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Season ticket refund

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infobleep

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Unfortunately the admin fee is only being waived for non-season tickets. Not sure of the logic, but I'd equally hazard a guess that it doesn't cover the costs involved for some TOCs when it comes to having to change their entire system for handling refunds, given the volume and legwork involved compared to refunds processed through Ticket Offices.
Don't many of the refunds need to be processed externally anyway as they are over a set amount that a ticket office couldn't authorise?

Either way you're probably right about the charge not covering their costs.
 
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CyrusWuff

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Don't many of the refunds need to be processed externally anyway as they are over a set amount that a ticket office couldn't authorise?
It depends on individual TOC policies. At my old TOC, refunds were done by the Team Leader once or twice a week on a separate shift. At my current TOC, they were processed through Accounts until we replaced our TIS with one that allows electronic refund authorisation (providing card details were captured when the refund was entered).
 

tomwills98

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Unfortunately the admin fee is only being waived for non-season tickets. Not sure of the logic, but I'd equally hazard a guess that it doesn't cover the costs involved for some TOCs when it comes to having to change their entire system for handling refunds, given the volume and legwork involved compared to refunds processed through Ticket Offices.

TfW and Scotrail are waiving the £10.00 admin fee on season tickets at requests from Welsh Parliament and Holyrood so no admin fee charged on anything.
 

VauxhallandI

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GA emailed me today to say that they will call me for my card number “soon”. Seems a labour intensive process.

Maybe this episode might encourage the railway to upgrade the the twentieth century
 

Wallsendmag

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GA emailed me today to say that they will call me for my card number “soon”. Seems a labour intensive process.

Maybe this episode might encourage the railway to upgrade the the twentieth century
Under normal conditions where staff can work in offices the current processes are fine. You have to understand this is hopefully a once in a hundred year event. There are some very unusual workarounds being used to satisfy the flood of refunds that are taking place.
 

Wallsendmag

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All right I'll ask the question another way, how much tax payer money would you like the TOCs to spend preparing for something that happens once every 100 years? How do you write the business case for that?
 

VauxhallandI

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All right I'll ask the question another way, how much tax payer money would you like the TOCs to spend preparing for something that happens once every 100 years? How do you write the business case for that?

Does everything have to be black and white?

It’s a poor set up, the whole industry has poor IT. It needs to improve, the system should better fullstop so in situations like this it can operate better naturally.

It’s not features built in just for pandemics, it’s fall back systems or work around or back up systems that are better than what they have.

As I’ve said before I can wait but they are not immune from criticism.
 

gazr

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Full marks to GWR (even though they charged the 10 pounds admin fee)...Submitted season ticket refund online 5/5 and received refund back to card payment today.
 

gtat

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Full marks to GWR (even though they charged the 10 pounds admin fee)...Submitted season ticket refund online 5/5 and received refund back to card payment today.

How much was that for? I'm still waiting on mine from 17/4. Although it was for a refund of approximately £7k, so perhaps the high amount means it needs to go over some additional hurdles.
 
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gazr

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How much was that for? I'm still waiting on mine from 17/4. Although it was for a refund of approximately £7k, so perhaps the high amount means it needs to go over some additional hurdles.

It was only £113! Hoping you get your refund soon.
 

johntea

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This has probably been answered a million times so apologies but...

My annual ticket (WY MCard but Harrogate Zone 6 so technically a rail ticket product rather than a WY MCard) started on 1 Jan 2020 to pay the 2019 price, when taking a refund into account they deduct the cost of 5 monthly tickets if say I gave it up on 1 June (I think?!)

Would the monthly tickets be calculated as the 2019 prices or the 2020 prices?
 

alistairlees

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This has probably been answered a million times so apologies but...

My annual ticket (WY MCard but Harrogate Zone 6 so technically a rail ticket product rather than a WY MCard) started on 1 Jan 2020 to pay the 2019 price, when taking a refund into account they deduct the cost of 5 monthly tickets if say I gave it up on 1 June (I think?!)

Would the monthly tickets be calculated as the 2019 prices or the 2020 prices?
The first one should be at the 2019 price, the rest at 2020 prices.
 

Haywain

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A true rail product would be calculated as a 5 monthly ticket at the 2019 price.
 

infobleep

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All right I'll ask the question another way, how much tax payer money would you like the TOCs to spend preparing for something that happens once every 100 years? How do you write the business case for that?
If everyone had laptops at the TOCs would refunds me possible more easily or do they need access to paper records?
 

37047

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I'm still waiting for mine from Great Northern. Slightly complicated as I originally bought a paper annual season ticket from my local ticket office but had it transferred it to my Key smartcard 3 days before our office closed. As such, I no longer had the paper ticket and was also unable to use the Key online refund option. I filled in an online refund form as best I could, heard nothing for 4 weeks, so contacted Customer Services, who asked me to fill in the form again. Almost another 4 weeks on and still no sign of my £1200-ish although I can see that the ticket is now marked as 'blocked' on the smartcard when I check my account. They haven't contacted me to ask for payment details. I don't want to hassle them as I'm sure they're very busy but I'm starting to worry that I'm going to lose out on a significant sum of money...
 

