Delay Repay on multiple tickets - official policy

[tehmarks]

At the end of June I travelled from Deansgate to Edinburgh. I bought an advance ticket from Deansgate rather than going to a more obvious station for the journey as I had a lot of baggage and was working and staying next door. The tickets to do the journey were bought from Trainsplit as a single journey/transaction and comprised of an advance single, Northern-only Deansgate-Preston for the 06:39 service, and an advance single Avanti-only Preston-Edinburgh for the 07:54 service.

Northern cancelled the 06:39 to Preston. The following service got me to Preston 6 minutes after my connection departed at 07:55. I had an Avanti-only ticket for Preston-Edinburgh so the TPE guard refused to let me board the 09:03. I eventually got on the 09:54 Avanti - which was itself delayed slightly - and finally arrived in Edinburgh close to 150 minutes late.

I submitted a Delay Repay claim, which Northern have just approved - for a delay of "15-30 minutes". This is obviously incorrect and I will be submitting an appeal, but in case the appeal route fails, can anyone point mee in the right direction to find the official policy with regards to claiming Delay Repay for a journey involving multiple tickets and operators.

As an aside, the Avanti platform staff member's first bit of advice to me was to "just board the 09:03 TPE service because Northern and TPE have ticket acceptance between each other". I imagine the member of staff in question isn't picking up the penalty fare that some poor traveller is probably going to end up being given by following their poor advice...

 

[Gaelan]

As an aside, the Avanti platform staff member's first bit of advice to me was to "just board the 09:03 TPE service because Northern and TPE have ticket acceptance between each other". I imagine the member of staff in question isn't picking up the penalty fare that some poor traveller is probably going to end up being given by following their poor advice...

I'd recommend asking the TPE guard in such circumstances - it's entirely possible they'd be pragmatic and allow you to travel.

can anyone point mee in the right direction to find the official policy with regards to claiming Delay Repay for a journey involving multiple tickets and operators.

From NRCoT:

14.2 Unless Condition 14.1 applies [tickets explicitly prohibiting use with another ticket], you may use a combination of two or more Tickets to make a journey provided that the train services you use Call at the station(s) where you change from one Ticket to another.

Thus two or more tickets can form one "journey"; the section on delay compensation (section 32) is phrased in terms of delay to "your journey".

 

[tehmarks]

I'd recommend asking the TPE guard in such circumstances - it's entirely possible they'd be pragmatic and allow you to travel.

I did; they weren't and they didn't.

 

[Watershed]

TPE's guard was being extremely unhelpful to say the least. It is not the passenger's fault that they have missed their connection due to a cancellation, and they are hardly doing the industry's reputation any favours by unnecessarily further delaying the passenger, thus also substantially increasing the industry's Delay Repay liability. Unfortunately a significant minority of staff are too narrow-minded to see the wider impact of these sorts of things; they only consider the implications for their own TOC, even though all of the relevant TOCs' costs and revenues ultimately appear on the same balance sheet!

Moreover, having been given permission by a member of station staff to board the 09:03, you were entitled to do so and the guard would have been in no position to second-guess this (did you mention this to them?). If you had travelled, they would have had no grounds for charging you given you had permission. That being said, I wouldn't see much mileage in a complaint to TPE. They will likely claim their guard was correct, and in any event they are not the company liable for Delay Repay or anything else.

It's Northern who are really the company you want to be pursuing here. Firstly, they should be paying Delay Repay in full based on the combined value of all of your tickets. Secondly, since the next Avanti train wasn't for 2 hours, meaning you would arrive at Edinburgh well over an hour late, they should have made arrangements for 'rerouting at the earliest opportunity' under the PRO by ensuring your ticket would be accepted on TPE, and if this was not possible then by buying/issuing you a new ticket valid on TPE.

Again, I don't see much mileage in a complaint to Northern as the 'damage' is done now anyway. Had you bought (or been charged for) a new ticket to travel on TPE, you would have been entitled to recover this from Northern, and this is what I'd do in future if I were in the same situation. Obviously you should still pursue the remaining Delay Repay.

 

[MrJeeves]

can anyone point mee in the right direction to find the official policy with regards to claiming Delay Repay for a journey involving multiple tickets and operators.

This may be of use:

Delay Repay applies to the journey regardless of number of tickets held (mythbuster)

Rail Delivery Group (RDG) issued a staff brief regarding "split ticketing" on 10th January; included in this brief was the following clarification: Compensation for delays is usually paid when customers experience a delay on their full journey, regardless of the number of tickets held. When a...

www.railforums.co.uk

Compensation for delays is usually paid when customers experience a delay on their full journey, regardless of the number of tickets held. When a delay results in a customer with multiple valid tickets arriving at their destination late, multiple tickets may be submitted with a claim for a delayed journey...

