Also, surely they should be refunding passengers for the additional costs of walk-up LNER tickets, not just the cost of the Grand Central one?
Yes, they’re legally obliged, but they don’t.
If they're unable to offer alternative transportation, shouldn't they provide overnight lodging? It's concerning that a passenger has agreed to a contract that hasn't been honored; there's no justification for them to incur expenses due to the service provider's failure.
Yes, they’re legally obliged, but they don’t.
They bank on the fact that most people will give up and take the financial hit.
They’ve learnt from the best here. This is a standard UK Railway tactic, make everything difficult and tedious. Over the years the railway as a whole will have saved hundreds of millions of pounds that is not rightly theirs through this.
I've seen more trustworthy rail operations in northern africa than them.
More reliable too.
Arriva and First aren't exactly new to the Railway though are they?
No, they’ve had years to practise this kind of behaviour.
I am not sure that this is solely an Open Access problem. I was given the same advice by station staff at King's Cross when my LNER train to Bradford Forster Square was cancelled, and LNER is a "proper TOC".
Indeed, this is something the railway is famous for. Making up rules that are more restrictive than the real ones for financial gain or to reduce financial losses.
General thoughts.
This IS the railway. Absolutely nothing will come of this because the railway does what it wants. There are so many different bodies within the industry that each have a tiny bit of a say in how things operate that when it comes down to enforcing rules on an operator (be them a regular TOC or an open access operator) nobody really seems to know who it should be or how it should be done. As a result of this, nobody says anything or does anything.
You have Transport Focus, the RDG, the Rail Ombudsman, the DfT, the ORR, the RSSB, the UK Government themselves. Then you have documentation like the NRCOT, the specific passenger charter from an operator, the TSA the PRO, the regulation of railways act, the penalty fare regulations and countless more.
All this just ensures that nothing ever gets done. Any of the bodies listed will bounce a complaint to another until it goes away. As a rail operator you really can completely ignore any passenger transit based rules wherever and whenever you want and in almost all cases absolutely nothing will happen. When things kick off, just pay the passenger off and the problem goes away. Rinse and repeat.
In this instance the following things are likely.
Those passengers that have seen the first message will have refunded their tickets. Many of them will not have been able to find the hidden, complicated method of refunding during disruption without fee so a good chunk will incur a £10 admin fee for doing this, whilst some will fight this and get it back, many will just put it down to the railway being ****.
They will then purchase a new open ticket. This is quite likely to be several times the price of their original one. Those who plan to go via Newcastle will be stung for nearly £200 a piece.
Some people might buy anytimes to their destination as they might not have time to go into the complexity of peak restrictions or might not know any different. Similarly the machine may offer this first.
The real kick in the teeth comes when GC take a small chunk of a London to York through ORCATS.
These people will then be stranded further up the line and given the train they’re on with the ticket they hold and the time they bought the ticket there will be no help from station staff to get them home as the 28.2 in the NRCOT doesn’t apply if there is no disruption.
But what about their original itinerary I hear you cry? For what ticket? They don’t have a GC ticket as they refunded it, the contract ends at that point, GC hold zero responsibility for them.
For those who were lucky enough to ignore or not see the first message they’ll get the LNER train where from experience there will be a 50/50 chance that the guard has been informed (or chooses to adhere to) the ticket acceptance in place. They may have to buy a new ticket anyway. If they’re lucky then station staff at the interchange point MAY put them in a taxi, although there’s a significant risk that staff at York would bounce passengers back to GC to solve the problem, of course by this time of night everyone from GC will be tucked up in bed with remarkably well wiped hands.
For those that were to use their tickets the following day, GC will not entertain the idea of paying for hotels nor reimbursing for them. This doesn’t matter if they’re legally obliged or not, they just won’t, at least until they’re sent legal papers.
I understand the current need for open access operators but unfortunately I remain of the opinion that they cannot afford to operate within the rules and regulations on the railway during disruption (caused by themselves or others).
This simple incident, despite eventually obtaining some ticket acceptance will leave passengers potentially hundreds of pounds out of pocket with very little chance of recovering any of it unless they happen to have more knowledge about the rules than the people at GC themselves.
