Delay Repay claims rejected

[Kite159]

I've had claims rejected in the past when SWR used the time the train passed a signal a few miles away as the arrival time at my local station. Only when I pushed them they claimed it took 3 minutes to cover the 6 and a bit miles something which is impossible on a sprinter!

 

[robbeech]

Clearly an ideal system would never reject a valid claim, but this is not reasonable, all systems have their limitations.

What is reasonable?

System A : Everything Manual, a human looks at the claim, they have extensive knowledge of the ticketing system, they have all the relevant running data, they read the notes you added and take this into account and make a decision.

System B : If it's absolutely clear cut, for example a single train being 68 minutes late to its destination, the automated system pays out, if it is more complicated than that, or the system is unsure, pass it straight on to a human with the knowledge, experience and data access as above to make a decision.

System C : If it's absolutely clear cut, for example a single train being 68 minutes late to its destination, the automated system pays out, if it is more complicated than that, sod that for a game of soldiers, just reject it outright and see if the passenger complains. If they do, let a human with a mere fraction of the above knowledge, experience and access to data have a look at it and be too scared to approve it so just copy and paste what the flawed automated system says and see if the passenger appeals a second time. If they do, let someone who has seen a rail ticket before have a look. If they don't appeal after the automated rejection, Christmas party fund.

A is, in my opinion the worst option, it would be frightfully slow and inefficient. Operators would want to pay very little and would provide next to no training meaning staff would likely default to rejection for fear of being reprimanded for giving out money.

B is, in my opinion the best of both, you have the automated system for speed, and you have the human for complications.

C is, the railway.

I've had claims rejected in the past when SWR used the time the train passed a signal a few miles away as the arrival time at my local station. Only when I pushed them they claimed it took 3 minutes to cover the 6 and a bit miles something which is impossible on a sprinter!

Indeed, although the automated system uses the data it is given, and of course, if a human looks at it they too can only go on the numbers in front of them so this sort of thing is difficult to get around.

 

[gray1404]

West Midland Trains/London North Western Railway have asked me to upload tickets again many times and even rejected claims because they have not be spoilt. This has been with both walk up and advance tickets. I would say WMT/LNW are one of the worst offenders for this.

Scotrail also do this. Both part of the Albireo group.

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

West Midland Trains/London North Western Railway have asked me to upload tickets again many times and even rejected claims because they have not be spoilt. This has been with both walk up and advance tickets. I would say WMT/LNW are one of the worst offenders for this.

Scotrail also do this. Both part of the Albireo group.

Out of interest, if you know this is a requirement for those operators, why don't you spoil the ticket and save yourself the hassle? Or are you saying you don't keep hold of the ticket?

Just trying to understand why you'd continually have a problem meeting a requirement you seem aware about.

 

[johntea]

Northern have an annoying part of their delay repay form where they ask if your ticket is a paper ticket or a E-Ticket/M-Ticket but the option is completely pointless as both options ask you to provide a ticket number / transaction ID AND a image/screenshot, surely in the case of the latter ticket type you have enough information on your database if I just provide the transaction ID alone without the faff of screenshots on top!

I do appreciate the compensation in form of free tickets though as with them being basically travel on any Northern route these are far more valuable than the amount of financial compensation that would be offered in most of my delay claims!

 

[SteveM70]

Northern have an annoying part of their delay repay form where they ask if your ticket is a paper ticket or a E-Ticket/M-Ticket but the option is completely pointless as both options ask you to provide a ticket number / transaction ID AND a image/screenshot, surely in the case of the latter ticket type you have enough information on your database if I just provide the transaction ID alone without the faff of screenshots on top!

I do appreciate the compensation in form of free tickets though as with them being basically travel on any Northern route these are far more valuable than the amount of financial compensation that would be offered in most of my delay claims!

