Delay repay on a split ticket

[doctor123]

Sorry to hear you’re not having much luck with this. Do keep at them, and escalate it as far as you need to. there’s more help around here should you require it. I was surprised at this response from VTEC as whilst I have had a couple of initial mistakes they’ve always been rectified afterwards.

Thanks. I will hopefully update this thread in due course

 

[doctor123]

the latest update:

Dear xxxxxxx

Thank you for your further correspondence received10 April 2018. I am sorry to hear you are unhappy with my colleague’s earlier response.

However I need to advise you the information provided was correct, as you were 48 minutes delayed you were entitled to 50% of your ticket price.

As you wish to escalate this matter further, i have provided an address below for your attention which is the Rail Watchdog for the Rail Industry.

www.Transportfocus.org.uk.

Transport Focus
RTEH-XAGE-BYKZ
Passenger Focus
PO Box 5594
Southend on Sea
SS1 9PZ

Telephone: 03001 232 350

Transport Focus will review your complaint and take this up through their appeals procedure.

Please note that in addition to this, the Alternative Dispute Resolution for consumer disputes (Competent Authorities and information) regulations 2015 requires us to advise you of an ‘Alternative Dispute Resolution’ organisation for your complaint. In our case this is The Consumer Ombudsman (www.consumer-ombudsman.org). However, as Transport Focus already provides a mediation service for customers in the rail industry, we do not make use of the ADR process, and correspondence to the Consumer Ombudsman will be redirected to Transport Focus

Yours Sincerely

xxxxxxxxx
Customer Solutions Representative

and my response:

Dear xxxxxxx

You might want to check the email chain again as I think the point I am raising has again been misunderstood

There are two issues:

(i) I never disputed the timing of the delay. It was the issue of whether a split ticket constituted one journey or not and if that was the case then I should be compensated 50% on both portions of the journey. The overall journey from Darlington to London was 48 minutes late But I was travelling on two tickets - Darlington to Peterborough and Peterborough to London. At the point the train reached Peterborough the delay was less than 30 minutes but I understand from the NRCOC that it is still one journey irrespective of whether the ticket is split or not

(ii) If only one aspect of the journey was eligible (which I dispute) you refunded me 50% on the Darlington to Peterborough aspect not the Peterborough to London aspect. ie the wrong leg of the journey

I know it’s a small amount but I would like to clarify this once and for all as I regularly use split tickets and I understand that other rail companies accept their validity in terms of calculating their versions of Delay Repay

Thank you

 

[AlterEgo]

No point responding to the TOC, as they have given you their final answer and now will not deal with you any further.

You should contact Transport Focus as part of the next stage of escalation.

 

[stephen rp]

Oakham to Exeter today on 5 separate tickets but all issued on the first train - it ran 48 late so missed the connection at New St. Next service ran 30 late so 90 late at Exeter. Obviously full refund on one ticket but will East Midland trains pay out for all legs?

 

[najaB]

Oakham to Exeter today on 5 separate tickets but all issued on the first train - it ran 48 late so missed the connection at New St. Next service ran 30 late so 90 late at Exeter. Obviously full refund on one ticket but will East Midland trains pay out for all legs?

They should do, yes.

 

[_toommm_]

They should do, yes.

In my experience they are quite good with delays and other discrepancies. It only took them 5 calendar days to email me back about my lack of seat reservation and to offer 75% of my fare back!

 

[robbeech]

They should do, yes.

Agreed they should do. However their social media team (who are generally quite good) have been known to tell people you are not entitled to delay repay and also not entitled to catch a later service should a connection be missed.
You are certainly entitled to delay repay so if there are problems then you need to escalate the case as necessary.

 

[_toommm_]

Agreed they should do. However their social media team (who are generally quite good) have been known to tell people you are not entitled to delay repay and also not entitled to catch a later service should a connection be missed.
You are certainly entitled to delay repay so if there are problems then you need to escalate the case as necessary.

As long as the minimum connection time is observed of course

- rereading your post it looks like you have so probably no point in me saying that.

