How do you appeal an Avanti Delay Repay decision?

[MKB]

We were delayed on an Avanti journey on 6 March bought from trainsplit.com. I was the customer (i.e. purchaser). My partner and I were the two passengers. Tickets were eTickets.

Avanti's Delay Repay system does not allow multiple pdf tickets to be uploaded. It says you must combine them into a single image for upload, or submit separate claims. The latter seemed like the quickest solution, so I submitted two claims, one for each ticket.

The second claim has been rejected stating:

Unfortunately, your application has been turned down as we have found an identical claim on our system. If you have made a claim on behalf of another customer, you need to ensure that all the customer contact details and payment details are those of the customer who experienced the delay, otherwise this will result in a 'duplicate claim' which will be rejected. If you believe that there are mitigating circumstances, for example you are claiming on behalf of dependants or children, please resubmit your claim explaining this. You will receive a response regarding your original claim shortly.

This is despite the fact that they are for tickets with two different images and two different reference numbers. They also conflate "customer" with what I would regard as the passenger here.

When I follow the link to appeal, the first problem is that the appeal consists of a single 250-character text box. I was half-way through typing when I realised I had run out of characters.

The second problem is that the only options on that screen are buttons labelled "Reveal Appeal Claim" (whatever that means) and "Cancel". When you click on the former, it takes you back through your original claim details, but there is no way to exit it and complete the submission at the end.

Has anyone managed (recently) to navigate this appeals process successfully?

 

[MKB]

Update: Well wouldn't you know it? After creating this thread, I had a third go at the appeals process, and this time, after clicking "Reveal Appeal Claim" and going through all of the original claims screens, it presented an option to submit the appeal. So appeal now successfully submitted. They don't make this easy!

 

[robbeech]

They don't make this easy!

Why would they?

Hopefully now you've appealed it will get looked at by a human and they'll be able to understand your journey and pay out accordingly. Be prepared for more rejections though, there seems to have been an increase recently.

 

[matt]

I appealed recently and it worked first time with no issues and has since been paid.

 

[MKB]

I have worked out what went wrong on the first two attempts at appealing. There is a bug in the software that, sometimes but not always, resets one of the fields in the original claim. It's a drop-down box that I think is labelled something like "reason for original delay". If it has been reset and if you don't reselect it, you don't get an error message (as you would during the original claim submission). Instead, it allows you to move on to subsequent screens but excluding the final "Compensation" screen, from which there would be the "Submit Appeal" button.

There is also a bug with the "Ticket Number" box. The presentation of this field changes when you change the "Ticket Medium". For "eTicket/mTicket", the "Ticket Number" box becomes a "Reference Number" box, as it should. For "Touch Smartcard", it becomes "Smartcard Number", etc. The medium "Contactless" is the only option that cause the "Ticket Number" field to be removed completely. But somehow or other, I managed to select ""eTicket/mTicket" and have the "Reference Number" field vanish, and it allowed me to complete and submit the original claim without entering one! And, astonishingly, that claim has been accepted.

I now have the further problem that, in all the frustration of trying to work out how to raise the appeal, I cut and pasted the ticket reference number from the wrong line in my Delay Repay spreadsheet. There is no mechanism for updating the claim with corrected information, so it looks like I have to wait for the appeal to fail and appeal again.