Ive only ever used a Northern m-ticket once or twice and didn’t need to make a delay repay claim. But I do recall the ticket used to show greyed out if you tried to view it after using it, in which case how could you screenshot it?

 

[robbeech]

Northern have an annoying part of their delay repay form where they ask if your ticket is a paper ticket or a E-Ticket/M-Ticket but the option is completely pointless as both options ask you to provide a ticket number / transaction ID AND a image/screenshot, surely in the case of the latter ticket type you have enough information on your database if I just provide the transaction ID alone without the faff of screenshots on top!

We shouldn’t rule out this being used for unrelated data collection to gauge the ticket types of claimants.

Ive only ever used a Northern m-ticket once or twice and didn’t need to make a delay repay claim. But I do recall the ticket used to show greyed out if you tried to view it after using it, in which case how could you screenshot it?

With difficulty. The process is difficult enough when you have to screenshot the right part of e-tickets. Infact northern at least used to reject ALL e-tickets unless it had the price on it, which sometimes they didn’t, especially on an expired ticket.

 

[Randomer]

I'd say a fairly large number of passengers are having valid claims effectively rejected as Rob Beech has shown in his examples above by automated systems that ask for more information but don't formally reject the claim. I do wonder what the regulator counts as rejected vs. timed out after asking for more information and not receiving it.

Anecdotally I've had to assist 2 separate friends who having seemingly simple delay repay claims rejected by Cross Country when they involved missed connections onto other operators. It seems that there training for some staff seems to have missed the key point of even if there service is only delayed less than 15 minutes a missed connection means a much longer delay. At one point the web form for XC didn't even allow you to input a different destination station if they didn't serve it. Something that seems to have now been fixed but how many people didn't claim because of this?

One took two phone separate phone calls the second one with me listening to the call and typing suggested responses to the person claiming on the phone. The first call the XC member of staff told the person they couldn't claim as the delay to the XC service was under 15 mins despite the missed connection causing over an hours delay. This is clearly false and points to questionable training. To note it was a valid itinerary, sold as a single XC and connections advance ticket from a well known online retailer who were absolutely no help to the person trying to claim either.

The second claim was resolved fairly easily in the phone call with a simple explanation of the journey but I can't help but wonder how many people never bother to contact customer services and don't get delay repay even though the claim is never formally rejected.

Both of these people were not regular rail users and have been very much put off by the experience, they only pushed the claims after I had effectively convinced them that XC were wrong and they had a valid claim.

I've had a similar experience a couple of times with Cross Country for the same reason, missed connection onto another operators service causing a hour plus delay, which I think I posted about here at the time and was told on the first contact that the claim was invalid as there service was delayed less than an hour. Now this was a combination of 4 or 5 tickets a mix of advances and singles over a long journey so I don't expect the automated system to work necessarily but having to chance getting somebody who understands ticketing on the phone to them when the claim is valid is a problem.

Separately I can't see any justification asking for a ticket to be spoiled if it is no longer valid whether it is an advance or the outward part of a single.

 

[_toommm_]

The worst one I had was with Greater Anglia where they refused to pay out for split-tickets. Even after pointing out that the NRCoT allows split-ticketing, and that the staff briefing from the Rail Delivery Group said they must pay out, they still refused.

To top it off, telephone customer services said that it wasn’t their fault a freight train broke down at Ingatestone, because they don’t operate them.

With how adamant they were with how they weren’t paying out, I’m sure most people at that point would believe them and leave it. It’s a bit of an insult when they’re threatening to prosecute people for making innocent mistakes, but deliberately rejecting valid delay repay claims both automatically and when they’re manually verified.

The journey was Manchester to Great Yarmouth: advance Piccadilly to Euston, advance Zone U12 to Norwich, day return Norwich to Great Yarmouth. They owed me £44.50 but only paid out £8.60 for the journey from London to Norwich, and I had to speak to about five people before they paid me the extra £35.90. Not a small amount in my books to refuse to pay out!

