There is a lot of support for the opinion that consumers should behave reasonably towards firms who experience disruption to their services by giving them more latitude than when services are not disrupted. There is a bold assumption out there that nearly everyone who booked tickets before notification of industrial action was given will find out about the travel disruption before they arrive at their origin station. There is a viewpoint that the firm is not in control of events when industrial action affects the supply of their service. People are known to decry what they see as 'compensation culture' because they think it is somehow dishonourable for an individual to claim their rights against a firm - although the same people often stay silent on the matter of whether or not it is honourable behaviour when a consumer is overcharged by a firm. Furthermore there is a general claim that consumers should make their choice between a refund (the cancelling of the contract) and a slower, less convenient journey - even if the journey ends up (avoidably, usually) taking two or three times longer than it would have done, and that because they were given a choice between this and a refund, that they lose part of their rights to a compensation payment after the fact.
While I sympathise with the intentions behind these viewpoints, I think they are fundamentally looking at the problem the wrong way.
To help think about it, when a customer buys a ticket, they are usually not permitted to refund it for free. In many cases they aren't permitted to refund it at all. If the railway industry can't provide the service they've committed to, they can choose to relax those parts of the conditions, and ask the passenger to agree to reverse the contract. But if the customer's journey is essential (as a large proportion of people would say their journey is), their right to refuse that offer cannot be expunged, if the offer is even made in time.
It is this simple: if I book an Advance ticket for travel on WMT, I don't have the right to change my mind and say that it's no longer convenient for me to travel so I would like a full refund, as if I never bought that service, unless they agree to the variation. Equally, they don't have the right to change their mind and say that it is no longer convenient to provide the transport so they are going to give me a full refund as if I never bought that service, unless I agree to the variation.
It's convenience to the railway industry to offer bookings a long time in advance, because it means they have the money earlier. It's also convenience to the railway industry to restrict refund rights because it makes their yield management more effective, keeps their costs low, and increases revenue when people buy tickets which must go unused if they change their mind. These two practices create the dilemma train companies sometimes find themselves in if they promote poor industrial relations to the point that strike action cripples their ability to provide the services they've taken pre-payment for. In the extreme circumstance, the train companies could charge us only at the ends of our journeys for the service we actually used, like some car parks do. That would then completely protect them from claims of this nature, but it would presumably also upset their business model. That's just the way it rolls.
People who claim that strikes are unforeseeable events which are outside the control of the company to mitigate with regards to customers who had already booked are detached from reality, as is anyone who claims that industrial action is force majure or that contracts have become frustrated as a result. Contracts cannot be cancelled by one party merely because that party regrets their decision to enter into the contract in the first place.
Of course, there is nothing to stop firms from deciding they dislike paying bills which are lawfully due, and using any method they think they can get away with to minimise on their liabilities. This happens a lot in the business world.