 

[robbeech]

One key (slightly unrelated) issue is where a person has used a dedicated split ticketing retailer is if they are refused travel on a later service then it is likely that the customer will complain to the retailer despite it being the toc that was in the wrong.

 

[SickyNicky]

One key (slightly unrelated) issue is where a person has used a dedicated split ticketing retailer is if they are refused travel on a later service then it is likely that the customer will complain to the retailer despite it being the toc that was in the wrong.

Any reputable retailer will assist the customer in making a complaint to the relevant train company in these circumstances. It almost never happens, though - staff seems to have grasped that split tickets are valid on later trains following delays. More worrying is where staff don't accept perfectly valid tickets because they don't understand (or simply won't read) the time restrictions. Again, the retailer should help with their complaint.

 

[PG]

I'm posting here as like doctor123 my issue is with VTEC/LNER's response to a delay repay claim using split tickets.

On 25-05-18 me and my wife travelled from Mansfield to Aberdeen using a combination of split tickets and our two together railcard. The final part of our journey was with VTEC from Haymarket to Aberdeen which arrived in Aberdeen 113 minutes late.

I submitted a claim for delay repay online via the VTEC website which resulted in an email from LNER

Subject: Case Reference: VTN-xxxxxxxxxx

Dear xxxxx,
Thank you for getting in touch with us at London North Eastern Railway.
At LNER, we’re passionate about creating the best possible travel experience for you. This Passenger’s Charter sets out our commitments to deliver a safe, reliable and high-quality service every day.
Unfortunately, things will sometimes go wrong, please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused.
Commitment to you
If one of our trains runs late or is cancelled and because of that you get to your destination station 30 minutes or more later than scheduled, ‘Delay Repay’ applies.
Am I being compensated?
The systems that keep track of our train running records indicate a delay of 113 minutes for two tickets provided Haymarket to Aberdeen at £13.20 each. We are therefore pleased to inform you that a BACS to the value of £26.40 has been raised and will be following this correspondence in the next 14 working days.
We kindly ask not to respond back to this notification as it could delay the compensation or a refund coming out to you. If you have not received this payment in the next the 14 working days, please don’t hesitate getting in touch with us.
Giving you the information
We do our best to always get it right for our customers. However, when things do not go right we want to make it as easy as possible to submit a Delay Repay claim.
• We offer an automated process via our website and mobile app.
• Alternatively, you can fill in a freepost Delay Repay claim form.
• They can be picked up at all stations where our trains stop – the form can also be completed on our website.
• If one of our trains is delayed by 30 minutes or more our on-board staff will hand out information detailing how to claim whenever possible.
• When submitting a claim, attaching your ticket, please ensure it gets to us within 28 days of the delay.
• We aim to process claims within 10 working days.
• If you have a weekly Season Ticket, attach it to the form once it has expired.
• If you have a monthly or longer Season Ticket, please take a photocopy of it and attach that to your form.
• Season Ticket holders will need to claim for each individual journey delay.
*If your payment preference of compensation is PayPal, you'll receive a separate email from PayPal asking you to claim your compensation from your PayPal account or set one-up. This will be sent to the designated email address, you requested to receive for PayPal payment, when you submitted your claim. So, please make sure you claim the money as you only have 30 days or the compensation is returned to us*
Thanks again for getting in touch.
Yours sincerely,
xxxxxxxxx
Customer Service Representative
London North Eastern Railway

The total price of the combination of tickets purchased for this journey was £128.20 so I thus emailed this reply

Dear xxxxxxx,

I refer to your recent email to me on Mon 25 Jun 2018.

I also refer to I refer you to the National Rail Conditions of Travel, http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/static/images/structure/css/Conditions of Travel 2016.pdf, specifically Condition 14:

14. Using a combination of Tickets
14.1 Unless shown below, you may use a combination of two or more Tickets to
make a journey provided that the train services you use call at the station(s)
where you change from one Ticket to another.

The journey that I was making, with my wife using our Two Together Railcard, was from Mansfield to Aberdeen.

