Likelihood of a successful delay repay and taxi claim

[Islineclear3_1]

I hope I've posted this in the right section

Last night, I was almost stranded in London after finishing work at 8pm. All the trains between Victoria and Ashford (via Maidstone) were cancelled along with other services towards the Kent Coast. I needed to get to Bearsted.

I was advised to go to London Bridge and catch a train to Tonbridge, only to find most of the trains were cancelled. There was 1 train, starting at London Bridge P8 at 20.39 which was terminating at Tonbridge. I asked whether SouthEastern would provide me a taxi to get home to Bearsted and the answer I got was "unlikely - however, I would have to order a taxi myself, pay and claim back from SouthEastern".

Having no other choice, I got this train but got a taxi instead from Sevenoaks (which was nearer with better access to the motorway given that the smaller roads would be snowed up). The taxi fare was just shy of £80!

What are my chances of claiming this back from SouthEastern? I have a receipt from the taxi firm

 

[Watershed]

So long as you bought your ticket before you found out about any disruption, and you made reasonable efforts to ask SE to help you get home, you have a clear cut entitlement to reimbursement of your out of pocket expenses.

If you didn't do the latter (e.g. by speaking to station staff at Sevenoaks) then your claim would be liable to be reduced by any additional expense you incurred, beyond what SE would have paid. So for example if they could have arranged to bring you to a nearer station, they might only reimburse you the proportional taxi fare from that nearer station.

In any case, you will presumably have been delayed by 15+ minutes and can thus claim Delay Repay.

 

[Hadders]

I would write to SouthEastern Customer services explaining what happened and ask if they will reimburse your taxi fare. Was there any staff at Sevenoaks to ask for advice or a help point you could've used to ask how to proceed?

 

[Islineclear3_1]

So I bought my tickets in advance (last Friday).

My journey from work last night would have entailed a train from Blackheath to Victoria. These were all cancelled; therefore I took the first available train to London Bridge (around 8pm last night) and asked for advice there as I did not want to go to Victoria because nothing was running towards Ashford.

The Team Leader on duty (at London Bridge) advised me to go to Tonbridge and get a taxi. This is further than Sevenoaks and would have been more difficult to navigate by road, especially by a taxi driver unfamiliar with the route and on iced up roads. At least Sevenoaks is nearer to the M20. Therefore, I made the decision myself to get off the train at Sevenoaks rather than continue to Tonbridge

I had considered a train from Blackfriars to Otford but the taxi driver (at Sevenoaks) told me there was no taxi office at Otford and that his firm was based in Sevenoaks. This was around 21.15 last night.

Apart from a solitary train dispatch person, there was nobody at the gateline at Sevenoaks

 

[island]

I think you made things a tad more difficult in terms of reimbursement by deviating from the instructions, but it would be morally right of Southeastern to refund you in full.

 

[Islineclear3_1]

Thank you

I took a screenshot of NRE showing the cancelled trains but wanted more evidence. Looking at RTT, services to Maidstone and Ashford aren't even listed, let alone shown as cancelled so to me, these trains were pulled from the schedule much earlier in the day