Baffling delay repay (Southern)

[Dave W]

Went to Chichester and back on Sunday 25th - plenty of disruption around. I submitted delay repay for all 4 journeys (2 of us travelled) - outbound fine.

Return - trainline sold us £8.70 split tickets (without a fee) - consisting of £6 advance single Chichester-Clapham, £2.70 super off peak Clapham-Victoria. Had a 30-59 minute delay so expected half back. I foresaw issues with this from the off and had a moan at Southern about their system only allowing one ticket to be uploaded. No problem, said their twitter account. We'll advise the team and mark these as split tickets when they're manually reviewed.

Attached are the results. Exactly the same ticket types, exactly the same journeys. Consecutive delay repay reference numbers. Two different outcomes.

I've naturally told them this on twitter and expect an amicable resolution - but "befuddled" is putting it mildly

 

[gray1404]

Submit an appeal for each one of the claims. In future let a claim go through first before reaching out on Twitter because it can often confuse things.

 

[WesternLancer]

Submit an appeal for each one of the claims. In future let a claim go through first before reaching out on Twitter because it can often confuse things.

Indeed - tho for the OP's info IIRC appealing D-R on Southern is really tricky - no intuitive option - I think you have to resubmit it via the claim form or raise it with customer services as an appeal.

This can only be deliberate to try and disuade ppl from appealing as other TOCs have straightforward appeal options clearly stated for when they reject a claim, for example.

 

[Dave W]

Thanks both

Indeed - tho for the OP's info IIRC appealing D-R on Southern is really tricky - no intuitive option - I think you have to resubmit it via the claim form or raise it with customer services as an appeal.

This can only be deliberate to try and disuade ppl from appealing as other TOCs have straightforward appeal options clearly stated for when they reject a claim, for example.

Agreed - I'm familiar with the process hence why I took to Twitter largely just to have a bit of a tantrum - they then offered to help which I (probably foolishly) engaged with.

What is quite amusing is that two different conclusions have been reached. The £3 is what I'd have expected from the initial look. The £1.80 - well I've no idea where that's from. It's not a percentage of anything.

 

[yorkie]

Some TOCs have poor DR forms; GTR is one of them.

In the end it's perhaps not worth the money persuing small claims of this nature; it ends up costing all parties more, in the value of their time, than the lost value of the claim!

I also wonder if perhaps you overpaid? Is it ever actually cheaper to split at Clapham Jn compared to swapping the reservation over at Barnham?

Trainline doesn't charge a fee for same-day purchases but it doesn't always find the best deal; look at next Sunday for example:


Trainline is charging more because the Chichester portion doesn't have any Advances available through to Victoria, but if you change portion at Chichester (you don't have to change trains, but this is shown as a change of train on the system) then you can pay £6 for the through journey all the way to Victoria.

However if you find that the forum's site is not offering the best possible deal for any given itinerary, if you send me a message I will ensure that the people responsible get the information, the suggestion can typically be implemented within 24 hours.

 

[Dave W]

I did wonder that, yorkie - splitting at Clapham wouldn't have been my first choice if I was doing it manually. Perhaps I'll do a bit more research next time.

 

[yorkie]

I did wonder that, yorkie - splitting at Clapham wouldn't have been my first choice if I was doing it manually. Perhaps I'll do a bit more research next time.

If you have time to spare, you can split manually but that can be a very time consuming process. You also need to take care to ensure the itinerary is a valid one.

For most people it's best to let a splitting site figure it out, but if you (or anyone else reading this) has spare time to do manual checks, and if you ever find that the forum's site isn't offering the cheapest combination, please do let me know so that we can get the relevant changes made!

 

[yorkie]

I did wonder that, yorkie - splitting at Clapham wouldn't have been my first choice if I was doing it manually. Perhaps I'll do a bit more research next time.

Just to go back to this thread, the forum's site was previously only offering the split at Clapham Jn if a change was included, but not on the through service, but it should now be finding these splits automatically. You may or may not have had an opportunity to check this since, but hopefully all should be working now. If the forum's site ever isn't doing what is optimal, please do let us know though and we can ask the relevant people to make the necessary adjustments it

 

[avid2424]

And also to go back. Travelled 10 July on split tickets. Bournemouth to Southampton on a South Western Railway Advance ticket. And then onwards from Southampton via Chichester on a Southern Advance ticket

To no great surprise the service from Southampton had been cancelled

And a bit of slack running produced a 32 minute delay

I scanned my paper tickets to create one pdf to upload for the online delay repay claim

Claim made 13 July, 3 days after travel, and agreed within 11 hours