I have again attached a two page pdf document showing all of our tickets and a valid itinerary and thus instead of the payment of £26.40 offered I look forward to instead receiving an amended amount of £128.20 at your earliest convenience.


Yours faithfully,

I have now received the following reply from LNER

Dear xxxxx,

Thank you for getting in touch with us at London North Eastern Railway.

Our Charter
We’re grateful you’ve taken the time to provide us feedback on your Delay Repay compensation we sent you.

Here at London North Eastern Railway we review each case individually as we know our customers are not all the same when affected by disruption. We appreciate that your journey was not the usual high standards you’ve come to expect from us.

We know you may be disappointed, but my colleague’s initial response was correct, and the correct compensation amount was issued for the disruption you experienced. Our Passenger's Charter provides detailed information on all the schemes of compensation we offer and it can be viewed on our website at www.lner.co.uk.

As you have only bought 2 tickets for one of our journeys, Haymarket to Aberdeen at 18.38, you are only due compensation for these tickets = £26.40

We are unable to provide compensation for tickets bought for other TOC's.

We hope you’ll understand that to ensure fairness and consistency for all our customers we must follow our Charter wherever possible.

Thanks again for getting in touch.

Yours sincerely,

xxxxxxxxxxx
Customer Service Representative
London North Eastern Railway

I'd appreciate advice on what I should do next... ?the somewhat toothless Transport Focus?... who doubtless will just back up the response from LNER

 

[pemma]

I'm posting here as like doctor123 my issue is with VTEC/LNER's response to a delay repay claim using split tickets.

On 25-05-18 me and my wife travelled from Mansfield to Aberdeen using a combination of split tickets and our two together railcard. The final part of our journey was with VTEC from Haymarket to Aberdeen which arrived in Aberdeen 113 minutes late.

Did you board the train at Haymarket or were you already on the train but had split your ticket at Haymarket?

 

[221129]

Did you board the train at Haymarket or were you already on the train but had split your ticket at Haymarket?

irrelevant surely?

 

[AlterEgo]

irrelevant surely?

Not sure how you can be considered to be making two journeys covered by two wholly separate tickets, if you don’t even alight at the point the railway company says you’re making the second journey.

 

[Haywain]

I'd appreciate advice on what I should do next... ?the somewhat toothless Transport Focus?... who doubtless will just back up the response from LNER

Phone LNER, ask to escalate the matter to a manager.

 

[PG]

Did you board the train at Haymarket or were you already on the train but had split your ticket at Haymarket?

Boarded at Haymarket.

Phone LNER, ask to escalate the matter to a manager.

Will do so and post update here.

 

[pemma]

Boarded at Haymarket.

Unfortunately they've not contradicted themselves with issuing the £26.40 payment then. With not knowing the exact journey you made Haymarket sounded like a place you'd split tickets rather than change trains, especially with you mentioning being on a service which would have come from York and beyond to get to Haymarket.

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

I'm posting here as like doctor123 my issue is with VTEC/LNER's response to a delay repay claim using split tickets.

On 25-05-18 me and my wife travelled from Mansfield to Aberdeen using a combination of split tickets and our two together railcard. The final part of our journey was with VTEC from Haymarket to Aberdeen which arrived in Aberdeen 113 minutes late.

I submitted a claim for delay repay online via the VTEC website which resulted in an email from LNER


The total price of the combination of tickets purchased for this journey was £128.20 so I thus emailed this reply



I have now received the following reply from LNER



I'd appreciate advice on what I should do next... ?the somewhat toothless Transport Focus?... who doubtless will just back up the response from LNER

They are, of course, completely wrong. You made one journey, which just so happened to involve multiple tickets (as is explicitly stated as your right through NRCoT 14.1). They cannot deny you compensation based on combined value of the tickets you bought merely because you did not make the entire journey with them, or because you only used one ticket when travelling with them - that's ludicrous!

As others have suggested, often phoning may be more effective at this point. However, if this does not resolve the matter then I do not see why you should not start pursuing it in the same way that most companies would pursue an unpaid debt - through a Letter Before Action, followed by a County Court claim (which can be done online) if payment is not forthcoming within the provided deadline (14 days is usually acceptable).

