Stratford fire ticketing question

[Russel]

Evening,

I'm supposed to be travelling to Clacton tomorrow, with tonight's fire at Stratford and the potential for services to still be severely disrupted tomorrow, I have a question regarding ticketing/refunds...

I have advance tickets from Lichfield to Euston with Avanti and a seperate set of advance tickets from Liverpool Street to Clacton with GA, now, the GA tickets will be a straight forward delay repay/abandoned journey claim, but would I be entitled to claim back the cost of the Avanti tickets into London too?

For reference, the current guidance on the National Rail site is as follows

Please do not travel for the remainder of the day. We will provide further updates as soon as we can.

Please ensure you submit a delay repay claim for your journey today, and add details of any exceptional costs you have incurred to facilitate your onward travel or abandoned travel to the claim. Alternatively, contact the customer relations team with details and copies of receipts.

Ticket restrictions for today (Friday 10 July 2026) have been lifted and you will be able to use your ticket on trains tomorrow (Saturday 11 July 2026).

 

[yorkie]

Evening,

I'm supposed to be travelling to Clacton tomorrow, with tonight's fire at Stratford and the potential for services to still be severely disrupted tomorrow, I have a question regarding ticketing/refunds...

I have advance tickets from Lichfield to Euston with Avanti and a seperate set of advance tickets from Liverpool Street to Clacton with GA, now, the GA tickets will be a straight forward delay repay/abandoned journey claim, but would I be entitled to claim back the cost of the Avanti tickets into London too?

For reference, the current guidance on the National Rail site is as follows

This was all bought in one transaction, for one through journey, and meeting the minimum connection times, yes?

If so, absolutely, and it should be hassle-free.

If you bought with us, I'd expect the refund procedure to take place very promptly and for the claim to be approved and money back in your account shortly, and if it isn't, feel free to let me know the reference number and I'd ask someone to look at it tomorrow.

If you bought elsewhere, go through their refund procedure.

Edit: looks like you said previously you buy from Avanti; their refund instructions can be found at https://www.avantiwestcoast.co.uk/help-and-support/refund-journey and do let us know how you get on.

 

[Russel]

This was all bought in one transaction, for one through journey, and meeting the minimum connection times, yes?

The journey more than meets min connection time but unfortunately brought separately as initially I was just going to get a day travel card to get into London but plans changed

 

[redreni]

Official position at the moment is disruption expected until 0800 tomorrow. Either they're being heroically optimistic or the damage is such that it can be fixed in something like that timescale? Either way, I'd say it's necessary to wait and see if your booked services are actually disrupted in order to qualify for a refund on that basis. I'd be inclined to look in the morning to see if the journey can still be made sensibly via rail. Even if they were to say services would run from Romford to points east, that would give you a sensible route via Upminster.

My understanding is that booking with separate retailers doesn't reduce your rights, it just creates hassle because you've got a lot of explaining to do with Avanti customer services as to why you qualify for a disruption refund when there's been no disruption to the part of the journey they know about (which as far as they know is your entire journey).

 

[yorkie]

What happened in the end, @Russel ?

The journey more than meets min connection time but unfortunately brought separately as initially I was just going to get a day travel card to get into London but plans changed

If you bought from the same retailer, then it may require a manual claim, but you could give the details of each booking in your refund request.

My understanding is that booking with separate retailers doesn't reduce your rights, it just creates hassle because you've got a lot of explaining to do with Avanti customer services as to why you qualify for a disruption refund when there's been no disruption to the part of the journey they know about (which as far as they know is your entire journey).

Yes, in principle, however both segments would need to have been bought before any disruption was known about, and details of the other booking would need to be provided to Avanti, along with suitable evidence (e.g. a photo of TOD tickets or a copy of the e-tickets for the onward journey).

I would strongly recommend that if anyone extends a journey, they book with the same retailer and ensure that it all matches up (I'd also get a screenshot of NRE, showing that the through itinerary is a valid one).

 

[Gareth1990]

This was all bought in one transaction, for one through journey, and meeting the minimum connection times, yes?

If so, absolutely, and it should be hassle-free.

If you bought with us, I'd expect the refund procedure to take place very promptly and for the claim to be approved and money back in your account shortly, and if it isn't, feel free to let me know the reference number and I'd ask someone to look at it tomorrow.

If you bought elsewhere, go through their refund procedure.

