Forum ticket site refund query: refunding a journey bought as two separate Advances in the same basket vs one return.

[nitten_travell]

Not sure if Fare advice or dispute, but it does involve the forum retailler.

Last week I bought a journey, made up of Advance single tickets, as two separate legs, in the same transaction, for a journey departing on Thursday. So in my account I have two different entries (one outbound, one return), both of which have the same booking number. They both include a cross-London transfer as part of the Advance ticket.

Plans have changed and I rebooked for different dates, same origin/destination, just me, this time I searched for one return booking, and what I bought was composed of two Advance singles (one for each way to/from London) and an Off Peak return also to/from London, with no cross-London transfer.

I went to process the refund using the automatic system and it would only let me select one of the two original legs, not both, for refund. So, I wrote a message to customer support and received this quick reply:

Thank you for getting in touch.

XXXXXXX is made up of two single journeys, these would of been added to your basket separately, where as YYYYYYY would booked been booked as a return journey.

It would need to be two single journeys again to replace the original.

What I can so is refund the new booking (YYYYYYYY) in full to allow you to rebook if you like?

For various reasons I can't do this (I need to have the ticketing broken up in London so that I can claim back a portion of the cost, time is of the essence and I can't force the site to offer anything other than Super Off Peak singles now)... but I also am wondering had I bought these tickets outside of TrainSplit, and submitted for a manual refund, whoever processed it would not know how I'd bought those tickets (one in the basket, or two), nor would they care, and I'd get all my money back, less an admin fee?

Or do I have the wrong end of the stick here?

 

[Starmill]

I personally can't understand the distinction between a basket containing one return journey with two single tickets, or two single journeys where the second is the inverse of the first. In both cases the whole basket is being checked out simultaneously. Is that correct?

 

[Watershed]

I'm not 100% sure I understand your situation (perhaps the person reading your message was confused too?). I think you may have mixed up YYYY and XXXX in the final sentence of your email quote?

You booked a return journey involving a cross-London Advance in each direction. You now want to travel on different dates but want to split the tickets in London rather than having through tickets - is that correct?

If so, that is fine provided you can get the site to come up with a split in London. What you can't do is to add your desired split tickets to the basket manually, and then use them as your replacement booking.

Advance tickets are generally not refundable; the exception is if there's disruption. They can be changed, which some retailers (like the forum's site) implement through a 'rebook and refund' process but that does not change the fact they are otherwise non-refundable.

 

[nitten_travell]

I'm not 100% sure I understand your situation (perhaps the person reading your message was confused too?). I think you may have mixed up YYYY and XXXX in the final sentence of your email quote?

You booked a return journey involving a cross-London Advance in each direction. You now want to travel on different dates but want to split the tickets in London rather than having through tickets - is that correct?

If so, that is fine provided you can get the site to come up with a split in London. What you can't do is to add your desired split tickets to the basket manually, and then use them as your replacement booking.

Advance tickets are generally not refundable; the exception is if there's disruption. They can be changed, which some retailers (like the forum's site) implement through a 'rebook and refund' process but that does not change the fact they are otherwise non-refundable.

What I originally booked:

Newtongrange - Hook, LNER Advance Single
Hook - Newtongrange, LNER Advance Single

Two tickets, found from two separate searches, placed into the same basket and bought as one transaction, so one transaction ID covers both.

What I replaced it with:

Newtongrange - London Kings Cross, LUMO Advance single
London Kings Cross - Newtongrange, LUMO Advance single
London Terminals - Hook, Off Peak return

All found as one "return" search and then bought as one transaction.

The reply from TrainSplit Customer Service suggested that as my original booking was essentially two searches in one basket I needed to replace that with two searches in one basket. Hence my query here.
Happily, I also wrote something similar back to TSCS and, whilst writing this reply, received emails to say that my original LNER Advance Singles have been refunded, less an admin fee, so all's well that ends well.

 

[Adam Williams]

Newtongrange - Hook, LNER Advance Single
Hook - Newtongrange, LNER Advance Single

The problem is that when you do this, it's booked as two related, but ultimately separate journeys with different identities.