There is limited merit in taking the case to Transport Focus, in my view - on the one hand there is a very small chance it may convince LNER to pay up (whether through incompetence, 'gesture of goodwill' or realising they are wrong). And it will also mean they have one more complaint registered against them, thus giving a truer representation of passengers' actual satisfaction levels.

On the other hand, Transport Focus are notoriously incompetent on this issue (not to mention the many other things they aren't much good at!), so if LNER tell them that more compensation isn't due they will believe them without questioning it. So from that perspective I generally refrain from involving them in any TOC disputes, because it simply wastes time and almost never achieves anything.

Of course, if/when the promised Rail Ombudsman comes into force... this may all change. If s/he is as effective as the other ombudsmen currently around (e.g. FOS, utilities) are, then there may be some hope. Especially so if s/he is competent, independent and binding!

I think this case would be ideal to progress legally as a sort of 'test case' - if you would be happy to be that - as the amount in question is large enough for it to properly warrant legal action, and the situation is clear enough (you aren't doing any break of journey stuff, for example, starting late or stopping short). Of course, it being a 'test case', there is always the risk that you lose, with the associated costs - plus, even if you win, it will no doubt be a lengthy, drawn-out and potentially stressful process.

Whether or not you would like to do this is, of course, entirely up to you; personally, I would be very interested for such a test case to proceed, setting a precedent (even if only persuasive/informative and not binding, being merely at the County Court and not the High Court or Court of Appeal).

 

[Silverdale]

Haymarket sounded like a place you'd split tickets rather than change trains, especially with you mentioning being on a service which would have come from York and beyond to get to Haymarket.

So you think LNER would cough-up for the full journey if the ticket split/change of trains was at Edinburgh, rather than Haymarket? Their reason/excuse was that the other tickets held were for legs (journeys by LNER's definition) operated by a different TOC or TOCs.

I don't even see the distinction between a place you would split tickets as opposed to one where you would change trains. At Haymarket you would appear to be able to do either or both.

 

[Silverdale]

We are in this situation because of the knee jerk and rather crass decision to make compensation for delay proportionate to the ticket cost as well as just the delay. Having been bounced into it, TOCs should accept the consequences, but I can readily understand they feel they need to kick back.

They should, of course, kick back against the DfT, not individual customers.

 

[Haywain]

We are in this situation because of the knee jerk and rather crass decision to make compensation for delay proportionate to the ticket cost as well as just the delay. Having been bounced into it, TOCs should accept the consequences, but I can readily understand they feel they need to kick back.

They should, of course, kick back against the DfT, not individual customers.

I'm not sure what you are suggesting, but this is simply a case of (the TOC) looking for a reason not to pay rather than realising that while split tickets may lessen the TOC's income they also, when delay repay is involved, lessen their expenditure.

 

[PG]

Half hour telephone call with LNER first with a customer service representative who basically reiterated what their second email said. I then asked to speak to a manager and eventually was put through to a gentleman who described himself as the team leader and... he went through condition 14.1 of NRCoT saying that LNER were only liable for the ticket that covered the portion of the journey that they provided ie Haymarket to Aberdeen.

I did try and reason with him that I believed his interpretation of the condition was incorrect but he said that nowhere in condition 14 did it make reference to compensation when using split tickets!
He did mention that if the difference between what I wished (in monetary terms) and what they had offered was smaller then he might have been able to help... interesting but irrelevant.
Also kept saying that because I'd taken advantage of getting my journey cheaper by utilising split ticketing as opposed to one ticket that that was why they couldn't pay compensation for the entire journey... definately incorrect in my opinion!
I then asked how I could escalate the claim and while being polite and friendly he didn't provide details of who I could make contact with so at that point I decided that we'd agree to disagree and thanked him for his time.

Is it worth an email to David Horne or has anyone got any better ideas?

 

[Silverdale]

I'm not sure what you are suggesting...

