Supercomplaint to ORR on rail delay compensation

[Solent&Wessex]

The complication with announcing on trains - or even booking offices telling people - exactly what compensation you are entitled to is that there is no consistency in what people are entitled to.

What you are entitled to will vary dramatically between TOCS, and even at the same TOC, depending on whether delay repay is in use or old passenger charter standards. It will also vary on how late you actually are and what type of ticket you hold. And who or what caused the delay. On a day of big disruption some people may be doubly-delayed and entitled to completely different levels of compensation by a different company than the one that you are actually travelling on at the time.

On a plane it is easy. Everyone is going between the same points at the same time with the same airline and is equally delayed. On a train that is not the case, so telling people exactly what they are entitled to is a) going to be virtually impossible for on board or station staff to get right in the time and with the information available to them, and b) ultimately lead to more complaints when this information is wrong.

Admittedly more could possibly be done to inform passengers of their rights to claim compensation for delays, but the rest of the process should be left to passengers to apply for and ultimately be dealt with by customer relations offices where they have the time and information to (in theory) accurately investigate the journey, the delay, and what level of compensation they are entitled to.

And of course, at the end of the line, the passenger will end up paying more anyway. If more rigid compensation rights are enforced and the TOCs have to budget to pay out even more money, then that money has to come from somewhere. The TOCs won't just suddenly accept lower profits, so it will either need to come from higher subsidies or lower premium payments - neither of which the DfT is keen on - or, you guessed it, higher fares!

 

[sheff1]

The complication with announcing on trains - or even booking offices telling people - exactly what compensation you are entitled to is that there is no consistency in what people are entitled to.....

... On a plane it is easy. Everyone is going between the same points at the same time with the same airline and is equally delayed.

As usual a plane analogy is not really relevant. But to put the record straight, not everyone will be making the same journey or will delayed equally. For example, on a KLM flight from a UK regional airport to Amsterdam many of the passengers (on some flights the majority) will be connecting with onward flights to destinations all over the world. Those travelling to Amsterdam will only qualify for compensation if the delay is truely exceptional. Of the others, some will still make their connections, others will miss their connection but have an alternative flight (maybe to a alternative airport) within a short timeframe and may or may not qualify for compensation, yet others may have to be put up overnight to catch a flight the next day.

When I have been on delayed feeder flights of this nature (to Amsterdam and Frankfurt mainly) the cabin crew have never mentioned compensation. This may, in part, be due to the fact that there is no consistency in what compensation people are entitled to on planes either but I believe the crew's main concern, quite rightly, is to assist everyone in getting to their destination as quickly as possible and hence all announcements are focused on this.

 

[Class 170101]

Some Train Companies are waging what I consider to be a war on passengers, and if you want to be prepared for battle, you need to do hours of research (we offer free fares workshops to assist with this), otherwise you lose!

Interestingly I have had EMT help me on two occasions in this area.

Firstly was a claim because XC cancelled a train which meant a missed bus to a destination in Nottingham. XC paid up for this. However EMT put me onto them because XC have no station staf at Nottingham.

Secondly was EMT where the train ran on time but I had an advance ticket for a booked train with a booked seat. The seat wasn't honoured. This time EMT paid up.