Rights in the case of delay

[tehmarks]

Is anyone able to concisely summarise what rights the passenger has with regards to re-routing in the case of delay with reference to where they are defined? I have a patchwork understanding from reading scores of threads on here, but I'm struggling to understand the whole picture.

I had a 3h delay in Spring which would have been significantly shorter had I been able to be re-routed on another operator's train, and at the time I wasn't aware I had any right to demand re-routing.

 

[redreni]

Under the Rail Passengers' Rights and Obligations Regulation 2010 (a UK statutory instrument which is part of retained EU law) you have the rights set out in the Passenger Rights and Obligations Regulation EC 1371/2007.

If faced with a delay over 60 minutes you have the right to choose between (a) a refund, (b) re-routing at the earliest opportunity or (c) re-routing at a later date at your convenience.

Not knowing your rights at the time can be a problem because if you don't ask to be re-routed at the earliest opportunity, the TOC can say it was unaware you wished to exercise that option. (It may also claim 'at the earliest opportunity' doesn't mean at the earliest opportunity and that it can re-route you on its own next available service compliantly with the Regulation, but that's nonsense in the circumstances you describe, of course).

If you re-routed yourself (i.e. bought a new ticket) to avoid a longer delay you might still have a case to be reimbursed your expenses because they failed to re-route you (but not if you had already accepted a refundof your original ticket, because you can't have your cake and eat it).

If you just sucked up the delay, I don't think you have a claim for compensation of any sort beyond whatever Delay Repay or passenger charter rights you may have had.

 

[All Line Rover]

Good luck relying on Reg 1371/2007, though. Most TOCs deny its existence or application.

 

[tehmarks]

Thank you, and apologies for the slow reply. I assume that it's the delay-causing TOC who are responsible for providing this? So, in the case where the TOC in question have no station staff presence (Northern were the cause of my 2h wait at Preston, for example), that means a phone call to their customer service number followed by sorting yourself out and claiming it back?

I'm very happy to apply my rights as they exist on paper; sadly as a self-employed person I'm quite well-acquainted with the legal avenues to recovering money, and I'm very happy to engage in the process when necessary.

 

[rocrat]

If you call any TOC and quote PRO (passenger rights and obligations as above), they will almost uniformly try to tell you that NRCOT limits your rights.

Sometimes it is best to request permission to travel (on their recorded line) as per your rights to re-routing and then simply get on with it, regardless of what they say. This covers you in the event someone tries to offer you a penalty fare etc., as you can simply SAR them for the phone call.

 

[redreni]

Contacting them on social media can be a useful way of getting their response in writing, which avoids having to SAR them for the recording of the phone call.

As you'll probably appreciate, when a passenger is delayed by over 60 minutes and the delay is longer than it would otherwise be because of a TOC restriction on the ticket, TOCs in Britain tend not to comply with their PRO obligation to re-route passengers at the earliest opportunity on another TOC, unless of course general ticket acceptance is arranged with that other TOC.

If ticket acceptance is arranged, fine. If ticket acceptance is not arranged, the purpose of contacting the TOC is mainly to establish that you asked them to re-route you at the earliest opportunity and they refused, which is an important piece of evidence to have in your possession before incurring extra costs in re-routing yourself.

I wouldn't suggest travelling on a ticket that is invalid because of a TOC restriction and then trying to argue against, or seek reimbursement of, a penalty fare or Anytime fare charged on board. Instead, I would suggest asking the relevant TOC to re-route you at the earliest opportunity and then, once you have evidence that they refused, re-route yourself by buying the cheapest available walk-up or last-minute Advance ticket. The idea of this is to be able to demonstrate you took reasonable steps to minimise any out-of-pocket expenses you incurred because of their failure to re-route you. Also, do not request a refund on the original ticket, because then you'd have chosen option (a) - a refund, and would not therefore be entitled to option (b) - rerouting at the earliest opportunity.

If the cheapest available ticket for re-routing purposes is a walk-up fare, there is an argument for boarding and then seeking out the guard and asking permission to travel on your existing TOC-restricted ticket. The advantage of this is you might get a guard who will just let you off (on a discretionary basis rather than because they're correctly applying PRO, but the result is the same), and if they don't let you off they'd probably be willing sell you the cheapest available ticket (i.e. off-peak where valid, with a Railcard discount if you're entitled to one) if you approached them and explained the situation.

But the risk is you may end up paying a premium because you boarded without a valid ticket, and then when you try to claim the money back you're vulnerable to the allegation that your claim is for more than the costs you should reasonably have incurred in the circumstances. If you board without buying a new ticket and just sit down, it could also look like you were hoping not to be checked and thus travelling without a valid ticket hoping to avoid detection, which is not something PRO entitles passengers to do, even if another TOC has failed to abide by its PRO obligations.