The discussion made me question why delay repay is structured as it is and whether it is actually fit for purpose. As it would disrupt this particular thread to develop that question, I have started a new thread. https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/is-delay-repay-fit-for-purpose.166714/

 

[Hadders]

I agree with @Haywain. LNER are looking for a reason not to pay. There isn’t much you can really do about this. Transport Focus are useless and will just repeat what LNER have told you (even if you get a personal response from Anthony Smith).

You can try a complaint to David Horne but when I did this over a ticketing matter I got no reply despite an acknowledgement.

The issue here is that TOC Passenger Charters need to be very specific about what they will and won’t pay. SWR and TPE both do this and should be applauded. The issue isn’t really about whether they will or won’t pay, it’s about transparency, in my opinion.

 

[Kite159]

Maybe it's time to send a letter before action to claim back the monies owed, and then start with the Small Claims process if they continue to ignore you?

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

Half hour telephone call with LNER first with a customer service representative who basically reiterated what their second email said. I then asked to speak to a manager and eventually was put through to a gentleman who described himself as the team leader and... he went through condition 14.1 of NRCoT saying that LNER were only liable for the ticket that covered the portion of the journey that they provided ie Haymarket to Aberdeen.

I did try and reason with him that I believed his interpretation of the condition was incorrect but he said that nowhere in condition 14 did it make reference to compensation when using split tickets!
He did mention that if the difference between what I wished (in monetary terms) and what they had offered was smaller then he might have been able to help... interesting but irrelevant.
Also kept saying that because I'd taken advantage of getting my journey cheaper by utilising split ticketing as opposed to one ticket that that was why they couldn't pay compensation for the entire journey... definately incorrect in my opinion!
I then asked how I could escalate the claim and while being polite and friendly he didn't provide details of who I could make contact with so at that point I decided that we'd agree to disagree and thanked him for his time.

Is it worth an email to David Horne or has anyone got any better ideas?

That may be an idea. Equally, you could try Transport Focus, for the little that will probably achieve. And if all else fails you may have to go legal.

 

[island]

Passenger charters and DelayRepay are not legally binding, so you would have trouble basing a court claim on that. You may (or may not) have more luck claiming the minimum compensation promised in the NRCoT; the argument that compensation on a split ticket journey should be based on all the tickets rather than just the ticket where the delay was incurred has at least some merit, though it is by no means black and white.

Furthermore, there is no definition of a “journey” in the NRCoT and it is not at all clear that you did not make two “journeys”.

(I’m aware of a provision of the CRA stating that representations by a merchant which a person relied upon in order to enter into a contract may in some circumstances be inferred into the contract. It is a very high hurdle indeed to prove that the existence of DelayRepay was a factor in purchasing a train ticket.)

 

[furlong]

Any other TOC would have to pay Delay Repay or worry about losing its franchise...

I doubt there'd be a dispute over the applicability of those documents, but rather the "by no means black and white" issue of the correct legal interpretation in the context of combining tickets. Guidance from the DfT is perhaps required - maybe it can apply pressure to RDG to agree and publish a common interpretation - otherwise it might be merely "we didn't think of this situation when we drafted it so you'll have to ask the courts".

 

[Haywain]

Any other TOC would have to pay Delay Repay or worry about losing its franchise...

The company has history on this, going back to the days of East Coast (or possibly earlier) but in the days before the customer relations operation was brought in house the issue could be resolved through someone in the TOC telling the Serco operatives that they were wrong. It was thought that when it was brought in house that this would improve but it actually got worse and they wouldn't be told they were wrong.

 

[furlong]

The industry shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways. It brought about a huge expansion in TOC-only fares for its own internal reasons (ORCATS), encouraging passengers to use multiple tickets for their journeys where they span operators (so the revenue gets split more fairly). But then in cases like these it's trying to use that situation of its own making to restrict the amount of compensation it pays. If LNER's interpretation here is to stand, LNER should be required to extend every advance/TOC only fare it has to a &CONNECTIONS version to every station beyond (and of course the current ticketing systems couldn't handle that - effectively you'd have a &CONNECTIONS addon from each station at the edge of its network to every other station beyond priced accordingly, possibly with peak and off-peak variants).