Thameslink / Great Northern unable to find their own trains? (Repeated delay repay rejections)

[Gagravarr]

Right now, I'd say I'm taking Thameslink / Great Northern about twice a week. As would come as no surprise to anyone here, I suffer some sort of delay of cancellation about 3 in every 4 journeys.... As such, I'm filling in a lot of delay repay claims.

After a period where they were pretty good about admitting their failings and coughing up compensation, for me at least, they seem to have taken a turn for the worse. Pretty much every delay repay I've submitted in the last month has been rejected with:

Decision: Declined
Having checked our records for the details of the delay you provided to us,
our system cannot find the journey that you intended to make so we are
unable to proceed with your claim at this time.

This is despite me normally travelling on fairly simple Single tickets, and specifying exactly where I'm going from and to and when!

Foolishly, after a period when they'd been quite good, I'd stopped keeping the confirmation email they send with all the details I've submitted in. When they decide to reject, they apparently very sneakily decline to include most of the information from your original claim, so it's a pain to go look up and see exactly how you were delayed + re-photograph the ticket + re-claim with the reference number.

Is anyone else finding that Thameslink have recently developed a sudden convenient amnesia and/or new auto-reject policy in recent weeks? And solutions, other than keeping all the details in triplicate as I would do for a "deliberately and/or conveniently incompetent" TOC like GWR?

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

Right now, I'd say I'm taking Thameslink / Great Northern about twice a week. As would come as no surprise to anyone here, I suffer some sort of delay of cancellation about 3 in every 4 journeys.... As such, I'm filling in a lot of delay repay claims.

After a period where they were pretty good about admitting their failings and coughing up compensation, for me at least, they seem to have taken a turn for the worse. Pretty much every delay repay I've submitted in the last month has been rejected with:



This is despite me normally travelling on fairly simple Single tickets, and specifying exactly where I'm going from and to and when!

Foolishly, after a period when they'd been quite good, I'd stopped keeping the confirmation email they send with all the details I've submitted in. When they decide to reject, they apparently very sneakily decline to include most of the information from your original claim, so it's a pain to go look up and see exactly how you were delayed + re-photograph the ticket + re-claim with the reference number.

Is anyone else finding that Thameslink have recently developed a sudden convenient amnesia and/or new auto-reject policy in recent weeks? And solutions, other than keeping all the details in triplicate as I would do for a "deliberately and/or conveniently incompetent" TOC like GWR?

As a matter of "policy", I keep the tickets for any train-related claim I make - regardless of whether it be for expenses, customer services complaints or delay compensation - safely separate from my chronological collection of all my tickets. That way, if there is ever a rejection of any claim, it is easy to find the ticket again and to take another photograph if, for whatever reason, Google Photos can't recognise the photo I originally took as a "ticket". As for delays, I will usually take a screenshot of RealTimeTrains or RecentTrainTimes as "evidence" of a delay, or in fact making a backup at the Wayback Machine (www.archive.org) helps too.

 

[Hadders]

I agree that GTR have got slower at processing delay repay claims in recent weeks. At the height of the shambles they were actually quite good with claims being accepted within a week. Since September things have slowed down with them generally taking 2-3 weeks. I haven't had anything rejected though.

I suspect they took on some additional agency staff to process claims during the shambles who have now been let go.

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

I agree that GTR have got slower at processing delay repay claims in recent weeks. At the height of the shambles they were actually quite good with claims being accepted within a week. Since September things have slowed down with them generally taking 2-3 weeks. I haven't had anything rejected though.

I suspect they took on some additional agency staff to process claims during the shambles who have now been let go.

To be fair, 2-3 weeks is not bad, certainly compared to other TOCs! I would consider 1 week a very good turnaround.

 

[jon0844]

They were quick before as they were authorising all claims, even quite large ones (taxi fares etc). Now I presume they're back to actually checking details.