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Left tickets at home, booked replacements, can originals be refunded?

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Butts

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I travelled down to the WM to take my daughter to Harry Potter at Warner Brothers new experience in Watford

We were travelling from Sandwell & Dudley to Watford Junction on two Advanced 1st Class Singles (there and back).

I had booked the tickets online at a cost of £62 in total and collected them from the machine at FKG prior to the trip. (Flew EDI to BHX and back)

Imagine my consternation when at 11pm the night before the trip I realised I had left the tickets all bar one of the seat reservations in Falkirk and here I was in Dudley. I had the booking reference and print out of the journeys etc but not the flipping tickets :oops:

A quick check of the VT website seemed to suggest if I had lost the tickets I would have to buy replacements. Had I opted for the "print at home" I could have reprinted them.....salutory lesson there !!!

A quick check on the website revealed I could replace them at a cost of £82 in total for the same journey......after midnight (no advance on day of travel) and it's up to £500 :idea: so I quickly booked replacements.

Did I do the right thing - would they have let us travel with just the booking reference details and one of the reservation tickets ????

When I got home I found the missing tickets down the side of the sofa :oops:

Further thought if I'd had the presence of mind could I have applied for a refund on the original 1st Advanced Tickets I'd left in Falkirk after I'd booked the new ones (as it was before I travelled)
 
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LexyBoy

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Nightmare!

You did do the right thing though - you would almost certainly have been charged new full fare tickets if you had travelled without the tickets.

Advance tickets are non-refundable so you'd not get a refund. Virgin are generally pretty good with customer service so I'd wager you would have had a chance of a refund if you had found the originals before travel, but as was you definitely wouldn't have been refunded.
 

Yew

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LexyBoy said:
I'd wager you would have had a chance of a refund if you had found the originals before travel, but as was you definitely wouldn't have been refunded.

For 60 quid I would b tempted to pen a letter and give it a shot though, you might get lucky. Although I'll admit it's very unlikely
 

John @ home

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I'm sorry to hear about your difficulty, Butts. Yes, I do think you did the right thing in the circumstances.
if I'd had the presence of mind could I have applied for a refund on the original 1st Advanced Tickets I'd left in Falkirk after I'd booked the new ones (as it was before I travelled)
You would not have been able to obtain a refund. Advance tickets are not refundable unless the reserved train(s) are cancelled or heavily delayed.

You would have been able to change your bookings to other tickets which had the same origin and destination. But this would not have helped in your particular case. When you change Advance tickets in this way, the new tickets say, for example, 'VALID ONLY WITH TICKET 12345', and both old and new sets of tickets must be presented together.
 

island

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You did the right thing in rebooking as you would have been liable for a full anytime single fare had you just boarded the train.

You could try to send in both sets of tickets with a very polite letter asking for the cheaper one to be refunded as a rail travel voucher. I doubt you will get anywhere but all you've got to lose is the price of the stamp.
 

34D

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For 60 quid I would b tempted to pen a letter and give it a shot though, you might get lucky. Although I'll admit it's very unlikely

I'd also do the letter. They may well make some form of gesture.
 

Butts

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Thanks for the "heads up" lads - I couldn't find the thread as someone had changed the title.....

They obviously don't write "like wot I does" :oops:

I'll give the grovelling letter a try .....put the tears on daughter would have been devastated to miss Harry Potter etc :p
 

Butts

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Thanks for the "heads up" lads - I couldn't find the thread as someone had changed the title.....

They obviously don't write "like wot I does" :oops:

I'll give the grovelling letter a try .....put the tears on daughter would have been devastated to miss Harry Potter etc :p

Wow Good Old Virgin just received £52 Rail Vouchers - well worth the price of a stamp :p
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Suprised no one picked up on this - I got a refund of £52 when I made a mistake.

Problem is I always book my tickets online and rail vouchers can't be used for that type of booking.

Can you:

a. Use them to buy a railcard-at a station

b. Give them to my Daughter

c.Use them on onboard buffets
 

DaveNewcastle

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Yes, you may use Rail Travel Vouchers (RTV) to buy tickets at a station or on board, and Yes, you can use them to buy a Railcard. I have even used them to buy East Coast 'catering vouchers' which have a value of £5 for every £4 of RTV. You can also use them to buy Oyster credit and Season Tickets.

Its not at all clear that the claim on the RTV that they are not transferrable can have any significance until the holder completes the reverse with their name. However, there is the less clear potential for a challenge if any insurance is invoked following an incident during travel and Investigators determine that a Claimant's ticket had been bought by an RTV (code W) and yet that passenger had not been issued with an RTV. [I have previously been challenged on here over my assertion that the RTV is effectively transferrable while a Ticket bought with an RTV is not. The explanation here is a potential circumstance in which the purported non-transferability of an RTV may actually have any significance - similar disputes over validity may give rise to other examples.]

They should be accepted on board by catering staff but it cannot be assured. I would not be surprised if a less-experienced person operating a trolley was unable to process an RTV. An EC cafe-bar should be able to accept it.
 
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GadgetMan

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If the £52 is accounted for on one voucher then to get the best value you need to use as close to the £52 in one transaction as you can as no change will be given for any surplus value. You can spend more than the voucher value and pay the extra using cash/cards etc.

I doubt you'd spend that sort of amount on sandwiches so probably best to buy the rail card and some tickets at a station in one transaction.
 

Butts

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If the £52 is accounted for on one voucher then to get the best value you need to use as close to the £52 in one transaction as you can as no change will be given for any surplus value. You can spend more than the voucher value and pay the extra using cash/cards etc.

I doubt you'd spend that sort of amount on sandwiches so probably best to buy the rail card and some tickets at a station in one transaction.

Fortunately its two £25 ones and a two pound one :p
 

LexyBoy

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On free travel vouchers I've had in the past the blurb said "not transferable" but the accompanying publicity said that you could give them to friends. I took this to mean that they were non-transferable once filled out, as Dave suggests.

Nice gesture from Virgin anyway.
 

Butts

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On free travel vouchers I've had in the past the blurb said "not transferable" but the accompanying publicity said that you could give them to friends. I took this to mean that they were non-transferable once filled out, as Dave suggests.

Nice gesture from Virgin anyway.

Wonder if East Coast would have been so generous ?
 

RPI

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Very good result and you did the right thing, well done! and good on Virgin as well
 
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