Delay Repay question

[negone]

What does this mean?

"We are sorry we have rejected your claim as the intended service was not timetabled to operate in advance of travel."
and
"Delay repay compensation is based on the advertised timetable at 10pm before the day of travel."

Booked in advance in the £1 sale;

Tue, 06 Sep 2022
Departing 13:30 from PRESTON to HUYTON

Train cancelled, got 13.17 Avanti to Wigan Got 13.55 Wigan Huyton 13 minutes late than original.
I thought if the train was cancelled you would at least get something.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

I suspect that you're not going to get anything out of this. There's a number of reasons for this:

- A fairly recent change to the rules says that if the train is cancelled before 10 pm the previous day, then rather than treating it as 'cancelled' it's treated as 'was never going to run' - and so you can't be planning to travel on it, and so you can't be delayed by it not running. If you have a look around the forum, you'll see that many contributors aren't happy about this - but at the moment that's what the rules say.
- even if Northern accepted that your claim should be based on the 1330 that you originally planned to get, Delay Repay only kicks in for a delay of 15 minutes or more. From what you say, your delay was 13 minutes. So you wouldn't get anything
- and even if you somehow managed to jump through the above hoops, Delay Repay is paid as a proportion of the train fare you paid. You appear to have paid £1. So even if you were entitled to 100% of what you had paid, you'd only get £1 back. You might well decide that this isn't an amount worth pursuing.

Sorry to bring bad news!

 

[negone]

It was customer service email that said try Delay Repay, I am very new to this and still learning .

 

[AlterEgo]

Your fare was £1 and the lower threshold of delay repay is 15 minutes for Northern anyway. Even if you’d been 15 minutes late the most you could have hoped for was the princely sum of 25p, which wouldn’t even buy you a Freddo chocolate these days.

 

[barrowjack]

A fairly recent change to the rules says that if the train is cancelled before 10 pm the previous day, then rather than treating it as 'cancelled' it's treated as 'was never going to run' - and so you can't be planning to travel on it, and so you can't be delayed by it not running. If you have a look around the forum, you'll see that many contributors aren't happy about this - but at the moment that's what the rules say.

I had the same email back from Northern today, and even though I am not happy about it I am guessing there is no point appealing.

On 30th August I purchased a ticket on the Northern website for travel on the 06:49 Barrow to Manchester service on 26th September so 4 weeks in advance. The ticket clearly shows the date purchased and the booked train. I noticed on the Sunday afternoon (25th) this had been deleted from the timetable but still turned up for t on the Monday morning and instead had to take the 07:08 to Lancaster changing for the TPE (ticket acceptance in place) arriving about 27 minutes later than the boked train. I therefore submitted a delay repay claim for this time band and this claim has been rejected.

Whilst the amount of money being claimed is not huge (I had ticked the donate to charity box on this occasion) it seems unfair that Northern are able to sell advance tickets for a service but as long as they cancel it before 10pm the day before the passenger isn't delayed! I had reasons for wanting to be in Manchester at that time, if I had wanted to use the 07:08 I would have booked for that train. Fortunately, this delay wasn't too long due to the short gap in service at this time of day, but if it had been a later service the delay could well have been in excess of an hour. When the 8.49 was cancelled a few weeks ago I was over 90 minutes late into Manchester and this claim was paid out!

Reading @Fawkes Cat's post that a train is cancelled before 10pm the previous day it is treated as if it was never going to run but having been able to buy a ticket for it beforehand then surely the intention was that it was going to run! Yet again it is the customer that loses out

 

[nedchester]

I had an appeal rejected from Northern telling me a train from Wigan to Liverpool didn't exist! I have now sent an email with a screenshot and a link to the Real Time Trains record of the train which was 39 minutes late into Liverpool meaning I'm entitled to a free single ticket.

I know they've cancelled a lot of trains recently but they're trying to put people off claiming by being obstructive.

 

[zero]

On 30th August I purchased a ticket on the Northern website for travel on the 06:49 Barrow to Manchester service on 26th September so 4 weeks in advance. The ticket clearly shows the date purchased and the booked train. I noticed on the Sunday afternoon (25th) this had been deleted from the timetable but still turned up for t on the Monday morning and instead had to take the 07:08 to Lancaster changing for the TPE (ticket acceptance in place) arriving about 27 minutes later than the boked train. I therefore submitted a delay repay claim for this time band and this claim has been rejected.

You can try a Consumer Rights Act claim. The success of this depends on the reason the train was removed from the timetable, unlike Delay Repay which is automatic compensation regardless of who was at fault for causing your delayed arrival.

 

[MKB]

I have also run up against this. East Midlands Railway is refusing Delay Repay compensation on a train cancelled the day before travel for which I held an Advance ticket.

Does anyone have any datapoints as to how the Railway Ombudsman is adjudicating such cases?

My journey from Nuneaton to Leicester to St Pancras (when Nuneaton to Rugby was closed) consisted of two Advance tickets, so it was not possible to avoid the delay into St Pancras by taking the previous EM train without buying a new ticket for the first leg. It seems to me rather perverse that a delay-compensation system would not actually compensate you for a delay against your booked journey and when you are booking after timetables have been confirmed.

 

[AdamWW]

I have also run up against this. East Midlands Railway is refusing Delay Repay compensation on a train cancelled the day before travel for which I held an Advance ticket.

Does anyone have any datapoints as to how the Railway Ombudsman is adjudicating such cases?

My journey from Nuneaton to Leicester to St Pancras (when Nuneaton to Rugby was closed) consisted of two Advance tickets, so it was not possible to avoid the delay into St Pancras by taking the previous EM train without buying a new ticket for the first leg. It seems to me rather perverse that a delay-compensation system would not actually compensate you for a delay against your booked journey and when you are booking after timetables have been confirmed.

It does seem perverse but that's the rules so I doubt that the Ombudsman could help.

It does seem a bit of a double standard - you need to plan your travel weeks or months ahead to get this ticket, but you shouldn't consider it an inconvenience if we then change your travel times with less than a day's notice...

 

[Runningaround]

Your fare was £1 and the lower threshold of delay repay is 15 minutes for Northern anyway. Even if you’d been 15 minutes late the most you could have hoped for was the princely sum of 25p, which wouldn’t even buy you a Freddo chocolate these days.

So if its £1 or £1,000 if passengers claim it's there right to, I claim for all delays as even if it's a small amount it still costs the toc in staff administration to process the claim and is a penny less than they deserve for the services they are barely providing.