Edit: looks like you said previously you buy from Avanti; their refund instructions can be found at https://www.avantiwestcoast.co.uk/help-and-support/refund-journey and do let us know how you get on.

I have a question, you say brought from us, but I was under the impression that the forum ticket site was just a different domain of Trainsplit? Is that a wrong assumption?

 

[yorkie]

I have a question, you say brought from us, but I was under the impression that the forum ticket site was just a different domain of Trainsplit? Is that a wrong assumption?

Yes, it is a brand of Trainsplit.

If @Russel has bought the tickets from the regular Trainsplit site, the same refund procedure applies, as described above.

 

[Russel]

What happened in the end, @Russel ?

Sorry, yeah, I forgot to come back with an update...

The entire day was one problem after another to be honest, but the Greater Anglia journey, despite the carnage at Stratford, was faultless, GA as usual, showing others how it should be done.

My plan was to get the 0642 Avanti from Lichfield to Euston, this failed at Lichfield due to a door interlock problem so the train was taken out of service, due to this blocking the platform for about 30 minutes, the 0710 couldn't stop at Lichfield so I ended up on the 0814 to Euston... My return from Euston was also a disaster as the 2031 to Preston was cancelled and in true Euston style, they seemed to just wash their hands of Tamworth and Lichfield passengers, with staff just passing me from person to person as they hadn't a clue, meaning I got a train to Stafford at about 2145ish and asked for them to provide me a taxi back to Lichfield...

Greater Anglia were great though, they had no issues with me using my advance tickets from Liverpool Street to Colchester and back on whichever train suited me best timing wise.

Full delay repay from Avanti though and it was back in my account in a matter of days, so can't moan about that.

This is a journey I do about once a month and unfortunately it isn't uncommon for the Avanti part of the journey to be a disaster in one way or another while GA just works, I'm at the point where I now expect a journey into or out of Euston to go wrong in some way.

 

[redreni]

If you were delayed against an intended through journey from Lichfield to Clacton that met the minimum connection times, then you're potentially letting Avanti off the hook if you only claim delay repay on the tickets covering the segment from Lichfield to London and London to Lichfield (though this does depend how severe the overall delay was and which delay threshold would apply to a claim based on the whole journey).

Impossible to say without more details, but just to make you aware you may have under-claimed (or been underpaid if it was auto delay repay).

 

[Russel]

If you were delayed against an intended through journey from Lichfield to Clacton that met the minimum connection times, then you're potentially letting Avanti off the hook if you only claim delay repay on the tickets covering the segment from Lichfield to London and London to Lichfield (though this does depend how severe the overall delay was and which delay threshold would apply to a claim based on the whole journey).

Impossible to say without more details, but just to make you aware you may have under-claimed (or been underpaid if it was auto delay repay).

The tickets were booked separately but did form part of a valid through journey, min connecting time wise, I always give myself an extra hour to cross London just and same on the return, I've been burnt by Avanti too many times so now give myself plenty of breathing space in case things go wrong.

The GA part of the journey only came to about £14 in total and with it being booked separately, I decided it wasn't worth the effort to go to with the inevitable initial rejection from Avanti followed by appealing etc.

 

[saismee]

Greater Anglia were great though, they had no issues with me using my advance tickets from Liverpool Street to Colchester and back on whichever train suited me best timing wise.

Our lovely RPIs and conductors will do what they can to help customers whenever CSL2 is activated on their (or adjacent) routes. They actually stop revenue duties beyond selling tickets to passengers who need them and just become customer service agents. This was an especially terrible day so it was all hands on deck to get passengers where they needed to be.

 

[Russel]

Our lovely RPIs and conductors will do what they can to help customers whenever CSL2 is activated on their (or adjacent) routes. They actually stop revenue duties beyond selling tickets to passengers who need them and just become customer service agents. This was an especially terrible day so it was all hands on deck to get passengers where they needed to be.

Yeah, I can't fault GA at all, given what they had to deal with, having a usable service back up and running by late morning was seriously impressive and the staff couldn't have been more helpful, the driver (I think, as he said he could see the platforms were all full) made an announcement apologising for and explain the small delay outside of Colchester and we'd only been stopped about 30 seconds at the most!

Complete opposite of Network Rail and Avanti at Euston who's attitude was quite frankly a disgrace, I get that they may not have had much information to give, but the impression I got was that they had given up and were lost all interest...