 

[scrapy]

If all claims start being handled centrally by GBR then I would be likely that delay repay rules and repayments would be standardised across the country. Unfortunately I fear that free tickets as compensation like on Northern will no longer be given.

 

[yorkie]

I am hoping that GBR will have a single Delay Repay clearing house so this sort of inconsistency will go away.

If all claims start being handled centrally by GBR then I would be likely that delay repay rules and repayments would be standardised across the country. Unfortunately I fear that free tickets as compensation like on Northern will no longer be given.

If anyone wishes to debate this further, feel free to create a new thread

 

[mikeg]

The last delay repay I had rejected was on an AP TPE only advance when the 0650 from Northallerton to York was cancelled... Because the 0715ish LNER service arrived less than 15 minutes later...

A quick appeal pointing out the routeing of the ticket and it was approved,but I wonder how many people would be confused going forward by such a rejection and then get chinged by LNER next time...

 

[DavyCrocket]

I had a legitimate claim with Thameslink rejected with the stated reason.



However whilst the delay to the Thameslink train may have been less than 15 minutes it caused me to miss a connection and hence a 31 minute delay (the next train was scheduled to depart in 30 minutes but arrive 31 minutes later, for some reason) so the total delay is over 30 minutes.

Thameslink require you to specify the date and time of departure so I supplied that along with the "via" point but still rejected.

I have resubmitted but I'm fully expecting them to reject it again and then I'll have to try and telephone or just write it off (which I'm sure is what they are want me to do).

GTR were up to the trick of removing destinations and trains from the destination screens the other day, even though they were timetabled.
So the journey I was claiming for wasn’t shown including on the Delay repay.

so when I did the Delay Repay submission I then made a complaint via the online form and gave the DR number and this was manually processed.

 

[island]

The ACCEPT threshold is often in the wrong place. Whilst the process for claiming is often fairly straight forward, various operators, Northern, Avanti and XC to name some where i've witnessed it add in a plethora of hurdles to jump over if the (mostly automated) system spits out your claim for a reason, spurious or otherwise. So we see people giving up, because they have no way to obtain the compensation they are entitled to. Customer services don't answer premium rate phone numbers (2hrs is fairly common before the line goes dead),

This is simply false. Every TOC has a standard rate customer service phone number, as they are required to do by law.

 

[richw]

This is simply false. Every TOC has a standard rate customer service phone number, as they are required to do by law.

That single piece of false information made me think the credibility of the rest of his post may be questionable too.

My partner made a GWR claim a month or so ago, she had the payment in her account within 7 days, and only contact was an automated email saying her payment was processed. She found the process very simple and easy to use and didn’t experience any of the issues others have experienced elsewhere

 

[[.n]]

Ref one of the points made in the opening post, I've never grasped why anybody would submit a claim "while sat on a delayed train" - how can the length of the delay possibly be known until the destination is reached?

Where I am, on some journeys, if the train is delayed, you know that you're automatically going to be at least 60 minutes late, and therefore could fill in the claim on that basis - and of course it means you've actually filled in the claim, as opposed to leaving it to later and perhaps forgetting

 

[Bletchleyite]

Where I am, on some journeys, if the train is delayed, you know that you're automatically going to be at least 60 minutes late, and therefore could fill in the claim on that basis - and of course it means you've actually filled in the claim, as opposed to leaving it to later and perhaps forgetting

But do you know for certain, or might the TOC put a taxi on or the connection be delayed? I'd not do it until the end.

 

[[.n]]

But do you know for certain, or might the TOC put a taxi on or the connection be delayed? I'd not do it until the end.

But do you know for certain, or might the TOC put a taxi on or the connection be delayed? I'd not do it until the end.

In my examples know for certain, e.g. there are plenty of examples [where I am] where even with a taxi connection provided it would be mean at least a 60 minute delay before reaching the end of your journey.

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

That single piece of false information made me think the credibility of the rest of his post may be questionable too.

