Less than 50% of delay repay being claimed

[cb a1]

I find Delay Repay easy to do, straightforward and very rarely have cause to complain about wrong rejections.

The sum of my delay repay is in the £thousands by now and that's despite no longer commuting about 30,000 miles a year by rail post-COVID (although I ditched having a car about a year ago, so more leisure journeys by rail).

 

[Mcr Warrior]

The sum of my delay repay is in the £thousands by now...

Certainly beats my recent paltry 63p RTV.

 

[james_the_xv]

However, since GTR updated their system where you select the trains you used and where you changed trains, I've had no rejections at all.

LNR should adopt this. I commute Coventry - MK changing at Rugby for the fast Crewe-Euston service and I haven't had a DR claim accepted on appeal yet for the 1Yxx being ~12 mins late causing a missed connection (so a ~20/25 min delay on total journey). LNR make it impossible to escalate once the appeal is rejected.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Gloag bought herself a lovely castle, although of course her rampant profiteering was out of the previous- far more restrictive and ungenerous- compensation regime.

Quite. I thought that one of her castles was bought in the mid-1990s, so she had already made loads of money even before privatisation. The second castle was in 2004, which predates most if not all Delay Repay schemes.

I am still waiting to learn who is buying castles and islands thanks to to the current arrangements as originally alleged (by somebody else).

 

[YorksLad12]

Even then at least LNER's is "one-click delay repay" where the customer's one click presumably serves as a confirmation that they were in fact delayed.

(Even on advances, I've managed come out ahead on TPE roulette with some quick thinking and an unofficial connection onto the earlier service! Although the one-click schemes might be limited to direct services, I'm not sure.)

LNER's system is marvellous and weird at the same time.

I had cause to use it on the 13th when the wires came down between Leeds and Wakefield, so we have to travel Northern to York and "change". In fact, a northbound Leeds train was diverted to York and was waiting for us on the adjacent platform. Left to my own devices I'd have caught the fast or waiting for the 1402 (I even reserved a seat), making me about 30 minutes late. But that train was there, due out five minutes later, so I boarded it. Unfortunately, it was also waiting for crew, so I eventually arrived 60 minutes late.

My one-click Delay Repay was 100% of my fare, presumably on the basis that my original train had been cancelled, and sorted before we'd reached Doncaster. But I could have arrived in London only 30 down - a 50% refund.

Edited to add that I always claim. If everybody claimed, there'd be a lot of admin and a lot of money being paid out. It might be the spur to improve things...

 

[Merle Haggard]

Quite. I thought that one of her castles was bought in the mid-1990s, so she had already made loads of money even before privatisation. The second castle was in 2004, which predates most if not all Delay Repay schemes.

She made money from an earlier privatisation - buying N.B.C. companies. Valuations as 'going concerns' and then sold off garages and bus stations to developers - which had not been valued at redevelopment prices. One bus garage sold for a sum equal that paid to the Government for the whole company.
At the planning inquiry for the sale of a bus station for redevelopment she said 'it's not the responsibility of the bus company to provide bus stations'.
Sums it up really. Presumably the Scottish castle she bought was 'Dunrobin Castle'
All allegedly

 

[Krokodil]

It might be the spur to improve things...

I admire your optimism

 

[cmovcc]

the delay repay claim websites seem to be deliberately awful

the "Tracsis Travel Compensation Services Ltd" one is the worst, the giant text boxes have one very small area you have to click in to activate them

and it requires something like 3 captchas to submit

for my last claim had to step through one of them in the browser's debugger to see which of the ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY form fields it didn't like, because all it told me was:

"Error, please edit and try again"

www.tracsistcs.com doesn't work (gets stuck in a redirect loop), which I think says it all

 

[zero]

I have been refunded by a bus company when the bus didn't turn up and I already had a valid ticket. While waiting for the next bus I sent an angry email to their customer services as I was not able to do anything else during that time, and they replied asking for my bank details, they gave me 50% refund on a return ticket like rail DR.

Some TOCs appear to hold that belief as well - LNER, XC for two.

