it, advised my free tickets would be dispatched and here I am May 26th still awaiting those...
I do not see that as particularly slow (most company complaints departments in any industry would not reply in a week) so unless the Northern Customer Charter says ( I have not looked) they WILL not TRY to respond in x days then you will just have to wait.
 

robbeech

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One of the issues is that disruption is not reducing and more and more people are jumping on board with claiming. Infact, operators are (perhaps reluctantly sometimes) encouraging more people to claim where eligible. I think we are still around 30-35% of people eligible for delay repay actually claim it, but this is notably improved on a few years ago, so there are more people claiming.

However, that said, the automated systems have improved MASSIVELY in the last 2 or 3 years and whilst they are far from flawless (they're biased towards not paying out in many cases) they have made the process much faster. i THINK (someone may be able to confirm) that if you have an account with the operator and they have bank details for you then a simple claim for a train that was late should need absolutely zero interaction from a human to process so is normally done within 24 hours.

I suspect had we not improved things then we would have been seeing many more 6 month + claims going in, although operators have been known to do a blanket accept to thin them out a bit. I wonder if this has lead to accusation of fraud 2 years later?
 

PeterY

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On Monday I applied for a delay repay with London North Western (WCML disruption last Friday) and I got an e-mail within an hour confirming my claim had been accepted. Money hasn't gone into bank yet though.
 

Horizon22

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One of the issues is that disruption is not reducing and more and more people are jumping on board with claiming. Infact, operators are (perhaps reluctantly sometimes) encouraging more people to claim where eligible. I think we are still around 30-35% of people eligible for delay repay actually claim it, but this is notably improved on a few years ago, so there are more people claiming.

However, that said, the automated systems have improved MASSIVELY in the last 2 or 3 years and whilst they are far from flawless (they're biased towards not paying out in many cases) they have made the process much faster. i THINK (someone may be able to confirm) that if you have an account with the operator and they have bank details for you then a simple claim for a train that was late should need absolutely zero interaction from a human to process so is normally done within 24 hours.

I suspect had we not improved things then we would have been seeing many more 6 month + claims going in, although operators have been known to do a blanket accept to thin them out a bit. I wonder if this has lead to accusation of fraud 2 years later?

Over the last 12 months, disruption has gone heavily down - train performance figures back this up. Of course this was coupled with Covid and less back-office staff actually in the offices to organise the paperwork in a timely manner. But yes greater awareness and an easier process is allow more people to claim so in the end in balances out somewhat.
 

robbeech

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Over the last 12 months, disruption has gone heavily down - train performance figures back this up. Of course this was coupled with Covid and less back-office staff actually in the offices to organise the paperwork in a timely manner. But yes greater awareness and an easier process is allow more people to claim so in the end in balances out somewhat.
Run 25% of a service for a while, and 50% for the rest and don't be surprised when performance goes up. Lets not do a David Horne here, when we show off how excellent we are by achieving 100% ppm one day where most of the line is closed and you're running 1tph with 23 minutes padding.
 

35B

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Run 25% of a service for a while, and 50% for the rest and don't be surprised when performance goes up. Lets not do a David Horne here, when we show off how excellent we are by achieving 100% ppm one day where most of the line is closed and you're running 1tph with 23 minutes padding.
I agree, it’s better not to claim a success when it’s nothing to do with what he’s done but an effect of something else entirely. But if the statistics clearly show that disruption is down, that is a fact.
 

Horizon22

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Run 25% of a service for a while, and 50% for the rest and don't be surprised when performance goes up. Lets not do a David Horne here, when we show off how excellent we are by achieving 100% ppm one day where most of the line is closed and you're running 1tph with 23 minutes padding.

Sure, it’s obvious why but the fact remains disruption has gone down. I doubt all TOCs will ever go back to 100% of their pre-COVID timetable.

What you call padding I call service resilience. Sure there’s times when the added 1 minute here or there or excess dwells gets more excessive, but frankly overall too many trains were being run (especially in London & SE peak) to run a robust timetable.

Anyway it’s a bit off-topic so I’ll leave this - but yes disruption massively decreased but coupled with back-office delays so probably balance out somewhat.
 
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