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Should you keep records of journeys as evidence to prove Delay Repay claims/defend against accusations of fraud?

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philthetube

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Mod Note: Posts #1 - #13 originally in this thread

Anyone making a lot of journeys and claims should consider keeping a log of all journeys made just in case.
 
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robbeech

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Anyone making a lot of journeys and claims should consider keeping a log of all journeys made just in case.
Indeed, it is a shame one should have to go to the efforts of doing this just incase in 12 months time an operator decides they've got an opportunity on a cracking little earner. I'm not suggesting this is what is happening here but, given the information we see here, and what we know about how the TOCs go about their daily business, it is POSSIBLE for them to do so and get away with it.
 

SteveM70

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Anyone making a lot of journeys and claims should consider keeping a log of all journeys made just in case.
Indeed, although in my case during the annus especially horribilis that was Northern in 2018, the sole reason at the time was to keep a record of all the claims so I could make sure they had responded to all of them. In total I had over 80 delay repay claims that year (all of them valid and eventually honoured, some after protracted discussion).
 

MotCO

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Anyone making a lot of journeys and claims should consider keeping a log of all journeys made just in case.

But is this 'evidence'? Unless you have a ticket for a certain train, then how can you prove that you caught a train which was delayed? This is particulaly the case for season tickets and Anytime tickets - there is no requirement to specify the train you are hoping to catch when you buy the ticket, and with a season ticket you can go up and down the line all day long!

Is it feasible for guards or ticket line staff to hand out 'certificates' to confirm your train was delayed?

Given that neither the passenger nor TOC can effectively prove that a passenger did or did not travel on a delayed train, how can this be enforced?
 

robbeech

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Given that neither the passenger nor TOC can effectively prove that a passenger did or did not travel on a delayed train, how can this be enforced?
It is enforced by the TOCs rejecting claims, and threatening prosecution for fraudulent claims where they think they have an opportunity of increased profit. It is backed up by the legal system frequently doing nothing about it and siding with the TOCs. As they get away with it, they'll continue to do so.

If the TOCs don't like the system they should push to change the rules, but at the moment, they are not pushing to change the rules and are getting away with threatening people (and in some cases getting away with some form of prosecution). On the flip side, there will be orders of magnitude more people trying it on with the TOCs so they will lose out overall, but that is not the fault of the genuine passengers who are the ones penalised.
 

NorthWestRover

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I have only applied for Delay Repay twice, both times for Northern when it was over an hour as you get the complimentary pass. The first one was on a normal priced ticket and that went through no hassle. The second one was on a 10p ticket and they initially rejected the claim, but then allowed it with not much argument. I wonder if they reject claims on effectively free tickets as a matter of course as a fair percentage of people will then not bother.
 

Fawkes Cat

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Anyone making a lot of journeys and claims should consider keeping a log of all journeys made just in case.
But is this 'evidence'? Unless you have a ticket for a certain train, then how can you prove that you caught a train which was delayed? This is particulaly the case for season tickets and Anytime tickets - there is no requirement to specify the train you are hoping to catch when you buy the ticket, and with a season ticket you can go up and down the line all day long!

Is it feasible for guards or ticket line staff to hand out 'certificates' to confirm your train was delayed?

Given that neither the passenger nor TOC can effectively prove that a passenger did or did not travel on a delayed train, how can this be enforced?
Yes, it's evidence. For the civil courts (where the case might end up if the railway sued to get overpaid delay repay back), the legal standard of proof is the balance of probability - that is, what's more likely than not. Until and unless things hit the criminal courts, proving matters beyond reasonable doubt doesn't kick in. And of course if matters don't get to a court then evidence is whatever the parties involved in a dispute agree is evidence.

So assuming that we're not in the criminal courts, a detailed -ideally contemporary - log of what delay repay was claimed when and why carries quite a lot of weight. It will show what journeys the OP was making, and why they were at (I imagine) random times. And people do have unlikely travel patterns: I think we saw a case a year or so ago where someone was using their season ticket to travel as a courier between two business offices - so they might well only spend five minutes at one location before getting the train back.
 

Titfield

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May seem obvious but if I was delayed on departure I would take a pic of the digital clock / departure board at the departing station and similarly at the arrival station.

May not be cast iron proof but it would assist if / when making a claim.
 

35B

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Yes, it's evidence. For the civil courts (where the case might end up if the railway sued to get overpaid delay repay back), the legal standard of proof is the balance of probability - that is, what's more likely than not. Until and unless things hit the criminal courts, proving matters beyond reasonable doubt doesn't kick in. And of course if matters don't get to a court then evidence is whatever the parties involved in a dispute agree is evidence.