Well LNER and XC have paid me DR on the full amount of multiple tickets without me needing to argue. With XC I even submitted a combination of e-ticket + paper + ranger. I hope you managed to get the correct amount of compensation on appeal

 

[Egg Centric]

Goodness knows. Some sort of assumption I guess, e.g. assuming people always follow booked itineraries even on walk up tickets on the basis that it'll even out with people who don't follow the itinerary and don't get delayed vs don't follow it and do get delayed.

Indeed contrary to what was said I'm astonished it's anything like this high. If I were to guess before this figure I'd have put it at under 15% of eligible claims made - at least in terms of journeys. But I guess a £186.40 claim accounts for a lot of 63p claims.

 

[43066]

Isn't 47% a reasonable increase on the last time this was reported? Anyway the RMT rhetoric is generally around 'evil private rail companies' so anything that fits that narrative they'll report on either if it might actually have longer-term staff consequences.

Obviously it's a shame for those who are eligible and don't claim and perhaps it could be less complex, but its unlikely to be 80%+ for a range of reasons.

Agreed re. the rhetoric. However the core RMT demand appears to be for simpler ticketing and a more centralised and effective delay repay scheme. Neither seem to be unreasonable aspirations, and both are often advocated for on here!

Personally I’ve claimed once or twice when travelling long distances on a priv ticket (last time with GWR, which was easy and smooth to do and resulted in £5 or so). My last big-ish delay of around 60 mins was LNER who I’m fortunate to get free travel with, so no claim there. I don’t bother claiming against my season ticket, as it’s only going to result in pennies, and it’s thankfully extremely rare to be delayed enough on the relatively short journeys I use it for.

 

[DC1989]

Not at all surprised by this. They make the whole thing unnecessarily long winded so people just think 'sod it'

I've only had to claim it twice and both times it was rejected and I had to appeal. Even this it was a cut and dried case of the train being cancelled. I can see why many don't bother - in fact 47% is high!

 

[trainophile]

I look upon the £1.82s and 98ps, and of course the occasional bigger amounts, as a small off-set towards the extra cost of having to book refundable hotels until they get the strike situation sorted out. Travelodge for example is about £6 a night extra for a refundable booking, which is pretty much par for the general course.

 

[markymark2000]

The thing is operators managed by First, and also Northern I've now found out, are shocking as they demand you sign up to their system and then become very hostile when you email and insist on a manual delay repay. As someone else has said, this login is separate to the normal account for the TOC. I refuse to sign up to it myself, I force them to process it manually and will continue to do so until such time that the industry realises that it is not acceptable to force people to sign up to their data mining system to claim compensation that they are entitled to. I recently asked the Office of Rail and Road

My first email they insisted the only way to claim was on the online system. In insisted they do it via email. They then asked me for all of the details, the same details that I had given in the first email (it's not my first rodeo) and then they lost my email for a month. Then tried the whole 29 minute delay lark to not pay up the full amount. I argued but it took me about 2 months to get £4.40 delay repay, all because they are incompetent.


The other issue is that almost none of the systems work with split tickets and as they are becoming more common, why haven't systems been updated to better support split tickets? Claiming multiple passengers? Good luck doing that without doing multiple claims and going through the form however many times because I've found the systems don't like claiming for more than just yourself.

Then you have stupid operators such as TFW demanding screenshots of the barcode but then refusing screenshots in their app so you can't get a photo of the code. What? So to claim, you want me to take a photo but you refuse to let me take that photo. It couldn't be much more fixed against the passenger.

Delays with bus replacement are automatically rejected because somehow it is beyond the railway industry to get proper bus replacement data despite some buses having live tracking via driver apps or ticket machines (Best is when it's First. First buses, first ticket machines, on contract to First Travel Solutions, on behalf of First Ran GWR. Yet somehow despite all being ran by First, no one can work out how to put data together so bus stats link to railway systems).


There are so many ways in which the system works against customers and so it is no surprise that many do not bother claiming delay repay, especially when the train operator comes back at you claiming that you weren't as delayed or that they weren't the operator to cause your delay or that your issue was caused by an act of god and so you're not entitled or whatever other stupid reason they come up with. It's just not worth the faff and those that 'claim' mostly are when it's automatic or those who claim as a point of principal.