It doesn't matter that you are paying for them in one overall transaction, they are not considered to constitute the outward and return portions of one journey - they are two one-way journeys as far as the system is concerned, that's just how it works today. I appreciate you had your reasons for wanting to do this, but it causes some headaches when customer support have to try and get this refunded (and the terms are fairly clear about this as a limitation today).

The backend may change in the future to be more flexible and allow doing a replacement with the involvement of multiple journeys, but it's not really a high priority enhancement.

I think (hope!) this has been resolved satisfactorily now with some pragmatism.

 

[Haywain]

Happily, I also wrote something similar back to TSCS and, whilst writing this reply, received emails to say that my original LNER Advance Singles have been refunded, less an admin fee, so all's well that ends well.

You should perhaps consider yourself fortunate as Advance tickets should mot really be refunded unless the origin, destination and route (LNER & connections) are the same on the new ticket as on the original.

 

[nitten_travell]

The problem is that when you do this, it's booked as two related, but ultimately separate journeys with different identities.

It doesn't matter that you are paying for them in one overall transaction, they are not considered to constitute the outward and return portions of one journey - they are two one-way journeys as far as the system is concerned, that's just how it works today. I appreciate you had your reasons for wanting to do this, but it causes some headaches when customer support have to try and get this refunded (and the terms are fairly clear about this as a limitation today).

The backend may change in the future to be more flexible and allow doing a replacement with the involvement of multiple journeys, but it's not really a high priority enhancement.

I think (hope!) this has been resolved satisfactorily now with some pragmatism.

Yes, all happily resolved and as I noted above I was initially surprised that I'd be able to get any money back at all.
One thing to clarify though. Had I originally searched for, and bought, the Newtongrange-Hook Advance Singles as one "return" search, rather than doing one then the other, the site would have interpreted this differently, given me just one identity - and I'd have been able to process the full refund claim automatically? My error here was to search for the two legs independent of one another, even though they were in the same basket?

 

[Starmill]

You should perhaps consider yourself fortunate as Advance tickets should mot really be refunded unless the origin, destination and route (LNER & connections) are the same on the new ticket as on the original.

Indeed. Of course since trainline etc started doing splits this idea has kind of gone in the bin a bit for online sales. Of course, the ticket office would still hypothetically enforce this. Yet more reasons why ticket office sales are so often more expensive or worse.

 

[Watershed]

You should perhaps consider yourself fortunate as Advance tickets should mot really be refunded unless the origin, destination and route (LNER & connections) are the same on the new ticket as on the original.

There is official industry guidance (RSPA2006 section 6.2.3) which recognises the fact that this would be unduly restrictive if applied strictly. It therefore permits retailers to also offer walk-up fares which allow travel on the original TOC, even if they have a different route code and are issued to a station group rather than a specific station (or vice versa).

In practice, Trainline's Advance ticket amendment feature allows you to change to any other fare available for purchase, which is as it should be IMHO.

 

[Adam Williams]

The route codes are such a mess and some TOCs (with a triangular logo) have just created a bunch more duplicate route codes that attempting to do anything more restrictive here is just a fool's errand and leads to a worse passenger experience.

 

[Haywain]

There is official industry guidance (RSPA2006 section 6.2.3) which recognises the fact that this would be unduly restrictive if applied strictly. It therefore permits retailers to also offer walk-up fares which allow travel on the original TOC, even if they have a different route code and are issued to a station group rather than a specific station (or vice versa).

I am aware of that but the OP’s case of changing from LNER & connections to Lumo only looks, to me, to be a distance outside the intention (and spirit) of the rule, before we get to the change of destination.

 

[Watershed]

I am aware of that but the OP’s case of changing from LNER & connections to Lumo only looks, to me, to be a distance outside the intention (and spirit) of the rule, before we get to the change of destination.

Yes, agreed. I think the change of split combination is less problematic but the change of TOC would not be permitted based on the guidance.