Forthcoming changes to National Rail Conditions of Travel

[joncombe]

For online purchased paid by credit card I thought there was meant to be some sort of "cooling of period" legislation where you can get a free refund within a certain time scale. Does that only apply to physical goods though or would it also cover rail tickets? If the latter I can't see how this change could be enforced? Although possibly it only applies if a ticket costs above a certain amount. I can certainly see an issue with this as I used Trainline to buy a ticket (possibly my first mistake) and had discovered that the ticket they sold me was a "split save" with the split at Gomshall not a direct ticket. But before I even started the journey the first (Thameslink) train was cancelled, meaning I'd miss the GWR train. The next one didn't stop at Gomshall, so my split ticket wouldn't have been valid for another 2 hours! As a result I could at least get a refund of the ticket (it was still unused) and buy another which wasn't a split. It would be annoying to be forced to wait 2 hours for the next one, or swallow the cost.

 

[Bletchleyite]

For online purchased paid by credit card I thought there was meant to be some sort of "cooling of period" legislation where you can get a free refund within a certain time scale. Does that only apply to physical goods though or would it also cover rail tickets?

Transport tickets (and a few other things) are exempt.

 

[BRX]

One of my local stations only has one functioning ticket machine. I don't need to go there in rush hour to find a queue. Sometimes there's no queue, sometimes there's 2 or 3 people in line. If I need to buy a ticket, then I need to get there in time to allow for the possibility I'm going to have to wait for a couple of other people to purchase tickets before I can.

 

[Dirty_Mac]

I don't think anyone has mentioned how it'll no longer be possible to refund the return portion of a return ticket. You can't even excess a single to a return after travelling, so people whose return travel arrangements are uncertain will just be screwed.

 

[mmh]

All of those are invented problems. I've never in my life factored in extra time to purchase an ordinary single or return in the UK, and I very often arrive at the station <5 minutes before departure without feeling rushed.

Buying tickets at the time of travel has always been best practice (and what I always do), even now refunds still incur a fee.

That'll be because you're a confident and experienced user of the system, who presumably doesn't care about seat reservations. I'd argue you are not typical of the majority of long distance passengers.

 

[johncrossley]

How "disrupted" does a journey need to be for refunds to be allowed?

 

[Bletchleyite]

How "disrupted" does a journey need to be for refunds to be allowed?

Delayed (how long is not specified, so any delay, though I think you'd be told not to take the mick if you tried it for 1 minute ) or cancelled. Same as would allow an Advance to be refunded now.

It's only if you decided not to travel *because* of the delay or cancellation (not if it's a coincidence), though that isn't enforceable of course.

(I don't doubt that the fraudsters will have a look at Realtime Trains and pick a delayed train and claim to have wanted that one...)

 

[Tetchytyke]

Sure, the Tube isn't the mainline, but it highlights how people mostly just aren't buying tickets at stations any more where they can avoid it, so doing so if you do need to is not much of a barrier.

Yet last time I went through Gatwick the queues for the ticket machines were snaking halfway down the corridor from the terminal building. And there are a lot of ticket machines at Gatwick.

It’s even worse at places like Manchester Airport, where there are fewer machines and the ones they do have are appalling.

Nobody will be buying paper tickets on the Tube and, unless you have a railcard, people won’t be using the machines to top up Oyster either.

 

[Haywain]

unless you have a railcard, people won’t be using the machines to top up Oyster either.

I have a Railcard on Oyster and can top up using the TfL Go app. No need to use a self-service machine.

 

[Tetchytyke]

How "disrupted" does a journey need to be for refunds to be allowed?

Not defined yet.

The current rules for Advance tickets are that you can get a refund if a train is delayed and you choose not to travel.

Given that most of our TOCs are singularly incapable of running things on time, I wonder how they will define it in the new conditions.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Given that most of our TOCs are singularly incapable of running things on time, I wonder how they will define it in the new conditions.

I can't see it being any different from how it's defined for Advances now, unless anyone happens to know to the contrary. It's just putting a wider range of tickets under the same sort of rules (i.e. all tickets bar seasons now cease to be refundable/changeable once they become valid*), not introducing anything new.

