LNER County Court Judgement

[therailwayking]

Good afternoon,

I got so fed up of LNER rejecting my refund request for a delayed train that I did not travel on, that I took them to Court.

They failed to respond to the Court so a CCJ was issued on June 26th against them.

I enailed them on the 7th July with the CCJ asking them to settle it.

Since then I have phoned them 3 times. The first time (21st July) I was told they would call me back later that day to settle the debt. They never did. I then phoned on the 28th July asking them to settle the debt and they promised to phone me the next day to settle the debt. They did not.

I then phoned on the 1st August and got a very defensive guy on the phone telling me I am not special and they will deal with my request when they feel like it.

Is this a case of LNER not understanding what a CCJ is? Am I going to have to issue a Warrant of Control and sent bailiffs to their York address?

Seems unbelievable they are this incompetent. Anyone on here from LNER who wants to sort this out and save your company the hassle of bailiffs?

Bizarre.

 

[Sonic1234]

TOCs are bad at dealing with post - often it can be a wait of several weeks if you send in a delay repay claim by post. If you served the court paperwork to the customer services address, it's probably in a pile for someone to have a look at when they get a break between the emails and phone calls (i.e. rarely).

It's surprising it's being ignored if you used the registered office address. Even worse is their incompetence has resulted in a routine customer service issue getting to this stage.

 

[Cantab26]

Send bailiffs to the booking office at York station to start making an inventory.

A payment out of the till then becomes the easiest off ramp for LNER.

I am aware of at least two instances of this occurring successfully: once with Virgin at Birmingham New Street and a second involving the Avanti booking office at Euston.

 

[John R]

Calling @David Horne who might be interested both in resolving the case to your satisfaction and investigating how their processes means a CCJ is being effectively ignored.

 

[AlterEgo]

Just send the bailiffs, it’ll be funnier. Keep us posted.

 

[Cantab26]

Just send the bailiffs, it’ll be funnier. Keep us posted.

Indeed. Go along in person at the same time and film it too - some of us have to live vicariously!

 

[therailwayking]

I can confirm I used the registered office of London North Eastern Railway Limited as shown on Companies House.
I have sent them the CCJ via email (which they also should have received in the post) and had it confirmed 3 times on the phone by customers services that they have received the email.
Someone called 'Mike' who apparently is the head of customer services has been supposed to call me to resolve this on 2 occasions and never bothered to call back.
The last chap I spoke to who was very rude confirmed his boss 'Richard' was looking at it but I never heard anything more.
They did confirm they had a legal department but refused to forward my call onto them. Pathetic situation.
Bailiffs incoming.

 

[ainsworth74]

Bailiffs incoming.

Do keep us informed!

 

[therailwayking]

I shall indeed!
Looking forward to filing a Warrant of Control!
It adds a further £94 to the debt LNER owe me and will involve County Court Bailiffs turning up to their office in York!
Well deserved I must say!

 

[styles]

I had to do this with an airline once when they failed to pay EU flight compensation, despite the fact they admitted they owed the money.

Had to pay to get a writ of control, and bailiffs went to their Luton Airport offices. I thought it was pretty ridiculous but I suspect they rely on people just not pursuing these things. As usual, it's the persistent 1% who benefit, while 99% of passengers lose out because of poor regulation and enforcement.

 

[AndroidBango]

Tell the bailiffs to ask for Mike and Richard.

 

[Hadders]

This sort of thing is c**k up rather than conspiracy.

In a former life I was an Area Manager for a large retail organisation. Occasionally invoices would go astray. The usual culptits were Busibess Rates bills issued by local authoroties - sometimes they sent them to the stores rather than to Head Office. They'd been told many times that they needed to go to Head Office but sometimes they ended up being sent to the stores. Stores didn't have the facility to pay invoices, if they received any invoices that needed paying then all they had to do was send them to the payment processing team in Head Office. Simples.

The inevitable sometimes happened. An invoice got sent to a store, didn't get sent on in a timely fashion, ended up with baliffs attending a store for payment. Almost always a different store to the one the invlice related to!

Standing instruction was to pay the baliff in cash with money out of the till, to make the matter go away. Then we dealt with transferring the cost to the relevent store...

 

[gray1404]

Instruct bailiffs now. They've had over a month to pay.

 

[duffield]

It might be fun to tweet their customer services, *not* in the expectation of them actually doing anything as such, but just to embarrass them publically by pointing out the outstanding CCJ and imminent baliffs, and the "you'll have to wait your turn" attitude towards a actual court judgement.

