Ticket office calculated changeover based on weekly price not annual price

[oxford]

Hi all,

I just did a changeover from:

Ashford Intl - London w/high speed - £6116pa

To:

Oxford Parkway - Marylebone via H Wycombe - £4732pa

The base rate of the original ticket was calculated at £16.76 (6116/365), which is what I expected.

I was expecting the base rate of the new ticket to be 4732 / 365 = £12.96.

However, the ticket office computer insisted on using the weekly OXP-MYB season ticket (£121.20) * 40 = £4848 as the annual price.

So the base rate was calculated at 4848 / 365 = £13.28.

I pointed out the discrepancy but they had the "computer says no" attitude.

My season ticket has 356 days left on it (i.e. I only used 9 days of the Ashford ticket), so the difference is considerable:

(13.28 - 12.96) * 356 = £113.92.

Which I'd obviously like back.

I did the changeover at a Southeastern ticket office in Charing Cross. They recommended "making a complaint to customer services".

Two questions:
1. Are my calcs correct?
2. Who should I complain to? Would this be best done to Southeastern CS (they did the changeover), to Chiltern Railways CS (they run the OXP-MYB line), or to some other body?

Thanks!

 

[ainsworth74]

I don't know enough about season ticket changeovers (from the top of my head) to be able to check the calculations. But as it is Southeastern who did the changeover it is them that you should complain to.

 

[Tetchytyke]

I think the issue probably is that the annual season ticket is supposed to be (weekly price)*40. In the Ashford-London ticket it is (£152.90*40 = £6116).

It appears that Chiltern Railways are using market based pricing on the new OXP-MYB season ticket, which means that the annual price is less (it works out at about 39.2*weekly price).

The ticket office have calculated it correctly according to their knowledge - (£152.9*40)/365 and (£121.20*40)/365, but the season ticket OXP-MYB is priced lower than the standard calculation.

Changeovers should be calculated against the base price, which is normally the weekly price, except with season tickets set on market-based pricing. The mistake will be if the base price for OXP-MYB is less than the weekly price, as often happens with market-based pricing, as they should then be using the base price not the weekly price.

 

[oxford]

Thanks Arctic Troll - that makes sense - I didn't know about market-based pricing.

Do you have any idea whether I then need to keep pursuing the matter with Southeastern or should I take it up with Chiltern as it's their pricing that has the "discrepancy"?

 

[bb21]

Base rate refunded ticket: £6116 ÷ 360 = £16.99
Base rate new ticket: £4732 ÷ 360 = £13.14

Fare refunded: £16.99 x 356 = £6048.44
Fare to charge: £13.14 x 356 = £4677.84

Refund: £1370.60

There is your definitive answer. No ifs and no buts.

Whether you need to take it up with them depends on whether you think the difference in refund amount is worth your, potentially considerable, time chasing them up.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Do you have any idea whether I then need to keep pursuing the matter with Southeastern or should I take it up with Chiltern as it's their pricing that has the "discrepancy"?

Southeastern should have used the correct base price and multiplied that by 40, which would have come to £4732, instead of just using the weekly price. The information is there if they are willing to look, and if not they should have contacted the pricing manager at Chiltern.

bb21 has explained it exactly how it should have been done.

Definitely complain, but don't hold your breath waiting for the £113 to reappear...

 

[oxford]

Base rate refunded ticket: £6116 ÷ 360 = £16.99
Base rate new ticket: £4732 ÷ 360 = £13.14

Why 360 as opposed to 365?

 

[CyrusWuff]

Why 360 as opposed to 365?

Slip of the keyboard, I suggest...Though 360 would be the correct figure to use for an "odd period" season valid for 12 months (not that such a thing exists), given that a month is counted as 30 days when calculating the base rate in such cases.

And under the old "Passenger's Charter" compensation scheme, void days on an Annual are calculated at 1/260th of the Annual rate (1/22nd of the relevant rate for Monthlies and 1/5th for Weeklies).

 

[bb21]

Why 360 as opposed to 365?

I have no idea why I put 360 there.

 

[oxford]

OK so just to be 100% clear the maths should be:

Base rate refunded ticket: £6116 ÷ 365 = £16.76
Base rate new ticket: £4732 ÷ 365 = £12.96

Fare refunded: £16.76 x 356 = £5966.56
Fare to charge: £12.96 x 356 = £4613.76

Refund: £1352.80

Is this right?

In that case given that I actually got refunded £1238.88, I'm owed a further £113.92. So I need to decide how much hassle £113.92 is worth!

 

[oxford]

Just had an email back from Southeastern (2 weeks later so not as bad as I'd feared!). So for anyone else running into this discrepancy, it's worth sending a quick note as the rules are clear that the refund should be calculated based on annual rather than weekly * 40.