 

[tehmarks]

Thank you all - this information is exactly what I needed. I find little more infuriating than big companies trying to shirk their obligations - in this case, Northern originally claimed I had attached an expenses receipt rather than a valid ticket (I hadn't), and on resubmitting with the exact same ticket they're now claiming I've been delayed 15-30 minutes. Particularly when, when the situation is reversed, we know exactly what the outcome will be.

TPE's guard was being extremely unhelpful to say the least. It is not the passenger's fault that they have missed their connection due to a cancellation, and they are hardly doing the industry's reputation any favours by unnecessarily further delaying the passenger, thus also substantially increasing the industry's Delay Repay liability. Unfortunately a significant minority of staff are too narrow-minded to see the wider impact of these sorts of things; they only consider the implications for their own TOC, even though all of the relevant TOCs' costs and revenues ultimately appear on the same balance sheet!

Moreover, having been given permission by a member of station staff to board the 09:03, you were entitled to do so and the guard would have been in no position to second-guess this (did you mention this to them?). If you had travelled, they would have had no grounds for charging you given you had permission. That being said, I wouldn't see much mileage in a complaint to TPE. They will likely claim their guard was correct, and in any event they are not the company liable for Delay Repay or anything else.

I'm fairly certain that I've read here of people being given penalty fares having followed staff advice, and given that I wasn't in any real rush to get home it seemed not worth the bonus hassle. I did go back to the staff member in question once the guard denied me boarding to point out that her advice could be dangerous if someone took it at face value, but she wouldn't accept that telling people to get on trains that they don't have valid tickets for wasn't correct, so I politely took my complaint to the ticket office to hopefully prevent any future travellers from being unfairly penalised.

Secondly, since the next Avanti train wasn't for 2 hours, meaning you would arrive at Edinburgh well over an hour late, they should have made arrangements for 'rerouting at the earliest opportunity' under the PRO by ensuring your ticket would be accepted on TPE, and if this was not possible then by buying/issuing you a new ticket valid on TPE.

Again, I don't see much mileage in a complaint to Northern as the 'damage' is done now anyway. Had you bought (or been charged for) a new ticket to travel on TPE, you would have been entitled to recover this from Northern, and this is what I'd do in future if I were in the same situation. Obviously you should still pursue the remaining Delay Repay.

Despite travelling fairly frequently by rail and considering myself reasonably well-informed, I struggled to find the specific information regarding re-routing while Googling in-transit on my phone and wasn't sure at what point the re-routing right kicked in. Thankfully I didn't have any great rush to be home.

 

[yorkie]

Thank you all - this information is exactly what I needed. I find little more infuriating than big companies trying to shirk their obligations - in this case, Northern originally claimed I had attached an expenses receipt rather than a valid ticket (I hadn't), and on resubmitting with the exact same ticket they're now claiming I've been delayed 15-30 minutes. Particularly when, when the situation is reversed, we know exactly what the outcome will be.

Northern are incompetent; what you describe is consistent with the experiences of many other people, when dealing with claims from Northern.

I'm fairly certain that I've read here of people being given penalty fares having followed staff advie...

Such PFs are invalid, however invalid PFs are issued as a matter of course by some train companies.


Northern are liable for Delay Repay, to the full value of all the tickets used for the journey.

As for the TPE Guard, I'd consider making a separate complaint to TPE about that, although you probably won't get anywhere with this. Unfortunately there is no automatic right to take that train, and the acceptance mentioned doesn't quite enable you to automatically take TPE, however while the TPE Guard might be able to get away with this beaviour on a technical level, it really is the absolute defintion of being a "jobsworth" not to allow travel in such circumstances. People like that give TPE, and the rail industry as a whole, a very bad name.

Given TPE and Northern are both Government owned, the actions of the TPE Guard are not consistent with sensible behaviour, which would be to limit the liabilities of the company you work for as well as any owning groups; it's also not consistent with good customer service, and goes against the spirit, if not the letter, of the mutual acceptance which is currently in place.

Sadly there are insufficient safeguards in place to ensure that staff who get these job are entirely suitable for the role, or that they behave appropriately and in a manner that doesn't bring the industry into disrepute.

 

[Snow1964]

The rules are in theory simple, if your journey involves multiple splits, and multiple operators, then it is only arrival time at final destination that is relevant.

Eg, first train on time, second train late, so miss third train and get later one, then doesn't matter third train you actually caught (a later train) was on time. Still overall journey that is threshold.

It works both ways, if you had long connection and still get it, then although you were late in middle of journey, but on time at end, no delay repay as didn't arrive late.

However there have been multiple cases where multiple operators are involved and they pass the buck saying other operator, or as in your case failing to look at whole journey (its whole journey by definition, not each leg, or each train)