So assuming that we're not in the criminal courts, a detailed -ideally contemporary - log of what delay repay was claimed when and why carries quite a lot of weight. It will show what journeys the OP was making, and why they were at (I imagine) random times. And people do have unlikely travel patterns: I think we saw a case a year or so ago where someone was using their season ticket to travel as a courier between two business offices - so they might well only spend five minutes at one location before getting the train back.
Not just that, but the onus in the criminal court would be on the TOC to prove their case. A robust log of journeys made, especially if contemporaneous, would be a decently high hurdle for a TOC to overcome. Certainly, I would have confidence in my own logs (at the time on OneNote with working and formation, detailed in Excel for other purposes, and reinforced with PDF extracts from RealTimeTrains) to persuade any but the most gung-ho investigator that I was in the clear.
 

Watershed

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Yes, it's evidence. For the civil courts (where the case might end up if the railway sued to get overpaid delay repay back), the legal standard of proof is the balance of probability - that is, what's more likely than not. Until and unless things hit the criminal courts, proving matters beyond reasonable doubt doesn't kick in. And of course if matters don't get to a court then evidence is whatever the parties involved in a dispute agree is evidence.

So assuming that we're not in the criminal courts, a detailed -ideally contemporary - log of what delay repay was claimed when and why carries quite a lot of weight. It will show what journeys the OP was making, and why they were at (I imagine) random times. And people do have unlikely travel patterns: I think we saw a case a year or so ago where someone was using their season ticket to travel as a courier between two business offices - so they might well only spend five minutes at one location before getting the train back.
Anything can be evidence. Of course, the Judge must decide how relevant, accurate and credible they consider it - and how much weight they will put on it as a result.

Because the criminal burden of proof is higher than the civil one, the defendant need only raise reasonable doubt of their guilt for them to be acquitted.

That is a not an impossibly onerous standard, and so a travel log, whether compiled manually or automatically by Google Maps etc., could certainly be sufficient to raise the requisite reasonable doubt - in the right circumstances.

TOCs may prefer to pursue the cases in the 'difficult' pile through the civil Courts as a result. It would certainly be easier to get a judgment in their favour.

Then again, most people hardly wish to acquaint themselves with the ins and outs of Court procedures and burdens of proof, and will just pay up if a TOC says "pay us or else..."!
 
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philthetube

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But is this 'evidence'? Unless you have a ticket for a certain train, then how can you prove that you caught a train which was delayed? This is particulaly the case for season tickets and Anytime tickets - there is no requirement to specify the train you are hoping to catch when you buy the ticket, and with a season ticket you can go up and down the line all day long!

Is it feasible for guards or ticket line staff to hand out 'certificates' to confirm your train was delayed?

Given that neither the passenger nor TOC can effectively prove that a passenger did or did not travel on a delayed train, how can this be enforced?
If every time you travel you happen to catch the one train that day which is running late then this is suspicious, if 9 times out of 10 you have a problem free journey then this does not appear suspicious, I agree that you should not need to do this but we all know that some thieves do fiddle delay repay and the TOC's do need to do something to protect themselves from this.
 

Deafdoggie

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Is it feasible for guards or ticket line staff to hand out 'certificates' to confirm your train was delayed?
No. I've been on trains that were on time till they stood for 7 minutes outside the station I was alighting at, which meant I missed the hourly connecting train. The guard simply would not have time to see who wanted that train and everyone else is unaffected by a 7 minute delay. On the next train it wasn't late, but I was an hour late. The ticket line staff often have trouble letting people through with valid tickets, getting them to say a 7 minute delay is worthy of delay repay will be near impossible.

The answer has to be 'smart tickets' that know when and where scanned and thus show where the passenger is. Some e-tickets do this now, it just needs rolling out more.
 

maniacmartin

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May seem obvious but if I was delayed on departure I would take a pic of the digital clock / departure board at the departing station and similarly at the arrival station.

May not be cast iron proof but it would assist if / when making a claim.
This is what I do. Its very quick, and if there is ever a dispute, I can go straight to the photos I took on that day and see where I was at what time
 

steamybrian

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Yes- if applying for a claim keep as much evidence as possible with scans of your ticket you are submitting, photos and anything else.
I have not applied for one myself. The only time I was on a train which was heavily delayed I was travelling on a free railway staff ticket...!
 

WelshBluebird

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If every time you travel you happen to catch the one train that day which is running late then this is suspicious
But it quite often happens that the same trains are late day in day out!

