I agree. It is good to be given the choice. Their is nothing more frustrating then to suffer a severe delay and then for the compensation to be such as amount whereby it was not even worth claiming. Even a single free journey, if used correctly, could be of the value of 100% of the delay journey concerned.
Personally I think that delay repay claims should be such as the minimum a customer should receive is £5. I am not saying that if the amount of the claim is less then this the customer should not be allowed to claim. Rather, I am saying that if the value of the claim is less then this then the TOC should have to give £5 to mitigate for the delay.
Hmm. This probably would cause problems for commuter TOCs as
MikeWh has suggested, particularly in the London area where PAYG is king.
On the other hand I would argue that, while for delays of an hour or less compensation should usually not be more than the single fare for the delayed journey, there
is a case for compensation (well) over and above this for delays of over an hour - particularly if it includes a period on a stationary train without lighting, toilets, air con, water etc.
Recall the incident at Clapham Junction a while ago with people trapped in crowded trains for three, four hours, often despite being metres away from station platforms. Many received somewhere in the region of £3 - which they rightly considered insulting in relation to the amount of their time that was wasted and the conditions they were in. Forcing more generous compensation payouts for situations such as this might galvanise TOCs into improving crisis handling, spending less time fannying around when deciding whether to de-train or not, or retrofit backup power for hotel facilities so pax at least have somewhere to go to the toilet.
I still believe that automatic scaled compensation à la the new C2C system is the way forward. Right now it seems certain TOCs take "under 30 minutes late" as a target, to the passenger's detriment when trains regularly arrive ten, twenty, twenty-five minutes late. Right time should mean right time.