Fawkes Cat
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Unlike your dogs, the railway does have an ombudsman and you also have access to the small claims court.
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Delay Repay claims rejected
- Thread starter yorkie
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RailUK Forums
Again, true. But is it worth is for the sake of 25£. And as it takes a month for them to reply telling me to go to the other operator again. Who then take a month to then say the same, you think its just easier to give up
signed
Established Member
Ask specifically for a deadlock letter and go to the ombudsman
Thank you for the advice. I shall try that!
Virgin West Coast had 29/58 back in the 30/60 days and it didn't cause the problems many people suggest. I don't recall dealing with any appeals from people who came in at 28 minutes or whatever.
Has anyone else found they get an email from TfW saying their claim has been approved, but can't appeal because the system says that it's still being processed?
The general view here (backed up by my experience) is that trying the Ombudsman has a high chance of also being completely pointless.
The general view here (backed up by my experience) is that trying the Ombudsman has a high chance of also being completely pointless.
Had that from other TOCs, seems to be a common thing that the emails get sent before the rest of the system updates.
Fawkes Cat
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Although my feeling, also from posts here, is that asking for a deadlock letter so that you can go to the ombudsman can (n.b. not will) have a positive effect on getting TOCs to concede.
I think it's definitely worth doing.
Though the two times I tried it they were happy to go straight to the Ombudsman.
I've noticed with LNER an email notifying me of a change of status often arrives before that new status is indicated on the website. I imagine many TOCs use the same software so it could be the same thing, maybe it updates overnight or at another set interval.
Hmmm.
Just queried my payment for a journey using PAYG with TfW. I can't tell if it's right because they don't seem to publish the rules, but other ones appear to have been based on a notional ticket price of 1/10th the cost of the weekly cap in line with how season tickets are handled. But for this journey they seem to have used 1/20th.
Their response to my query?
To tell me my claim is incomplete (though it wasn't a problem first time round) and that they require a photograph of my ticket. Which would be a bit tricky.
Time for customer (dis)service.
And my next two claims also resulted in a demand for me to provide the impossible again - a photograph of my PAYG ticket. One of them even complained that the ticket number wasn't displayed in the ticket I provided previously.
Given that the responses were different from each other, and both took a while to come back, that suggests that this isn't an unfortunate programming error. Someone is looking at these and then making the decision to make an unreasonable request.
Or maybe they're now using machine learning to provide inappropriate customer service. I'm not sure it could do much of a worse job than before.
Just queried my payment for a journey using PAYG with TfW. I can't tell if it's right because they don't seem to publish the rules, but other ones appear to have been based on a notional ticket price of 1/10th the cost of the weekly cap in line with how season tickets are handled. But for this journey they seem to have used 1/20th.
Their response to my query?
To tell me my claim is incomplete (though it wasn't a problem first time round) and that they require a photograph of my ticket. Which would be a bit tricky.
Time for customer (dis)service.
And my next two claims also resulted in a demand for me to provide the impossible again - a photograph of my PAYG ticket. One of them even complained that the ticket number wasn't displayed in the ticket I provided previously.
Given that the responses were different from each other, and both took a while to come back, that suggests that this isn't an unfortunate programming error. Someone is looking at these and then making the decision to make an unreasonable request.
Or maybe they're now using machine learning to provide inappropriate customer service. I'm not sure it could do much of a worse job than before.
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Well, if so, the machine is learning fast, and doing the job as well as could be expected.
GZ
Haywain
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A bit late here but why would you want to appeal your claim being approved?
Belperpete
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My experience with various TOCs is that if they start getting a backlog of claims, they start rejecting them for spurious reasons. Those that are simple (such as only involving one train, and probably a simple automated computer says yes) still get accepted quickly, but those that are a bit more involved (such as a missed connection to another TOC) you wait ages, only to get a tickbox response that has clearly received no thought whatsoever (usually we can't find a matching service).
It clears the immediate backlog, and I suspect a sizeable proportion of those that get rejected never get appealed. Whether it is internal company policy to do this, or just agents acting on their own initiative to get through as many claims as quickly as possible (are they paid on piece rates?), I know not.
It may have been approved for less than @AdamWW expects.
Quite so.
Though unusually rather than calculating the wrong delay they seem to have got the delay right but the payment wrong.
In the interest of fairness there have been several scenarios on here and I’ve had it myself more than once where a TOC has approved a bunch of claims when things have been delayed processing to clear the backlog too.