My partner made a GWR claim a month or so ago, she had the payment in her account within 7 days, and only contact was an automated email saying her payment was processed. She found the process very simple and easy to use and didn’t experience any of the issues others have experienced elsewhere

I think some posters on this forum, even faced with official government independent statistics going back a few years, are still of the mindset that companies such as train operators deliberately set out to inconvenience as many people as possible, even though the statistics show overwhelmingly that, at least for delay repay, there's still room for improvement, but it's pretty impressive overall.

I certainly don't expect every company handling tens of millions of passengers to get it right every time, and by it's very nature, this forum attracts people who are generally doing something perfectly acceptable, but outside of the norm, or who gotten into trouble because of their criminal actions and need help, e.g. fare evaders.

The fact that the ORR and presumably the DfT even monitor things in this level of detail around Delay Repay, suggests that it is taken seriously, and operators are needing to report regularly, and presumably be cooperative and candid in their reporting obligations.

Anyone who thinks there is a conspiracy could simply make a Freedom of Information Request to the ORR for more information or to the likes of LNER or Transport Wales Rail to understand further.

 

[robbeech]

This is simply false. Every TOC has a standard rate customer service phone number, as they are required to do by law.

Ok, my apologies then, standard rate calls, which means when the TOC has made a mistake, the passenger may (if 0345 / 0333 numbers aren't part of their inclusive allowance or if they don't have an inclusive allowance) have to pay to call them because e-mails are often not responded to within a month. Calls can be over 2 hours ( i appreciate this will be longer than normal at the moment perhaps but it doesn't really change the principle) and often end in the operator hanging up or not being able to help, or telling the passenger to "do it online" even though it is CLEARLY not possible to do online.

Apologies to those working for TOC customer service (they are here watching, but never contribute which i find more than a little odd) but from my experience on the phone to them, a fair bit of the time they would be better off not having it and saving the rest of the pittance they are paid, although given the wait times at the moment (clearly nobody has an internet connection to do VOIP from home) it seems many of them already have.

 

[richw]

I think some posters on this forum, even faced with official government independent statistics going back a few years, are still of the mindset that companies such as train operators deliberately set out to inconvenience as many people as possible, even though the statistics show overwhelmingly that, at least for delay repay, there's still room for improvement, but it's pretty impressive overall.

I certainly don't expect every company handling tens of millions of passengers to get it right every time, and by it's very nature, this forum attracts people who are generally doing something perfectly acceptable, but outside of the norm, or who gotten into trouble because of their criminal actions and need help, e.g. fare evaders.

The fact that the ORR and presumably the DfT even monitor things in this level of detail around Delay Repay, suggests that it is taken seriously, and operators are needing to report regularly, and presumably be cooperative and candid in their reporting obligations.

Anyone who thinks there is a conspiracy could simply make a Freedom of Information Request to the ORR for more information or to the likes of LNER or Transport Wales Rail to understand further.

I also suspect many of those encountering issues may have made an error by not reading the information about how to fill in prior to filling in. I wonder how many of the rejected claims are due to error by the passenger rather than TOC

 

[BrianW]

What is Delay Repay FOR?
Does it work; does it work well?- that seems uncertain.
Is it worth it?
It's not free is it- someone is paying somehow- passengers and/or taxpayers.
Ok- if it was my job to be part of this 'process'- a back-office checker, manager, front-line flacktaker, 'customer service', ... I'd be keen to keep it, of course.
How many are involved; are they part of or another apocryphal 400 blame passer-on-ers ...
I have a strong impression that there are as many disgruntled and dissatisfied at the end of the process, if not more.
How about a 'culture change' from rights and dissatisfaction and irritation and ANGER etc ETC !!! to something more like- these things happen; people are doing their best, hope no-one was injured ...
Thank you to all who do their best every day, despite the ingratitude and lack of appreciation.

