SWR Delay Repay

[Railm123]

Hi all,

I have been speaking to a friend who has told me they have been claiming delay repay for delayed SWR services they have not been travelling on. They have submitted around 35 claims, 25 of which have been accepted, amounting to around £100 in the past few months. I pointed out the severity of this and they are now extremely worried. I am after some advice on their behalf.

Is this something that the SWR fraud team are likely to pick up on? If so, is an out of court settlement the most likely outcome as only £100 has been claimed? My friend has even suggested he owns up and emails SWR offering to repay this before anything is flagged at their end. They are very keen to do this so it would not be a constant worry for the next however long. Would this be a good idea?

Would anyone be able to help with these queries.

Thank you!

 

[WesternLancer]

Hi all,

I have been speaking to a friend who has told me they have been claiming delay repay for delayed SWR services they have not been travelling on. They have submitted around 35 claims, 25 of which have been accepted, amounting to around £100 in the past few months. I pointed out the severity of this and they are now extremely worried. I am after some advice on their behalf.

Is this something that the SWR fraud team are likely to pick up on? If so, is an out of court settlement the most likely outcome as only £100 has been claimed? My friend has even suggested he owns up and emails SWR offering to repay this before anything is flagged at their end. They are very keen to do this so it would not be a constant worry for the next however long. Would this be a good idea?

Would anyone be able to help with these queries.

Thank you!

Definitely don’t contact swr to offer to do this without weighing up various advice from here first

But your friend definitely needs to stop doing this. The railway companies definitely use data trawls to look for persistent high delay claims to see if they are suspicious. So you are correct to warn your friend of the risk here.

 

[gray1404]

My advise would be that your friend stops claiming now. Even if they have a legitimate claim, just leave it. Hopefully they will not come up on their radar. This does amount to fraud.

 

[AlterEgo]

That’s fraud, which is a serious criminal offence that often attracts jail time.

Stop doing it and stop talking about it. Don’t contact SWR.

 

[DelW]

Presumably the miscreant held tickets for similar journeys to those being claimed for? If so, it might be useful to know whether these were e-tickets (with scannable 2D codes) or orange cardboard tickets with a magnetic stripe, and whether they were bought on line or at a station.

Cardboard tickets and/or station purchases store less information and so are probably less likely to be flagged up during post-hoc analysis of ticket use. It's still not worth taking the risk of course.

 

[Railm123]

That’s fraud, which is a serious criminal offence that often attracts jail time.

Stop doing it and stop talking about it. Don’t contact SWR.

Is is definitely not better to own up now to hopefully come to a more amicable agreement sooner rather than later then?

 

[AlterEgo]

Is is definitely not better to own up now to hopefully come to a more amicable agreement sooner rather than later then?

No. It’s not in your interests to admit to fraud which hasn’t been detected. Stop doing it - you’re panicking because you have suddenly twigged this is fraud and are now paranoid - and stop talking about it. Immediately.

 

[Railm123]

No. It’s not in your interests to admit to fraud which hasn’t been detected. Stop doing it - you’re panicking because you have suddenly twigged this is fraud and are now paranoid - and stop talking about it. Immediately.

OK, thank you. I will pass this advice on.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Feb 2025 ==

Just one more question. If caught, is an out of court settlement likely for something like this?

 

[30907]

OK, thank you. I will pass this advice on.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Feb 2025 ==

Just one more question. If caught, is an out of court settlement likely for something like this?

Don't think we have evidence for SWR on this type of offence, but in general they are amenable.

 

[WesternLancer]

OK, thank you. I will pass this advice on.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Feb 2025 ==

Just one more question. If caught, is an out of court settlement likely for something like this?

Probably a reasonable chance. Your friend should keep a sum equal to the amount claimed plus perhaps £200 to hand in case this is required.