Storytime:
When I was living near Oldfield Park station and commuting to Keynsham, the local stopping train I would catch would quite often end up 10-15 mins late because it would quite often lose just a couple of minutes during its journey from Weymouth along some single track, putting it in competition with an ex London HST at an important junction, and obviously it would "lose" in that "fight" and so would be held back for the HST, pushing its delay to 10-15 mins (even if it was only 2 or 3 mins late to start with). At the time GWR's delay system was based on 30 mins but they have since changed it to allow for claims for 15 minute delays. Had that policy been in place then, I would probably have been doing 2 or 3 delay repay claims for the same train each week.
 

Stuwhu

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But it quite often happens that the same trains are late day in day out!

Storytime:
When I was living near Oldfield Park station and commuting to Keynsham, the local stopping train I would catch would quite often end up 10-15 mins late because it would quite often lose just a couple of minutes during its journey from Weymouth along some single track, putting it in competition with an ex London HST at an important junction, and obviously it would "lose" in that "fight" and so would be held back for the HST, pushing its delay to 10-15 mins (even if it was only 2 or 3 mins late to start with). At the time GWR's delay system was based on 30 mins but they have since changed it to allow for claims for 15 minute delays. Had that policy been in place then, I would probably have been doing 2 or 3 delay repay claims for the same train each week.
Isn't it more of a case that they get suspicious if eg on Monday you put in a claim saying you were on the delayed 06.12 service, on Tuesday a claim for the delayed 22.14, Wednesday the delayed 17.05, with no obvious pattern of travel
 

Vespa

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I have put in a delay repay claim from London to Paddington 1st Class ticket as there was a point failure, we were offloaded at Totnes and no buses was provided to take us to Plymouth, the staffs got in their own taxi and buggered off leaving us all to our own devices, not very impressed at all.

Took photos and film of everything, train, platform full of people, destination board showing time and cancelled train, photo of my eTicket, photo everything and put it in a separate folder in your smart phone, GWR did initially reject my claim, I pressed further and mentioned I have taken loads of photos if they wished to see it, they folded and refunded 100% of my fare back.

Three times on Virgin and Avanti my First Class carriage was declassified, I made a claim for the difference between standard and first class fares, every occasion they initially rejected it out of hand which I expected, when I pressed them further and mentioned names of the staff in charge also I've took loads of photos, they refunded the difference .

Smartphone is your friend with each image is a date, time stamp and geolocation to prove beyond dispute where you are and when.
 

Gloster

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But it quite often happens that the same trains are late day in day out!

Storytime:
When I was living near Oldfield Park station and commuting to Keynsham, the local stopping train I would catch would quite often end up 10-15 mins late because it would quite often lose just a couple of minutes during its journey from Weymouth along some single track, putting it in competition with an ex London HST at an important junction, and obviously it would "lose" in that "fight" and so would be held back for the HST, pushing its delay to 10-15 mins (even if it was only 2 or 3 mins late to start with). At the time GWR's delay system was based on 30 mins but they have since changed it to allow for claims for 15 minute delays. Had that policy been in place then, I would probably have been doing 2 or 3 delay repay claims for the same train each week.
The second train up from Weymouth, 06.53 or thereabouts, was supposed to leave Castle Cary around 08.10, get through the section to Witham (up Brewham Bank with a stop at Bruton) and them go into Frome, where the Golden Hind (ca. 05.19 Penzance) would pass it by going along the avoiding line. Because the Hind was one of the prestige trains, the signalmen at Castle Cary had strict instructions that if there was any chance of the Hind even being Distant-checked, the Weymouth had to be put in the loop to give it a clear run. It was regarded as important that the Hind was in Paddington before 10.00 and a substantial delay to the Weymouth was, probably reluctantly, regarded as the lesser of two evils.

All this from memory of the early 1980s when there was still Absolute Block in the area. I like the term ‘important junction’ for Castle Cary.
 

6Gman

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I have only claimed thrice - and in all cases it was because I felt the TOC concerned hadn't dealt with matters as they should have. (I regard most delays as simply "stuff happens")

In two cases the refunds arrived (though one was an RTV still in a drawer here as I don't want to use it during Covid) without issue; in a third case I only got half of what was due, but I ignored it.

If I was claiming on multiple occasions I would keep a log, largely to keep abreast of what had or hadn't been dealt with. And if they send a refund I would assume the matter was closed.
 

43096

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May seem obvious but if I was delayed on departure I would take a pic of the digital clock / departure board at the departing station and similarly at the arrival station.

May not be cast iron proof but it would assist if / when making a claim.
I've often created a PDF of the RealTimeTrains schedule (the detailed version) after I've got home just in case delay repay claims get challenged. Tend to do this particularly if it's for something like a 16min delay on DR15 or 31min on DR30. I usually delete this after they pay up.