* Except 70 Minute Flex which appears to remain changeable up to 139 minutes *after* they become valid, but aren't refundable.

 

[Benjwri]

people won’t be using the machines to top up Oyster either.

Plenty of people do, you see it all the time, not least because you can use cash. Certainly it isn’t the norm but it definitely happens regularly.

 

[Wallsendmag]

Then you've been very lucky. My experiences at Newcastle and at Manchester Airport are very different. I know what I'm doing but I still have to wait behind all the people who don't.

Until Sunday there were 19 TVMs in Newcastle most of them totally underused

 

[soil]

Unsurprisingly, IanVisits (who is in my experience always anti-customer and pro-establishment, I guess because it eases getting access to stuff for his London tours business) is touting the party line.

Fare dodgers targeted as train ticket refund rules are tightened

In a bid to clamp down on ticket fraud that costs the railways millions each year, the government has quietly changed the rules on claiming refunds for unused train tickets.

www.ianvisits.co.uk

He's also claiming sole credit for "discovering" this change.

https://x.com/ianvisits/status/2028482891387203935

Everyone (really?) is talking about it because I wrote about it.

 

[Adam Williams]

He's also claiming sole credit for "discovering" this change.

https://x.com/ianvisits/status/2028482891387203935

Wow Perhaps a very slightly overinflated idea of the importance of his site.

As much as I have criticisms of this change, one thing I don't think RDG have done badly on is planning comms and working with retailers to make it all as obvious as possible as to what's going on. I believe there are various posters that have gone up, frontline ticket office staff briefings, co-ordinated postings on socials, changes to booking flows etc - and of course it all got leaked here months ago as well so it was hardly unknown.

And yes, all of the comms planning was done well before Ian Mansfield wrote anything about it. We started sending emails out on when the embargo ended on Sunday; by now, if you've purchased from e.g. the forum ticketing site in the last year, you should've received an email.

 

[Bletchleyite]

He's also claiming sole credit for "discovering" this change.

https://x.com/ianvisits/status/2028482891387203935

As distinct from it being emailed to every user of every ticketing site and all over the websites etc...his arrogance knows no bounds sometimes!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Mar 2026 ==

As much as I have criticisms of this change, one thing I don't think RDG have done badly on is planning comms and working with retailers to make it all as obvious as possible as to what's going on. I believe there are various posters that have gone up, frontline ticket office staff briefings etc - and of course it all got leaked here months ago as well so it was hardly unknown.

Yes, it's been communicated so well anyone who gets caught out by it because they didn't know about it (rather than because it's unreasonable in itself) must have had their head in a bucket of sand for a period of time.

And yes, all of the comms planning was done well before Ian Mansfield wrote anything about it. We started sending emails out on when the embargo ended on Sunday; by now, if you've purchased from e.g. the forum ticketing site in the last year, you should've received an email.

Yes, I've had one.

 

[CyrusWuff]

Northern have sent out emails to their entire CRM database by the looks of it, regardless of whether you've bought a ticket through their website.

Passing through Marylebone earlier suggests Chiltern have added an advert about the upcoming changes to the rotation on all their TVMs.

It should really be on the NRE home page too, instead of ads for London Theatre Week and "On the train you can..."

 

[kkong]

Northern have sent out emails to their entire CRM database by the looks of it, regardless of whether you've bought a ticket through their website.

I spotted a page about the forthcoming refund changes on the information monitors on a Northern Class 195 this morning.

 

[Wallsendmag]

Northern have sent out emails to their entire CRM database by the looks of it, regardless of whether you've bought a ticket through their website.

Passing through Marylebone earlier suggests Chiltern have added an advert about the upcoming changes to the rotation on all their TVMs.

It should really be on the NRE home page too, instead of ads for London Theatre Week and "On the train you can..."

IT's on the LNER Web/App and on the TVM screensaver AFAIK

 

[MrJeeves]

At least some S&B machines are displaying dialogs with the information when you go to buy a ticket. Don't know if that will be TOC-specific or not.