 

[signed]

It might be fun to tweet their customer services, *not* in the expectation of them actually doing anything as such, but just to embarrass them publically by pointing out the outstanding CCJ and imminent baliffs, and the "you'll have to wait your turn" attitude towards a actual court judgement.

They may be tempted to pay once that goes viral (and I am sure it would go viral), baliffs are funnier

 

[styles]

Write to Simon Calder at the Independent, especially if bailiffs do end up going. I'm sure he'll lap this up.

 

[duffield]

They may be tempted to pay once that goes viral (and I am sure it would go viral), baliffs are funnier

Save the tweet until the bailiffs are actually in the office, start it with "Guess who's making a special visit to your York booking office *right now*?" If possible attach a picture with faces blurred out.

 

[styles]

Turn up to the office and film your own episode of Can't Pay, We'll Take It Away.

(I think we are perhaps staying off topic now though so I'll leave it there!)

 

[KirkstallOne]

Opened this thread expecting to find a rare instance of a TOC pursuing a civil case against a passenger. It warms the cockles of my heart to realise it is the passenger pursuing a civil case against LNER. Shame you can’t privately prosecute them for intent to evade something or other but well done for your persistence.

Can you start adding costs on for the time and effort you are spending pursuing this?

 

[1D54]

Never have i enjoyed a thread on this section of the forum as much as i am enjoying this one.. Stick it to them and there is no truth in the saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity!!

 

[enyoueffsea]

Hope LNER do not want to apply for a residential mortgage on a 3-bed detached house in Surrey within the next few years now they have a CCJ.

 

[styles]

Can you start adding costs on for the time and effort you are spending pursuing this?

Not easily no. On the whole if you want a judgement enforced you pay the courts for enforcement and they recover their costs from the debtor.

If you want to spend time calling and Tweeting a debtor in the hope they'll pay, that's off your own back really.

 

[therailwayking]

Thank you for your very encouraging messages!
Mr Horne did reply but only to say a colleague of his would respond. Heard that one before.
If I receive no response by the end of the week, the Warrant of Control is going in a long with the 94 quid fee (which is added to their debt).
I have replied to Mr Horne to make him aware of this.
I have now given them 3 deadlines so this is the absolute last.

 

[John R]

Thank you for your very encouraging messages!
Mr Horne did reply but only to say a colleague of his would respond. Heard that one before.
If I receive no response by the end of the week, the Warrant of Control is going in a long with the 94 quid fee (which is added to their debt).
I have replied to Mr Horne to make him aware of this.
I have now given them 3 deadlines so this is the absolute last.

David Horne is the Managing Director of LNER, and so I would be amazed if something doesn't happen very quickly. The couple of other times he has intervened things were resolved with speed. (And thank you David for picking up on the notification posted here - much appreciated.)

 

[therailwayking]

Yes. To be fair to him he has now had this resolved as of 5.20PM this afternoon.
Thank you for passing on his name.
I would still say its a real concern their own internal processes and CS department feel they can just ignore Court documentation though. A real liability for them going forward.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 4 Aug 2025 ==

LNER have now got in touch offering to settle this CCJ plus a goodwill gesture. Thank you to all for your help and encouragement. In particular for the email address of the MD David Horne.

 

[enyoueffsea]

Positive outcome but it shouldn’t take the Managing Director to be contacted via an online forum to resolve matters like this.

 

[John R]

I would still say its a real concern their own internal processes and CS department feel they can just ignore Court documentation though. A real liability for them going forward.

If an MD has to get involved for something serious like this, in most organisations I would usually expect that a) someone has had some fairly frank feedback, and b) it's much less likely to happen again. I've no reason to believe it will be any different for LNER.

 

[KirkstallOne]

It’s great that Mr Horne intervened and (may) have issued some rollickings to his underlings but they have ignored court processes and many attempts to resolve. Seems the rot must run quite deep in his organisation.

 

[Hadders]

As I said upthread, it’s c**k up rather than conspiracy.

Don’t underestimate many staff being completely unaware of the importance of dealing with things like this straight away.

 

[island]

As I said upthread, it’s c**k up rather than conspiracy.

Don’t underestimate many staff being completely unaware of the importance of dealing with things like this straight away.

Indeed. Especially at large organisations. This kind of thing goes off into an enormous in-tray or routed to an overworked legal or compliance team, and default judgements often happen.