As for keeping a longer-term backup, I have my moves book/database which will tell me the journey, train details (headcode etc) and traction. If they want to check the traction against the system, be my guest!
 

simonw

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I've often created a PDF of the RealTimeTrains schedule (the detailed version) after I've got home just in case delay repay claims get challenged. Tend to do this particularly if it's for something like a 16min delay on DR15 or 31min on DR30. I usually delete this after they pay up.

As for keeping a longer-term backup, I have my moves book/database which will tell me the journey, train details (headcode etc) and traction. If they want to check the traction against the system, be my guest!
I had delay relays rejected even after sending in details from realtimetrains
 

43096

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I had delay relays rejected even after sending in details from realtimetrains
Presumably they think you made it up, then?!

Strangest one I had (and in a good way) was a return trip on Caledonian Sleeper which was late into Edinburgh and I think I was entitled to 50% of that leg, and claimed on that basis. They actually refunded me 100% of the entire booking, including the return - the return journey was around 30 early into Euston!
 

simonw

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Presumably they think you made it up, then?!

Strangest one I had (and in a good way) was a return trip on Caledonian Sleeper which was late into Edinburgh and I think I was entitled to 50% of that leg, and claimed on that basis. They actually refunded me 100% of the entire booking, including the return - the return journey was around 30 early into Euston!
No they claimed realtimetrains wasn't accurate. As it was an argument over some £2.40 I didn't press the point.
 

Vespa

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Vespa said:
I have put in a delay repay claim from London to Paddington 1st Class ticket as there was a point failure, we were offloaded at Totnes

Olleyrogers said
Must have been a lengthy diversion...

Sorry should have said "Penzance" amended now.

My phone is lagging and must have auto filled the wrong place.

Think I need a new phone .......
 

infobleep

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Anything can be evidence. Of course, the Judge must decide how relevant, accurate and credible they consider it - and how much weight they will put on it as a result.

Because the criminal burden of proof is higher than the civil one, the defendant need only raise reasonable doubt of their guilt for them to be acquitted.

That is a not an impossibly onerous standard, and so a travel log, whether compiled manually or automatically by Google Maps etc., could certainly be sufficient to raise the requisite reasonable doubt - in the right circumstances.

TOCs may prefer to pursue the cases in the 'difficult' pile through the civil Courts as a result. It would certainly be easier to get a judgment in their favour.

Then again, most people hardly wish to acquaint themselves with the ins and outs of Court procedures and burdens of proof, and will just pay up if a TOC says "pay us or else..."!
Good point about Google Maps. I don't create a personak log of trains, unless I'm recording any disused station sits or junctions I'm looking for on a longer journey. Google maps does do this for me however

It has proved useful for non rail related stuff, a couple of years after I made a journey.

This reminds me I need to put in a claim.
 
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island

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This is what I do. Its very quick, and if there is ever a dispute, I can go straight to the photos I took on that day and see where I was at what time
If it is particularly close to a “border” such as 14/15, 29/30 or 59/60 minutes I have taken to taking a video showing my watch, noting when the doors release, and including the station clock after stepping off.
 

clagmonster

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Could it even be worth requesting CCTV footage of oneself on the train and at the stations concerned to provide evidence in the event of a dispute.
 

Tazi Hupefi

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Bit late to the party, but the answer to the thread title is a resounding "yes you should".

I think some forum members, and even rail passengers have become very desensitised to what Delay Repay actually is. You are making a formal claim for compensation, albeit under "industry arrangements". The onus is on you to support your claim for compensation. Delay Repay is one of three methods proscribed in the conditions of travel for you to exercise various consumer and contractual rights when delays occur. In essence, Delay Repay is essentially a reverse "out of court settlement". The TOC pays you compensation, you agree to accept it as a remedy, and the matter does not need to be escalated further. You are not obliged to use a Delay Repay scheme, and the conditions make it clear you have 2 other options, 1 of which takes you down the path of exercising your statutory rights (which could eventually end up in a civil court).

So I am afraid whilst you are not legally obliged to retain records, given that from a civil perspective (in England & Wales) you can be sued for up to 6 years afterwards, prosecuted in the Magistrates' Court up to 6 months afterwards, and in the Crown Court at an indefinite date long into the future, it would be careless not to. Simply because "Delay Repay" has a "casual" feel to it, does not take away that you are presenting a formal, legal demand for compensation/redress each and every time you claim, and affirming that it is true and accurate.

99% of the time, I would bet that you would never be contacted about that claim ever again. Unless I am missing something, it appears that the actual number of people receiving letters about "potentially suspicious" claims is likely somewhere around 1% or maybe even lower, which to me, suggests that whatever processes are currently in place for the rail industry are generally working remarkably well for the vast majority of claimants.
 
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