Impressive how they can roll that out and not fares data every night.

 

[sprunt]

And yes, all of the comms planning was done well before Ian Mansfield wrote anything about it. We started sending emails out on when the embargo ended on Sunday; by now, if you've purchased from e.g. the forum ticketing site in the last year, you should've received an email.

I have! Not had them from Hull Trains or Avanti who are the TOCs I know I've previously bought tickets from.

 

[robbeech]

They can't overrride but there is a way round the reservation

And how does the average passenger deal with this?

 

[mmh]

IT's on the LNER Web/App and on the TVM screensaver AFAIK

Ticket machines shouldn't have screensavers. TOCs (or rather, the railway as a whole) are either completely incompetent at considering the passenger, or alternatively just don't give a stuff.

Sadly, this isn't about to change. Nationalisation will just mean the same nonsense in a different colour.

 

[Vexed]

Ticket machines shouldn't have screensavers. TOCs (or rather, the railway as a whole) are either completely incompetent at considering the passenger, or alternatively just don't give a stuff.

Sadly, this isn't about to change. Nationalisation will just mean the same nonsense in a different colour.

What's wrong with a screensaver if it's used for important messages about upcoming rules changes? I wouldn't approve of adverts on them but I don't see the issue with showing info like that or what I think the Thameslink ones say about what tickets they do and don't sell. It doesn't take any time to tap anywhere on the screen to start a transaction.

 

[CyrusWuff]

Ticket machines shouldn't have screensavers.

Why not? The monitors (which, depending on the TVM supplier, may well be a TV rotated through 90 degrees) are susceptible to burn-in just like other computer monitors. Having a screensaver running prolongs the usable life.

 

[Adam Williams]

Why not?

Because whoever configures them can't be trusted not to leave caps-lock on and add unnecessary punctuation

 

[kkong]

Because whoever configures them can't be trusted not to leave caps-lock on and add unnecessary punctuation

How many years does it take for these to no longer be considered "new"?

They are still showing this nonsense to this day.

 

[teaspoon]

Because whoever configures them can't be trusted not to leave caps-lock on and add unnecessary punctuation

The machines at my local station briefly had a new screensaver recently - alternating between a ScotRail logo and a promo for a charity - but have reverted to this.
I have a photo somewhere of a 'new' TicketXpress machine at a Silverlink station in 2005.

 

[Tom]

We've had a one or two queries from the mail shot we sent out on RTT to our customers shortly after the embargo lifted. I've also noticed quite a lot of people (in industry) actively defending this change defending it on the basis of unable to guarantee scans which of course basically admits that it is a problem with e-ticket processes more than anything else.

It shows this on the machine at Inverness Airport as you'd expect, at least it's fairly accurate there as it is new

 

[AdamWW]

We've had a one or two queries from the mail shot we sent out on RTT to our customers shortly after the embargo lifted. I've also noticed quite a lot of people (in industry) actively defending this change defending it on the basis of unable to guarantee scans which of course basically admits that it is a problem with e-ticket processes more than anything else.

I'm curious - how do passengers benefit from information about the change being embargoed until close to implementation?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 4 Mar 2026 ==

Also this bit is interesting:

https://media.raildeliverygroup.com/news/ticket-refund-changes-media-factsheet

This is a legacy of the outdated refund system that was designed for an era of paper tickets and cash payments, which allowed customers 28 days to return to the station that sold them their ticket to request a refund. Today, however, more than 80% of customers use digital tickets or tap in with payment cards or smart devices, and most refund claims are handled through self-serve processes online. The outdated rules in recent years have become a significant source of fraud and misuse.

So the 28 day rule was necessary in a time of paper tickets, and it's OK to make it impractical now to refund paper tickets at short notice because only 20% of passengers use them? (In some cases, of course, not by choice).

And

The new changes bring Britain in line with other countries’ railways and other transport sectors, where refunds are not generally available once a ticket is valid for use.

Can we look forwards to them looking at areas were Britain's rules are harsher than most other countries so that they can be relaxed to bring us into line? Or does it not work like that?