717001

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I don't want to hassle them as I'm sure they're very busy but I'm starting to worry that I'm going to lose out on a significant sum of money...
The Great Northern website https://www.greatnorthernrail.com/t...y/coronavirus-information/coronavirus-refunds now says:
If you have not heard from us within 28 days of submitted a refund application, please get in touch and we will investigate your claim. If you applied at a ticket office, please provide as much information as you can, including a copy of any paperwork issued by the ticket office. If you applied using the web form, or other online service, please quote your reference number.
If you are on Twitter, it may be quicker to contact them that way, once you reach the 28 day point. NB Once amount and payment details are sorted, they say it can still take "up to 20 working days" to receive the money.
 

maniacmartin

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I bought my ticket from a Southern station and submitted the claim online for a refund (with picture of the season cut up). After a few weeks, I got a phone call from Thameslink giving me the refund value and asking for my long card number. Another week or so later, the refund appeared, from West Anglia Great Northern on my bank statement! Followed by a paper letter another week later saying the refund had been processed.

So don't give up hope, they are working through the backlog!
 

SWT_USER

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Finally received a call today from SWR to check my details, I was informed they then pass this on to the finance team to process the refund, hopefully I won't have as long to wait for the finance team to process it as I did for the initial call!
 

arb

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I got a phone call from Thameslink giving me the refund value and asking for my long card number.
Finally received a call today from SWR to check my details
Surely this process breaks every single rule about how to protect yourself from phishing/fraud attacks? You get cold-called from somebody who claims they work for a train company, they say you're due a lot of money, and you just need to give them your card details in order to receive it. Is that really the best that train companies can do? Thanks for the heads-up as to what might happen - I would probably have just laughed and put the phone down if I'd received a call like this! I've been assuming I'll get a cheque in the post because they (Greater Anglia in my case) didn't ask for any card details/account numbers when I submitted my claim.
 

SWT_USER

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Surely this process breaks every single rule about how to protect yourself from phishing/fraud attacks? You get cold-called from somebody who claims they work for a train company, they say you're due a lot of money, and you just need to give them your card details in order to receive it. Is that really the best that train companies can do? Thanks for the heads-up as to what might happen - I would probably have just laughed and put the phone down if I'd received a call like this! I've been assuming I'll get a cheque in the post because they (Greater Anglia in my case) didn't ask for any card details/account numbers when I submitted my claim.

I agree, it's not ideal, the best I could do was check that it was a genuine SWR number (which it was). Unfortunately they are only willing to refund to the original payment method, and I'm waiting on over 1k so I didn't really have any choice but to go with it.
 

Haywain

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Surely this process breaks every single rule about how to protect yourself from phishing/fraud attacks? You get cold-called from somebody who claims they work for a train company, they say you're due a lot of money, and you just need to give them your card details in order to receive it. Is that really the best that train companies can do? Thanks for the heads-up as to what might happen - I would probably have just laughed and put the phone down if I'd received a call like this! I've been assuming I'll get a cheque in the post because they (Greater Anglia in my case) didn't ask for any card details/account numbers when I submitted my claim.
It's difficult to deal with - they don't ask for card details when you submit the refund as it is not permissible to keep them in written form, therefore the next best thing is to call and take the details over the phone for manual entry. You will not be asked for the CVV number though, so you should be safe from payments being taken from your card.
 

35B

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It's difficult to deal with - they don't ask for card details when you submit the refund as it is not permissible to keep them in written form, therefore the next best thing is to call and take the details over the phone for manual entry. You will not be asked for the CVV number though, so you should be safe from payments being taken from your card.
When I claimed a refund from LNER through the ticket office here at Grantham, I'm pretty sure that the form I filled out included the card number - which is what I was refunded onto within a week or so.
 

Haywain

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When I claimed a refund from LNER through the ticket office here at Grantham, I'm pretty sure that the form I filled out included the card number - which is what I was refunded onto within a week or so.
Indeed, but there are very specific requirements about how that form can be stored and who can have access to it, and we've worked to move away from doing that as it is far from ideal.
 
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Can you not just ask the person calling you to confirm something nobody else would know - ticket stations at either end? I had the same situation with EasyJet, and I asked them to confirm the flight details to prove who they were.
 

maniacmartin

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I was pretty sure the call was genuine in my case as the caller told me how much money I would be getting, and it tallied with the rough amount I was expecting (and my season doesn't start around the start of the calendar year so any 'guess' would likely be wrong.)
 

arb

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Yes, there are plenty of way to check the call is genuine - asking for some information that only the train company would know (as mentioned above), or even calling them back yourself (to a number on their website, not one they give you in the call). I'm just amazed that any company these days would make their default position exactly mimic what a fraudster would do - each time a company does this it reinforces in the customer's mind that such a situation is normal and safe - increasing the chance that one day they will get caught out by a phishing attack.

With regards to asking for the card number when making the claim and not being allowed to store these details, they (Great Northern at least) ask for payment details with online Delay Repay claims (or they did at some point in the past - I admit I've gone back to the paper form in recent times because it's *so* much simpler to fill in than an online claim, so I don't know if they still do). I don't see what the difference is between an online Delay Repay claim and an online season ticket refund claim in this regard.

As to whether asking for start/end stations on the ticket, or the amount of the refund, is enough to verify the caller is genuine: if your tcket is to an obscure destination and bought on a random date in the middle of the year then maybe it is. I think I'd be asking for something like the photocard number or ticket number as well. If I were a fraudster, I'd be calling random numbers within a city just outside London, quoting a season ticket from there to London Terminals, and quoting a price/refund amount assuming the ticket was bought on 31st December. I'll be right some of the time, and if I'm making 60-second anonymous phone calls to try and con people then I only need a tiny success rate for it to be worthwhile.
 
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