Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
We have four LNW return tickets from Crewe to Euston on Saturday (booked before the strike was announced). LNW have said they will not be running any trains on that route so I was hoping Avanti would accept them. However I've spoken on the phone to both LNW and Avanti and they have both confirmed that Avanti will not accept these. Avanti even said I'd get fined if I try to use them on an Avanti train, as well as having to buy new full price tickets.
The advice was to get a refund on the LNW tickets and buy new tickets with Avanti, which will cost us £200 more. So we all have to pay for LNWs lack of service, and it feels like they just wash their hands of the consequences. Looks like we'll be driving to London then....
I see what you mean, though does the fact that the cancellation was notified to the customer some days in advance negate that obligation?
I had a similar issue when I was travelling from Crewe to Manchester Airport recently with an AP Northern ticket. The train was cancelled and in order to get to Manchester Airport in time to catch my plane I had to go via Piccadilly using a TfW service. On that occasion I was told at the Crewe ticket office that I had to buy a more expensive any operator ticket and claim a refund on my Northern ticket which I complied with. So the journey cost me about 3 times what it should have.
We have four LNW return tickets from Crewe to Euston on Saturday (booked before the strike was announced). LNW have said they will not be running any trains on that route so I was hoping Avanti would accept them. However I've spoken on the phone to both LNW and Avanti and they have both confirmed that Avanti will not accept these. Avanti even said I'd get fined if I try to use them on an Avanti train, as well as having to buy new full price tickets.
The advice was to get a refund on the LNW tickets and buy new tickets with Avanti, which will cost us £200 more. So we all have to pay for LNWs lack of service, and it feels like they just wash their hands of the consequences. Looks like we'll be driving to London then....
Refunding your existing tickets is something you should only do if you have no intention of travelling anymore (or you prefer to drive and it's cheaper).
WMT are absolutely responsible for arranging ticket acceptance or providing you with an endorsement or new ticket valid on Avanti. Since they refuse to do that, you would be entitled to claim back your reasonable costs for buying a new ticket valid on Avanti.
That being said, since WMT are otherwise leaving you stranded, Avanti would also be obliged to assist under NRCoT 28.2 by accepting your ticket - although I appreciate you may not want to argue that 'on the ground' and you may prefer to argue it out with customer services afterwards.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Absolutely not. They may try to claim so but they are making that up; there's no requirement for the cancellation to be on the day for those rights to apply.
I had a similar issue when I was travelling from Crewe to Manchester Airport recently with an AP Northern ticket. The train was cancelled and in order to get to Manchester Airport in time to catch my plane I had to go via Piccadilly using a TfW service. On that occasion I was told at the Crewe ticket office that I had to buy a more expensive any operator ticket and claim a refund on my Northern ticket which I complied with. So the journey cost me about 3 times what it should have.
Unfortunately you were misinformed. If it was within the last 6 years you'd have legal recourse, although I appreciate it may be too much of a faff to be worth pursuing given the likely value in question.
Refunding your existing tickets is something you should only do if you have no intention of travelling anymore (or you prefer to drive and it's cheaper).
WMT are absolutely responsible for arranging ticket acceptance or providing you with an endorsement or new ticket valid on Avanti. Since they refuse to do that, you would be entitled to claim back your reasonable costs for buying a new ticket valid on Avanti.
That being said, since WMT are otherwise leaving you stranded, Avanti would also be obliged to assist under NRCoT 28.2 by accepting your ticket - although I appreciate you may not want to argue that 'on the ground' and you may prefer to argue it out with customer services afterwards.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Absolutely not. They may try to claim so but they are making that up; there's no requirement for the cancellation to be on the day for those rights to apply.
Unfortunately you were misinformed. If it was within the last 6 years you'd have legal recourse, although I appreciate it may be too much of a faff to be worth pursuing given the likely value in question.
Thankyou for the advice, I'll remember that in future. We haven't asked to refund our LNW Crewe to London tickets yet, so am tempted to turn up on the day and see what happens. Also to print out the relevant article and take it with us. My wife and others may be less willing to run the gauntlet however, so still hoping Avanti will change their ticket acceptance stance.
There is also K3 of Customer Information Pledge. I used that in addition to Article 16 PRO when my wife`s Northern train was cancelled and she was advised to use Avanti but told she had to pay for the privilege. I got the refund in the end but only after receiving nonesense from Avanti Customer Services who clearly had no knowledge of the law nor even of their own Avanti publication. I told them that I`d take it higher if they persisted in denying either the law of their publication. They thanked me for my further correspondence and paid up.
Looking at Article 16 it applies when arrival at destination is likely to be 60 or more minutes late, and going via Birmingham would mean a delay of 115 minutes getting into Euston, so I don't think that applies.
The PRO doesn't give you an automatic right to use Avanti. What it does do is require WMT to reroute you, which basically means buying you a ticket on Avanti if they won't do acceptance. However, reports on this Forum would suggest that the only way you are ever going to enforce that right is to purchase the Avanti ticket yourself and bring a claim in the Small Claims Track against WMT for failure to do so, having asked them in advance citing PRO and received a refusal in writing. If doing this do NOT refund the WMT ticket, as that would remove this right.
I don't know what success people have had with that approach, but for most it's too much hassle.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Some Trent Valley stations (well, Lichfield and Rugeley) will have services to New St from which a service to Euston is operating. It's a slow way to go but you will get there provided it's within the limited operating day.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Thankyou for the advice, I'll remember that in future. We haven't asked to refund our LNW Crewe to London tickets yet, so am tempted to turn up on the day and see what happens. Also to print out the relevant article and take it with us. My wife and others may be less willing to run the gauntlet however, so still hoping Avanti will change their ticket acceptance stance.