Dear X,

Thank you for your web form dated 11 August about the problem with your recent season ticket changeover refund. I can certainly appreciate the frustration caused, and why you've taken the time to get in touch, so must apologise.

I've gone through the calculations myself, and discovered the same as you - that the correct annual ticket price of Oxford Parkway to London Marylebone is £4732 not £4848. This, of course, raised some alarms, so I had my calculations verified by our Retail Systems Support team - with the same result.

Upon further investigation, it appears that there's two potential issues:

- There's an error with the STAR machine calculator

- There's a discrepancy in Chiltern's pricing structure for the annual price

Naturally, the latter isn't something we're able to alter, but there are checks taking place to see. The former is also being investigated through Fujitsu who's the supplier of STAR which is used by the majority of train operators across the UK. The ruling on changeover calculations states that the prices used must be the actual annual ticket price.

The problem comes when the STAR machine calculated the annual price as the weekly price multiplied by 40. This is because regulated ticket prices are set against weekly prices. As the calculation seems to be incorrect in this instance, we're also looking into Chiltern's prices to see if the issue is there.

Despite all of this, I'm sorry that you're out-of-pocket. Therefore I've raised a cheque for £113.92 to bring your changeover refund to the full amount of £1352.80. It'll be sent under separate cover from our Treasury department, and should be with you within the next 14 days (though we hope much sooner than that).

So thank you for taking the time to get in touch with us about this problem. I'm sorry that you encountered it, and hope that if you have to go through the process again that it'll go much more smoothly.

Yours sincerely

Customer Relations Officer
Southeastern

 

[OwlMan]

It looks like they used the wrong rate.
When doing changeover calculations you are meant to use the PSS rate (which is the base rate calculated from the annual fare) rather that the actual 7 day rate.

Route
00305 VIA HIGH WYCOMBE
Cross-London NO
Fare Setter NCH CHILTERN RAILWAYS
STANDARD CLASS
7DS SEVEN DAY STD [FONT=Droid Sans,DejaVu Sans,Arial Unicode MS]◊[/FONT] STD SEASON ADULT: £121.20 CHILD: £60.60
PSS SEASON STD [FONT=Droid Sans,DejaVu Sans,Arial Unicode MS]◊[/FONT] STD SEASON ADULT: £118.30 CHILD: £59.15

 

[ainsworth74]

As an aside SouthEastern have a 'Treasury' department?!

 

[causton]

How bloody lucky SE stations are to have STAR do changeovers for them! What I would do to not have to do one of those manually...

 

[Lad Brookes]

How bloody lucky SE stations are to have STAR do changeovers for them! What I would do to not have to do one of those manually...

They obviously haven't paid Fujitsu for the upgrade that calculates the changeovers correctly!

As an aside SouthEastern have a 'Treasury' department?!

I skim-read their reply, and reading 'Treasury' and 'regulated ticket prices', I had a mental image of them getting prices of regulated tickets checked by someone senior at HM Treasury!

Not that I'm sure what the relevance of a fare being regulated or not is- surely if it is 40x weekly base rate, then that applies whether or not the fare is regulated. In any case, I would seriously doubt whether any fare from Oxford Parkway is regulated, given that the station didn't exist this time last year.

 

[Haywain]

As an aside SouthEastern have a 'Treasury' department?!

Well, they're not the only TOC to have one, I can assure you.

They obviously haven't paid Fujitsu for the upgrade that calculates the changeovers correctly!

In fairness to Fujitsu and Southeastern, market based pricing of seasons means tat there are effectively two base rates (7-day season fares) for that flow, so it may not be the easiest of things to resolve. It is also an unusual situation because in most cases of market based pricing, the problem would not arise because 7-day seasons are not available.

Whilst bb21 has calculated the daily rates in the right way, using the 7-day rate is (normally) completely correct and, where fares have changed in the interim, is the figure more readily available to the staff doing the calculation. I suspect that in this case a hole has been found in the software that Fujitsu didn't even know about!

 

[ainsworth74]

Well, they're not the only TOC to have one, I can assure you.

What's wrong with just calling it the more traditional 'Finance' department? Though I suppose it does mean the staff can legitimately say 'I work at the Treasury'

 

[greatkingrat]

I expect they do. Treasury is usually a team within the wider Finance department.

 

[ainsworth74]

Ahh I see.

 

[jon0844]

As an aside SouthEastern have a 'Treasury' department?!

It all makes sense now. They run the penalty fares appeals service, run the Treasury and maybe have IT people managing their internal networking under the banner 'Network Rail'.