Northern have on 2 occasions paid out at the full 120+ minutes delay on journeys delayed by 15 to 29 minutes and 30 to 59 minutes with an apology for the delay in processing.
That is at least better than accusing someone of failing to upload a ticket image with the ticket number visible when they used pay as you go.
00:14 arrival Glasgow Central, 61 minutes late, I suspect that’s what you wanted to hear.
87015
Established Member
Why didn't you get the (Avanti) train which left Preston at 2109 and arrived into Central at 2332 if you were at Preston for the 2041?
Kite159
Veteran Member
Unless they held an advance for that particular train.
Brent Goose
Member
Rather oddly the Southern website keys you (mistakenly) claim for trains departing later that day which led to a rejection as my crystal ball required cleaning
Getting multiple claims rejected over the past few months because I am not "providing information for the entire journey", particularly when using my ticket for break of journey or starting/finishing short. All totally valid according to the ticket conditions, I've double and triple checked this.
Any idea what brought this on, and how to make them give me my money? Thanks.
Any idea what brought this on, and how to make them give me my money? Thanks.
Southern seem to be dead-batting straightforward claims now. Two in a week - Valid Oyster season ticket (receipts attached, Journey printout attached) for a single journey with no changes. Told 'ticket not valid for travel'. This is extremely irritating. Have now resubmitted with exactly the same info and checkbox ticked 'information already provided'.
More positively…
Mrs Bungle travelled from Birmingham area to Cardiff last week. Outbound changing at Bristol Parkway on to a GWR Paddington-Cardiff, rather than the direct CrossCountry service.
Connection was delayed due to a points failure in Swindon.
It turned out that although it was running very late, the preceding GWR on that route was also very late, and would actually have worked as a connection in its place - arriving in Cardiff only 8 minutes later than originally scheduled. This is what GWR claimed, and refused the Delay Repay claim.
Unfortunately, for some reason platform staff directed Mrs Bungle to a Gloucester-Weymouth, changing again at Filton Abbey Wood on to a Portsmouth-Cardiff - therefore arriving 44 minutes late.
The point is, I’d been concerned that GWR would reject the Delay Repay claim on the basis that the delayed Paddington-Carmarthen at Bristol Parkway had provided a valid connection, regardless of the fact she ended up changing again and being much later on the advice of platform staff. Thought it might be black-and-white - connection was there, therefore no compensation owed, regardless of what happened.
Happily, after a couple of days, they accepted the first appeal and paid up. Fair play to them.
Mrs Bungle travelled from Birmingham area to Cardiff last week. Outbound changing at Bristol Parkway on to a GWR Paddington-Cardiff, rather than the direct CrossCountry service.
Connection was delayed due to a points failure in Swindon.
It turned out that although it was running very late, the preceding GWR on that route was also very late, and would actually have worked as a connection in its place - arriving in Cardiff only 8 minutes later than originally scheduled. This is what GWR claimed, and refused the Delay Repay claim.
Unfortunately, for some reason platform staff directed Mrs Bungle to a Gloucester-Weymouth, changing again at Filton Abbey Wood on to a Portsmouth-Cardiff - therefore arriving 44 minutes late.
The point is, I’d been concerned that GWR would reject the Delay Repay claim on the basis that the delayed Paddington-Carmarthen at Bristol Parkway had provided a valid connection, regardless of the fact she ended up changing again and being much later on the advice of platform staff. Thought it might be black-and-white - connection was there, therefore no compensation owed, regardless of what happened.
Happily, after a couple of days, they accepted the first appeal and paid up. Fair play to them.
Egg Centric
Established Member
I go to journey history and it claims an agent is still dealing with my claim and there's no way to appeal it.
I wouldn't blame someone in my position who decided to see what happens as if Hull Trains had caused the delay (they didn't - I made a connection at Grantham despite trying not to, only to succeed later on at Kettering) then it would probably bring the "calculated" delay repay to over 1 hour. However this is not within the rules so instead I shall have to waste time on a back n forth with possibly two sets of customer service.
It wasn't me travelling so I can't answer that one .. they had come from Nottingham via Crewe and can only assume that when they found there train was late (advance tickets) they had suitable refreshments!
RooseWithAZed
Member
Avanti have just attempted to throw out my DR claim on the 1st for 9S85 running 10 minutes late, causing me and multiple other passengers to miss our connection at Lancaster to the Cumbrian Coast local 2C51. Because I had split my tickets and travelled on LNWR for the first leg from Euston to Crewe, they've tried to punt it to LNWR.