No there are no Trent Valley local trains, but you could use the half hourly Cross City trains to connect into the hourly LNW Birmingham to Euston via Northampton trains. Its not ideal, and will take longer, but if you really need to travel on either Friday or Saturday at least you will get there going that way.
Extremely poor for them to be saying "no acceptance, rebook at your own cost" if they are seeking to arrange it. They should be telling people an honest truth about what they are doing.
Extremely poor for them to be saying "no acceptance, rebook at your own cost" if they are seeking to arrange it. They should be telling people an honest truth about what they are doing.
On a short term basis I have found it depends what the weather is like, who is on shift, etc... One Friday afternoon, 1546 EUS-LTV cancelled, acceptance on the 1607 Avanti. The following Friday, no such luck.
I haven't read much into this specific dispute; but in general union action aims to cause a large impact, not a mild inconvenience. If it only affected business travellers, their companies would just buy flights or taxis. Effective union action requires mass disruption.
A 2 day strike from Saturday to Sunday or even Sunday to Monday would have had more impact. The majority of football matches this weekend are on Sunday (ony one of the play off finals is on Saturday), and Firday is probably the quietest weekday.
A 10 car 730 every hour would probably be ok for the Northampton - Euston services. There will be standing passengers but the trains are not likely to be uncomfortably full. Do the unions have any say about what the train formations will be on a strike day?
Nope. This is down to train planners and control teams - and in a lesser immediate sense WMT’s commitments to deliver capacity in their agreement with DfT. Although control staff are the ones on strike so…
It appears to be a mix of 10 and 12 car, with the odd 8 in the morning. There look to be 2 8 car sets which seem to get swapped in their entirety later on, one of them is the set from the 0139 off Euston that doesn't "go to bed" and one that appears to be from the Euston end, so would be dependent on yesterday's diagramming.
Presumably though if anything fails that diagram will just end up short formed for the rest of the day.
I wonder if the company will pay guards £250 per day to act as contingency controllers like they did to the striking controllers when we went out on strike?
Half hours training should do to cover their jobs….
I wonder if the company will pay guards £250 per day to act as contingency controllers like they did to the striking controllers when we went out on strike?
Half hours training should do to cover their jobs….
I think you under estimate the role.
From my experience, a lot of ex train crew who moved into Control jobs couldn’t hack it and moved back to their original roles.
I am not aware of any Controllers (or DTCMs/Roster Clerks) who acted as Contingency Conductors during the recent strikes
There's now a couple of diagrams showing as 15 car, which might be a first, at least for the Northampton loop.
I'm heading to London this evening and have the choice of changing onto the same Avanti service at either MK or Rugby. I'm thinking Rugby is likely to be less of a scrum (!) to get on than Milton Keynes. Would that be a reasonable presumption?
Catching 23.30 from Euston on the way back. Is there a chance I won't be able to board? Thinking mainly of MK passengers who usually have more services. If I can't, what happens then? I'd probably run over to St Pancras and get a taxi home from Wellingborough but would Avanti be putting stranded passengers in taxis anyway?
Catching 23.30 from Euston on the way back. Is there a chance I won't be able to board? Thinking mainly of MK passengers who usually have more services. If I can't, what happens then? I'd probably run over to St Pancras and get a taxi home from Wellingborough but would Avanti be putting stranded passengers in taxis anyway?
No guarantees but my suspicion is that people from MK mostly won't go to London today and so you'll be OK, though that train can be a bit busy on a Friday sometimes.
If you purchased a ticket dated for travel on Friday 22 May or Saturday 23 May this can be used either one day before I.e. Thursday 21 May or up to one day after on Sunday 24 May.
In addition to WMR services tickets will be valid with other operators on other routes;
Chiltern Railways between Birmingham Snow Hill and Leamington Spa only;
Great Western Railway between Worcester Shrub Hill and Hereford only;
Transport for Wales between Birmingham New Street and Shrewsbury only.
Ticket acceptance has also been agreed with some other transport modes for travel on any reasonable route: These ticket acceptance arrangements are valid as follows:
- On Friday 22nd May; - On Saturday 23rd May.
West Midlands Metro - Customers holding rail tickets can be used on Metro services on both days of the strike action between The Hawthorns and Birmingham CityCentre only. West Midlands Metro have asked us to brief that some metro services may be particularly busy on Saturday 23rd May, this is due to the Pride Festival in Birmingham.
National Express Bus - Customers holding rail tickets for certain lines of route where there are no rail services operating can use them on NX Bus services as follows:
-Snow Hill lines between Snow Hill and Stourbridge Junction:
4M, 7, 9 (Direct between Stourbridge and Birmingham), X10, 12, 13, 74, 80, 87.
-Camp Hill lines between New St and Kings Norton via Kings Heath:
35, 50 between Pineapple Road and Birmingham;
11A/11C between Kings Norton and Kings Heath;
Passengers travelling between Kings Norton and Birmingham should use Cross City train services.
-Darlaston and Willenhall to Wolverhampton/Walsall:
529 (from Willenhall to Wolverhampton or Walsall), 37 (Between Darlaston & Willenhall) and 34, 37, 39 (from Darlaston to Walsall).
-Between Leamington Spa and Nuneaton via Coventry:
11 and 20
We are aware of an issue with emails from the Forum to Microsoft-based email accounts (hotmail/outlook/live.com email addresses). This is being looked into currently, thanks for your patience meanwhile.
