Delay repay entitlement - what was my "journey"?

[scragend]

On Thursday 6th April I travelled from Manchester to Dover. I had the following Advance tickets:

Manchester Oxford Road (13:09) to Doncaster (14:35) £8.80 TPE (booked online via TPE)
Doncaster (16:05) to London King's Cross (17:46) £13.50 Hull Trains (booked online via Hull Trains)
London St. Pancras (19:07) to Dover Priory (20:13) £17.50 Southeastern (booked online via TPE)

I booked the first two separately but on the same day - I don't know why I booked them both on the respective operators' sites rather than all via TPE as I normally do; it was late at night so maybe I wasn't fully with it. But anyway. The Southeastern leg was booked a few weeks later because I was waiting for the Advance tickets to be released.

I was travelling with my bike and had reservations on the first two trains (not required on the Southeastern leg). The reason for the long gaps between the legs was to allow for any potential delays, and also in the case of the final leg so that I only left London after the peak bike ban had ended.

The train from Oxford Road was cancelled so the booking office there rerouted me via the following:

Manchester Piccadilly (12:58) to Leeds (14:10)
Leeds (14:21) to Doncaster (15:06)

The first of those two actually stopped at Oxford Road en route so I don't know why they sent me to Piccadilly for it, but that doesn't really matter. Although I arrived at Doncaster 31 minutes later than originally intended, I was able to make my connection at Doncaster without a problem so in effect I caught up that delay in full.

The final leg to Dover was delayed leaving St. Pancras and ultimately arrived at Dover at 20:39, 26 minutes late. There were announcements on the train inviting passengers to apply for Delay Repay.

My question is - what was my "journey" for Delay Repay purposes? Is it just the final leg from St. Pancras to Dover? Or the whole thing from Manchester? Or something else?

 

[Watershed]

There's nothing in the National Rail Conditions of Travel (NRCoT) that defines the term "journey". The only thing it does say is that you can make a journey with multiple tickets. It's up to you how and whether you take up that right, and therefore up to you how you define your journey.

You might decide that your journey was Manchester to Dover, or equally you might decide you made two journeys - one from Manchester to Doncaster and then later one from Doncaster to Dover. Defining it as the latter would likely earn you slightly more Delay Repay given that you'd earn Delay Repay at the 30-59 minute band on your Manchester to Doncaster ticket, rather than the 15-29 minute band for all of the tickets. However, given the relatively low value of your tickets there is a negligible difference at stake - £2.20 by my calculations.

Of course, some might argue that defining your journey after the fact in a way that earns you as much Delay Repay as possible is wrong. But you aren't doing anything legally wrong as there is no formal definition of journey (as previously mentioned). From a practical perspective, there is also no way that any of the TOCs can know what your intended journey was (if you even had an intention made up when you booked/travelled), particularly given that you bought your tickets from different retailers.

Morally, I also don't really see anything wrong with it. The train companies get up to plenty of immoral antics, e.g. adding "padding" to the final destination so that trains which are running late appear to arrive "on time", so I don't see why you shouldn't play them back at their own game. If they didn't want to allow this, they could add an according exclusion to the terms of Delay Repay. But despite what some might have you believe, that's not realistically going to happen - it would be impossible to enforce and would save a negligible amount. It's far more likely that the Delay Repay threshold will be increased to 30 minutes in a cack-handed attempt to save the government a bit of money.

 

[ainsworth74]

For me I would claim for the whole journey from Manchester to Dover from SouthEastern (who do have a 15 minute delay repay threshold) as I wasn't actually inconvenienced by the delay on the leg into Doncaster.

That's my personal opinion and others may disagree and suggest you should maximise your delay repay by claiming for the Manchester - Doncaster leg from TPE and then the Doncaster - Dover leg from SouthEastern. Fundamentally this is a bit of grey area and there's nothing particularly stopping you claiming in the most beneficial way possible. I just personally think that there's an element of "cakeism" if people claim on individual legs when the delay hasn't actually inconvenienced them overall (hence for me the determining factor is if I was unable to do something due to the delay at an intermediate station) but wouldn't want to stop anyone who thought otherwise!

 

[hkstudent]

On Thursday 6th April I travelled from Manchester to Dover. I had the following Advance tickets:

Manchester Oxford Road (13:09) to Doncaster (14:35) £8.80 TPE (booked online via TPE)
Doncaster (16:05) to London King's Cross (17:46) £13.50 Hull Trains (booked online via Hull Trains)
London St. Pancras (19:07) to Dover Priory (20:13) £17.50 Southeastern (booked online via TPE)

I booked the first two separately but on the same day - I don't know why I booked them both on the respective operators' sites rather than all via TPE as I normally do; it was late at night so maybe I wasn't fully with it. But anyway. The Southeastern leg was booked a few weeks later because I was waiting for the Advance tickets to be released.

I was travelling with my bike and had reservations on the first two trains (not required on the Southeastern leg). The reason for the long gaps between the legs was to allow for any potential delays, and also in the case of the final leg so that I only left London after the peak bike ban had ended.

The train from Oxford Road was cancelled so the booking office there rerouted me via the following:

Manchester Piccadilly (12:58) to Leeds (14:10)
Leeds (14:21) to Doncaster (15:06)

The first of those two actually stopped at Oxford Road en route so I don't know why they sent me to Piccadilly for it, but that doesn't really matter. Although I arrived at Doncaster 31 minutes later than originally intended, I was able to make my connection at Doncaster without a problem so in effect I caught up that delay in full.

The final leg to Dover was delayed leaving St. Pancras and ultimately arrived at Dover at 20:39, 26 minutes late. There were announcements on the train inviting passengers to apply for Delay Repay.

My question is - what was my "journey" for Delay Repay purposes? Is it just the final leg from St. Pancras to Dover? Or the whole thing from Manchester? Or something else?

For maximum delay repay (legally):
50% delay repay on TPE leg alone for one journey then 25% delay repay on Hull Trains + Southeastern to claim from Southeastern. Treating you got two seperate journeys from Manchester to Doncaster then Doncaster to Dover.

For next time, you shouldn't need to leave that much of gap between services even with bikes. East Coast services (LNER / Hull / Grand Central) often get plenty bike spaces even if you missed your intended services.
Meanwhile, maybe best to use trainsplit / railforum ticket site to look for best ticket split and then book individually from TOCs to get the bike reservation? I would say OP can even catch a service at around 15:00 and can still make it for the post 1900 SER HS1 services.

 

[scragend]

Thank you all, some good points raised which I shall go away and consider.