 

[Adrian1980uk]

Part of this is knowledge of being eligible, then claiming and actually getting it.
I've claimed it twice this year but I could not believe I had to screenshot the ticket on the app to upload it to the claim website (not the main site), then type the code and tell them how delayed my train was - I'm honest but you mean to say the TOC didn't know!!!
I've got the app, the advanced ticket tells the time I travelled on and surely there could be a button I just click

 

[Bletchleyite]

The thing is operators managed by First, and also Northern I've now found out, are shocking as they demand you sign up to their system and then become very hostile when you email and insist on a manual delay repay. As someone else has said, this login is separate to the normal account for the TOC. I refuse to sign up to it myself, I force them to process it manually and will continue to do so until such time that the industry realises that it is not acceptable to force people to sign up to their data mining system to claim compensation that they are entitled to.

Data mining system? It's no more one than this Forum is.

It's also probably the best of the systems in terms of ease of entry.

 

[markymark2000]

I've claimed it twice this year but I could not believe I had to screenshot the ticket on the app to upload it to the claim website (not the main site), then type the code and tell them how delayed my train was - I'm honest but you mean to say the TOC didn't know!!!

It's funny though as they soon know if you click 2hr+ but the delay was only 15 min, they are quick enough to tell you that the delay wasn't as long and you aren't entitled to that much money.

then type the code

How have they not worked this out yet? With AI and systems being able to get text from photos as good as it is, they should be able to get the code without us typing it in. I'd also say, if they have the QR code, that will give them the rest of the details because it shows the conductor all of the information on their machine and so why can't that be applied to delay repay? Give them the QR code and that brings up the details or failing that, ticket code which again should give them them a good number of ticket details.

Data mining system? It's no more one than this Forum is.

The forum is very different, no one is forced to sign up. TOCs attempt to force people to sign up for accounts to claim compensation that they are entitled and they have to process it manually and without signup if requested. With data breaches as they are, I want less and less accounts, certainly less accounts that I rarely use (I've used GWR delay repay twice I think, that's it. I live up north, I am unlikely to use GWR enough to justify an account. another operators such as TFW though, I may make enough use of their delay repay to justify an account). Some people in the world are more than happy to have their details in every single website that exists, others prefer to be a bit more careful and not sign up to hundreds of sites that I will only use once.

 

[futureA]

One of my trips from Manchester to London developed a 1 hour delay en route.
But I didn’t claim delay repay because I wasn’t in a rush and I enjoyed taking the slow scenic route around Birmingham.

 

[156421]

Special mention to the CrossCountry delay repay webform (which I accessed through a mobile browser - may be different on a computer) for asking for a ticket photo (fair enough) then setting the max. file size to something like 4 MB which conveniently is less than the file size of modern smart phone camera photos. Finding and downloading an app to adjust the file size took about 30 minutes (almost 50% of the original delay time).

 

[156421]

this login is separate to the normal account for the TOC.

For AWC and Northern it confuses web browsers saved passwords as the web browser sees it as the same login and will only save one of the passwords.

 

[Purple Train]

I developed my current strategy of not claiming after one of the first journeys I did after finishing shielding. On the outward journey, everything ran to time. On the return journey, everything ran to time until some kind of infrastructure failure meant that trains were unable to call at my home station in the down direction. This meant going west and doubling back, so I ended up 40 minutes late as the up journey was also delayed by 15 minutes. While the Elizabeth Line's threshold is half an hour, I found the website so confusing that I figured that trying to claim compensation for that set of circumstances would be a losing battle. I was sorely tempted to claim after my experience with Transport for Wales, but, given I ended up in a position where I could be disputed as either 57 or 64 minutes late, I again decided to save my energy.

 

[YorksLad12]

My regular train got me home exactly one hour late last night. It was 45 minutes down by the time it arrived (flooding near Taunton), and I could, reasonably, have tried for one of the others in the interim. I chose to wait and be sure of a seat (which I got). Am tempted to put a claim in, just to see what happens...