 

[richw]

(if 0345 / 0333 numbers aren't part of their inclusive allowance or if they don't have an inclusive allowance)

The government made it legislation these numbers must be included in allowances at the same time they made it legislation companies must not use premium numbers.
I suspect very few people don’t have inclusive allowances these days. Even most Pay as go Customers opt to buy a bundle rather than traditional pay as go style usage

 

[robbeech]

I suspect very few people don’t have inclusive allowances these days. Even most Pay as go Customers opt to buy a bundle rather than traditional pay as go style usage

Agreed, though it doesn't fix the issue at hand that passengers are having to wait 2+ hours on the phone to be told they can't help, and to not get a reply to an email, and to get utter nonsense from social media including being told to phone customer services, who after 2 hours will tell you to email which won't be responded to etc. I'm fully accepting of it JUST being incompetence but it is really pushing the boundaries. It certainly feels like a lot of people are paid solely to tell people to ask someone else.

 

[SteveM70]

As an aside, is there any data on the number of delay repay claims made as a proportion of passenger journeys eligible?

I appreciate anything there is would be imprecise because there’s not data on the actual number of passengers on every train, but TOCs know approximate loading don’t they?

 

[Haywain]

As an aside, is there any data on the number of delay repay claims made as a proportion of passenger journeys eligible?

I appreciate anything there is would be imprecise because there’s not data on the actual number of passengers on every train, but TOCs know approximate loading don’t they?

The number of passengers is not necessarily relevant - some will be unable to claim for reasons like free travel or the complexity of using such as Britrail passes, while others may not actually be delayed at all even though the train may be.

 

[SteveM70]

The number of passengers is not necessarily relevant - some will be unable to claim for reasons like free travel or the complexity of using such as Britrail passes, while others may not actually be delayed at all even though the train may be.

Yes, you’re right, it’s never as straightforward as it may at first appear, but surely the industry must have some notion as to the uptake of DR?

 

[Haywain]

Yes, you’re right, it’s never as straightforward as it may at first appear, but surely the industry must have some notion as to the uptake of DR?

I agree that there may be some idea of that but it does not bear too much relationship to train loadings.

 

[mike57]

I've had a few disputes with TPE over delay repay, I started to take pictures of departure boards to prove I was at the places and to back up my claim. It proved useful in this case which took the longest to sort:

Travelling from Chorley home to Seamer usually I would use the direct service to Man Vic. and change to TPE there. On the day in question the Victoria train was cancelled, but I was at the station in time to catch the earlier service via Piccadilly. On arrival at Salford Crescent a quick scan of the departure board showed I was going to miss my Scarborough train if I waited for the next service to Victoria, so I remained on the train to Deansgate, bought a tram ticket, and arrived on the platform at Victoria about 5 mins before the Scarborough train was due to leave. Took picture of departure board at departure time as was my habit by this time, previously talking to another regular traveller he had used this as evidence during disputes. It was already showing 5 or so late. Journey back across the pennines was the usual slow 'following stopping services', arriving in Seamer about 40 late, cue delay repay. 1st claim was rejected even although I detailed route and produced (time stamped) tram ticket as well. It went to appeal and took ages to sort, but I didnt let it drop. Initially they told me I should claim off Northern, but I had arrived in time for my TPE train. Then they told me route wasnt possible, well it was I had tickets and evidence to prove it. Eventaully it got to a snail mail letter writing pitched battle, this got results and an apology, in a previous communication they even accused me of fraud.

Surely if you produce evidence, pictures, timed other public transport tickets etc. they must realise its a genuine claim.

At this time I was travelling for the day to the NW once or twice a week and was racking up delay repay on probably half the journeys, so I dont know if this flagged me.

 

[maniacmartin]

The main problem with how claims are rejected is there is no easy way to click a button to ask for a manual review. Lots of TOCs require you to start a brand new claim and key in all the details again which is very cumbersome