I find this really bizarre. All our stations are locked up by padlocks that every single employee has access to. And all doors use the same standard key.
Quite often on our very early/very late turns we have to let ourselves into the station.
I’m really sorry this happened to you. As mentioned above, minimum should be a full refund on your tickets for that evening.
The Guard did say this to us .. something about a 16 lock?? However, the padlock on the gates that exit to the Car Park wasn't the padlock that she was expecting.
In terms of compensation .. I don't know where Northern will go with this. Following the initial calls on Monday I have received an email on Tuesday asking me to send the tickets over to them.
In addition, there was a delivery on Tuesday of some flowers .. which kind of says they are apologetic .. but doesn't really resonate much with me as a flower delivery neither explains what happened nor rectifies the situation that we were put in.
I am sure at some point there will be further communication and I will share this once received.