@bb21 If you make a different journey to the one originally booked (e.g. depart early afternoon instead of in the evening), are you definitely entitled to claim Delay Repay based on the actual departure time?
Or are you deemed ineligible if you made a journey many hours earlier than originally booked but only arrived a few minutes earlier than originally booked?
I can see VTEC's customer service staff arguing on this one; some of them are not exactly pro-customer....
I am not aware of any clear guidance, so no idea what the official position is, or should be, I'm afraid.
The only contractual obligation I know of is paying compensation according to delays against the contracted arrival time. This may seem unfair to those holding Advance tickets, as people with walk-on fares can essentially claim their revised departure time as their original intention and given any benefit of the doubt, but on the flip side, it can be argued people with walk-on fares were not tied down to any particular itinerary so they did not need the "favour" of restrictions being relaxed. (Yes, I know people with Off-Peak fares may still benefit in theory by using what is essentially a Peak/barred service on their ticket, but the point about flexibility still applies.) The relaxation of travel restrictions does not make an Advance ticket a walk-on ticket.
I have never handled any such claim as suggested (not that I remember anyway), so I am unable to speak from experience either. If someone travelled several hours early and only arrived marginally before the original itinerary, they would in all likelihood have been delayed several hours, in which case it falls firmly within the realm of goodwill gestures, as extended delays can cause hardship but this is more or less assessed on a case-by-case basis. I normally use 2 hours as benchmark for this but can be reduced if mitigating factors apply. Three hours would be widely recognised as payable to some extent.
Anyone delayed sufficiently so as to arrive 30 minutes (15 minutes on some schemes) or more later than the original itinerary would still be contractually entitled to compensation, even if departed origin earlier.
That leaves those who travelled slightly earlier but delayed up to 2 hours although still arrived within the 15-/30-minute margin of the original itinerary, I am not aware of any compensation arrangement that specifically covered that unfortunately. I would likely consider these on a case-by-case basis if faced with one.
