Avanti trying to make Delay Repay even harder to claim?

[MKB]

Over the years, I have seen rail companies go out of their way to make the Delay Repay process as cumbersome and burdensome as possible, presumably to put off all but the most determined claimants. I typically have an average of about one claim a week to make. With all the inevitable rejections, appeals, re-appeals, customer service, etc., ultimately being paid, it's a very time-consuming process that cannot be justified only by the financial return achieved. I do it out of sheer bloody-mindedness to hold the railways to account.

I always travel with my partner on a Two Together railcard, so each delay necessitates two claims. It's long been the case that rail companies reject Delay Repay claims if you try to claim for multiple passengers on one claim, so I have learnt to do both separately, and it can be tricky when a journey involves several tickets to ensure that all the ticket numbers submitted for one passenger align with the images. It's very easy to get one mixed up across passengers. Nevertheless, I try, and I haven't made an error in quite a while.

However, Avanti have now introduced a new restriction. Apparently, I am no longer allowed to do all the admin that Delay Repay entails for both myself and my partner. I must claim for my ticket on my account and my partner must create a separate Avanti account and claim for his ticket on that.

Previously, I have been able to submit both from my account. Now, two claims for the same journey, but with different ticket numbers, have BOTH been rejected as duplicates (and again at appeal) with the explanation:

If you have made a claim on behalf of another customer, you need to ensure that all the customer contact details and payment details are those of the customer who experienced the delay, otherwise this will result in a 'duplicate claim' which will be rejected.

With how the system worked previously, the second claim for a journey did not take very long to do, as the journey details were often remembered. Now you are expected to re-enter everything from scratch on a second account, which also means my partner has to forward all email correspondence regarding the claim to me so that I can keep tabs on progress.

There can be no reason for Avanti making this change that I can see, other than to further reduce what is paid out. It does nothing to prevent fraud.

 

[Haywain]

Why are you making two claims? I have claimed recently from Avanti (for me and my wife) and put both tickets in one claim and got paid without any problems.

 

[MKB]

Why are you making two claims? I have claimed recently from Avanti (for me and my wife) and put both tickets in one claim and got paid without any problems.

Bitter experience. It nearly always gets rejected.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

Now you are expected to re-enter everything from scratch on a second account, which also means my partner has to forward all email correspondence regarding the claim to me so that I can keep tabs on progress.

By no means a complete solution, but (assuming that you and your partner have a reasonably trusting relationship) I don't think there's anything to stop you setting up matching email accounts - mydelayrepay@myemailprovider.com and mypartnersdelayrepay@myemailprovider.com - and managing both of them with matching Avanti accounts. If you're lucky and do them both from the same computer/phone, it might manage to remember details from one account to another. Even if you're not lucky, everything will come to you rather than your partner - as long as you're prepared to look at both email accounts.

 

[MKB]

Thanks Fawkes Cat. Yes, something like that might be the way I go, but it's all just an extra layer of faff, which is I guess is the point.

 

[jfollows]

Just to be clear - are you saying that Avanti is happy for you to pay for both of two tickets using the Two Together railcard, but won't allow you to claim a refund under Delay Repay for the two tickets?

Are you signed up to their "automatic" Delay Repay which requires you to book through them? Not that I am advocating that you do this, but it might be yet another reason to "force" you to do so in future.

 

[MKB]

Just to be clear - are you saying that Avanti is happy for you to pay for both of two tickets using the Two Together railcard, but won't allow you to claim a refund under Delay Repay for the two tickets?

Are you signed up to their "automatic" Delay Repay which requires you to book through them? Not that I am advocating that you do this, but it might be yet another reason to "force" you to do so in future.

Yes to the first.
Yes to the second, but the auto delay repay often fails to trigger when it should.
In this case, although booked directly on Avanti using a direct Avanti train service and an Advance fare, it would never trigger auto Delay Repay because the train was cancelled rather than delayed, and they wouldn't know which alternative train we took.

 

[jfollows]

Yes to the first.
Yes to the second, but the auto delay repay often fails to trigger when it should.
In this case, although booked directly on Avanti using a direct Avanti train service and an Advance fare, it would never trigger auto Delay Repay because the train was cancelled rather than delayed, and they wouldn't know which alternative train we took.

Thanks - I'll be wary of this then when I travel next in January, Two Together railcard using the Avanti booking site and already signed up for "automatic" Delay Repay, which has worked in the past for me. It's not "automatic" but it has worked when I've followed their manual process previously.
I agree with you that Avanti goes out of its way to make it hard for people to claim Delay Repay, especially when compared with Virgin who seemed to have a truly automatic system.

 

[JBuchananGB]

I have to offer an alternative point of view. Recently I claimed Delay Repay from Avanti for both the outward and return journeys which my wife & I made. Outward on 19 October and return on 21 October. Both included advance tickets with reservations on AWC services. We travelled on both the booked services and all associated connecting trains. Both journeys delayed by over an hour. I submitted two claims, one for outward (both passengers), and one for return (both passengers). There were no split tickets involved. Tickets were purchased from Greater Anglia, and as they included cross London travel they were CCSTs. Each ticket had 3 coupons, the travel ticket, and two reservation coupons. For each claim I submitted a scanned image of all 6 coupons, stated that the ticket number was 000000. I did not have a booking reference of the format required by the system, because the tickets had been posted to me, not collected from a station or TVM. The money for both claims was credited to my credit card account on 27 October.
Back in March I did something similar, claimed for 2 passengers on one claim, with a booking reference as I had paper tickets which I collected from a station using ToD. Likewise no problem, prompt payment.

 

[Snow1964]

Seems Avanti have paid out £25m of the national £101m in delay repay for 2022/23, LNER paid out nearly £26m, GWR £15.8m

The other £34m was spread between all other operators, with no one else paying out over £6m

Compensation paid by train operators since 2016 in accordance with their Passenger’s Charter and including:

• delay repay compensation
• compensation paid under the traditional charter scheme
• discretionary compensation

Rail passenger compensation paid by train operating companies

www.gov.uk

 

[plugwash]

The way delay repay is set up favours long distance travellers, because they delay thresholds are fixed amounts of time, but the payout depends on what you originally paid for your ticket. I doubt many people bother to claim on local journeys.

I'm surprised crosscountry aren't higer on the list though.

 

[Watershed]

The way delay repay is set up favours long distance travellers, because they delay thresholds are fixed amounts of time, but the payout depends on what you originally paid for your ticket. I doubt many people bother to claim on local journeys.

I'm surprised crosscountry aren't higer on the list though.

People always see XC as a long-distance TOC, and whilst they do operate plenty of long-distance services, their customer base is mostly made up of people making short journeys. Revenue per passenger is thus lower.

 

[HORNIMANS]

If I were you I would complain to Advanti west coast and Transport Focus its Free and will take up on your behalf