 

[Watershed]

Thank you, and apologies for the slow reply. I assume that it's the delay-causing TOC who are responsible for providing this?

That's right.

So, in the case where the TOC in question have no station staff presence (Northern were the cause of my 2h wait at Preston, for example), that means a phone call to their customer service number followed by sorting yourself out and claiming it back?

That's one option, but I would simply contact them on social media as it's most likely to result in a quick response, and you then have evidence in writing to either show you were given permission to travel on an alternative route/TOC (if questioned during the journey), or that this was refused and hence you had to buy a new ticket to vindicate your PRO rights.

I'm very happy to apply my rights as they exist on paper; sadly as a self-employed person I'm quite well-acquainted with the legal avenues to recovering money, and I'm very happy to engage in the process when necessary.

Yes, unfortunately this is often necessary to get recalcitrant TOCs to pay up. They almost always fold when faced with a (relatively modest) Court claim form, though.

If you call any TOC and quote PRO (passenger rights and obligations as above), they will almost uniformly try to tell you that NRCOT limits your rights.

Sometimes it is best to request permission to travel (on their recorded line) as per your rights to re-routing and then simply get on with it, regardless of what they say. This covers you in the event someone tries to offer you a penalty fare etc., as you can simply SAR them for the phone call.

Unfortunately, unless you are actually given that permission, you are taking somewhat of a risk if you simply travel on another TOC (when on an Advance or TOC-restricted ticket which doesn't permit that operator).

It is safer, though clearly more cumbersome, to pay for a new ticket as necessary, and then claim this back from the TOC at fault afterwards.

 

[Haywain]

So, in the case where the TOC in question have no station staff presence (Northern were the cause of my 2h wait at Preston, for example), that means a phone call to their customer service number followed by sorting yourself out and claiming it back?

Did you speak to anyone at Preston at the time? That is the obvious first step, regardless of which train company employs them.

 

[robbeech]

What we must remember is the railway has a short, medium and long term goal (currently, who knows what the future holds in reality) of hostility and resistance towards passengers.

The regulations as written can be changed at the drop of a hat, so I rather suspect that as we start to quote them more and more as operators ignore them we’ll find they are stealthily changed removing or at the very least reducing the rights of passengers.
We saw it with delay repay, published timetable of the day randomly appeared which left passengers with tickets and itineraries they’d booked in good faith without their (legally due imo) compensation and in some cases stranded in locations with nobody willing to assist.
We then saw a further tightening of the screw where published timetable of the day was scrapped in favour of just being allowed to change the timetable willy nilly as and when they feel like it to remove rights further.

The railway has no interest in conveying passengers and has no real world regulation to stick to that forces them to do so but at the same time it can command and demand alterations to the very regulation it has been ignoring to allow it to fall into place with how it currently behaves.

It’s like the railway law version of a desire path. They do what they want until someone rewrites the rule book.

So in essence, it’s all well and good quoting all these rules, but if the railway doesn’t want to follow them, it won’t and there’s isn’t really anything you can do. So few passengers have the knowledge and not many really have the financial means to risk taking it far enough to get what they’re legally entitled to. I’d say we’re right on the cusp of the PRO being amended to silence those pesky passengers exercising their rights.
This is the railway in 2024.

 

[redreni]

So in essence, it’s all well and good quoting all these rules, but if the railway doesn’t want to follow them, it won’t and there’s isn’t really anything you can do. So few passengers have the knowledge and not many really have the financial means to risk taking it far enough to get what they’re legally entitled to. I’d say we’re right on the cusp of the PRO being amended to silence those pesky passengers exercising their rights.
This is the railway in 2024.

I'm not sure I follow this line of argument.

If very few people have the knowledge, the means and the patience to re-route themselves at their own expense when TOCs refuse to re-route them, and to get the compensation they are due, then why would that result in the PRO Regulations being amended? The TOCs can just continue to just make it difficult for people and then cough up at the last minute if needs be to avoid going to court, as it does currently.

Don't underestimate the difficulty of getting legislation changed, especially in ways that Ministers are likely to regard as politically difficult and potentially vote-losing. If they could say "this is costing us a fortune" and had evidence to back it up, I'm sure they could eventually do it, but I don't think they will do it to shut down a handful of people making small claims against them.

Even if I'm wrong, that would be no reason for those of us who do have the knowledge, the means and the patience to refrain from asserting our rights. It serves no purpose to preserve a right by not exercising it. What good is a right that goes unexercised?