Update: just went to the XC website, and the Delay Repay form is unavailable due to a "technical issue". I knew I shouldn't have posted first

 

[Oxfordblues]

Avanti have found a neat way of avoiding Delay Repay. Today's 1M08 arrived at Preston at 11:01 63 late (full refund for single fare). It was promptly cancelled, renumbered 1M09 and departed at 11:08, just 8 minutes late (no refund). You've got to admire their chutzpah!

 

[jfollows]

Avanti have found a neat way of avoiding Delay Repay. Today's 1M08 arrived at Preston at 11:01 63 late (full refund for single fare). It was promptly cancelled, renumbered 1M09 and departed at 11:08, just 8 minutes late (no refund). You've got to admire their chutzpah!

It may complicate things, to the extent that some people who could claim will give up, but it shouldn't materially affect anything. Delay Repay is paid on the delay to an individual's journey based on their arrival time at destination and not the reporting number of the train used to get there. However this change will probably confuse the "automated" processing of claims, causing them to be rejected, and only by getting a human being to look at the claim will they then be paid, so some people will give up at the first hurdle I expect.

 

[Gaelan]

Avanti have found a neat way of avoiding Delay Repay. Today's 1M08 arrived at Preston at 11:01 63 late (full refund for single fare). It was promptly cancelled, renumbered 1M09 and departed at 11:08, just 8 minutes late (no refund). You've got to admire their chutzpah!

You should still get delay repay - your service was cancelled, you had to travel on a later service, and you'll ultimately arrive over an hour late. That counts.

 

[AlterEgo]

Avanti have found a neat way of avoiding Delay Repay. Today's 1M08 arrived at Preston at 11:01 63 late (full refund for single fare). It was promptly cancelled, renumbered 1M09 and departed at 11:08, just 8 minutes late (no refund). You've got to admire their chutzpah!

That doesn't avoid Delay Repay at all.

 

[1Q18]

Avanti have found a neat way of avoiding Delay Repay. Today's 1M08 arrived at Preston at 11:01 63 late (full refund for single fare). It was promptly cancelled, renumbered 1M09 and departed at 11:08, just 8 minutes late (no refund). You've got to admire their chutzpah!

That’s not how delay repay works… any passengers who had been travelling on 1M08 are still delayed by over an hour even though they are now theoretically on the train an hour behind, so they’ll still be entitled to delay repay.

 

[Horizon22]

Avanti have found a neat way of avoiding Delay Repay. Today's 1M08 arrived at Preston at 11:01 63 late (full refund for single fare). It was promptly cancelled, renumbered 1M09 and departed at 11:08, just 8 minutes late (no refund). You've got to admire their chutzpah!

It doesn’t work like that. 1M08 was cancelled at Preston and 1M09 started at Preston. This might have been for a range of operational reasons, but the passenger has still be delayed on arrival to their destination, and should claim accordingly.

 

[Bikeman78]

It may complicate things, to the extent that some people who could claim will give up, but it shouldn't materially affect anything. Delay Repay is paid on the delay to an individual's journey based on their arrival time at destination and not the reporting number of the train used to get there. However this change will probably confuse the "automated" processing of claims, causing them to be rejected, and only by getting a human being to look at the claim will they then be paid, so some people will give up at the first hurdle I expect.

1M08 was restarted on time at Preston as 1T08 with a fresh unit and Crew. I wonder where the set came from? Meanwhile 1M09 never left Glasgow.

 

[Merle Haggard]

The same happens on Cross Country at 5th New St axis - if a succession of trains towards there are running late by around 30 minutes the first drops back to the next departure from New Street and so on. This changes the destination as well, and so inconveniences passengers already on the train, but it contains the delay and so passengers beyond New St have a train that runs closer to on time; obviously there is one cancellation beyond New St but thereafter everything is back to time (ish).
Don't have an opinion about whether it should happen, but New St is where XC trains empty out and re-load. Not quite the same at Preston, but there is a fair amount of joining & alighting there.