Northern online delay repay - auto rejecting multiple passengers.

After having claims rejected and then appealing, I’ve finally got Northern to cough up for delay repay for journeys that my parents and I took on the same day back in June.

Me - Lancashire to Cumbria on an off peak day return.
Mum and Dad travelling together - South Yorkshire to Yorkshire coast on 2x day rovers.

All three tickets bought as e-tickets by myself using the Northern app and printed out.
All tickets were scanned on the trains.
All of us experienced delays.

So I put in 3x claims using the same “family” delay repay account, linked to my Mum and Dad’s shared email address.

After them initially rejecting my claim because I started short on my ticket so the journey didn’t match the ticket, my claim was accepted. However, Mum and Dad’s claims were rejected due to “Our systems show that you have already claimed that you were travelling on a different service at this time. You can only claim for the actual delay you experienced and therefore this claim has been rejected.”

So I appealed and they have relented with the advice -

When multiple claims are submitted from the same account for passengers travelling at the same date, our system may incorrectly identify these as duplicate or conflicting claims and automatically reject them.

To prevent this from happening in the future, your parents will need to create separate Delay Repay accounts and use separate email addresses when submitting their claims. This will ensure that each passenger's journey is assessed independently and reduce the likelihood of claims being rejected by our validation checks.

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I can’t see my elderly, computer-illiterate mother setting up her own personal email account purely to keep Northern’s AI happy. In future I will advise them to claim using a paper form in the post.

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lyndhurst25 said:

I can’t see my elderly, computer-illiterate mother setting up her own personal email account purely to keep Northern’s AI happy.

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Maybe set up a new one for you and let your parents keep the existing account?

lyndhurst25 said:

After having claims rejected and then appealing, I’ve finally got Northern to cough up for delay repay for journeys that my parents and I took on the same day back in June.

Me - Lancashire to Cumbria on an off peak day return.
Mum and Dad travelling together - South Yorkshire to Yorkshire coast on 2x day rovers.

All three tickets bought as e-tickets by myself using the Northern app and printed out.
All tickets were scanned on the trains.
All of us experienced delays.

So I put in 3x claims using the same “family” delay repay account, linked to my Mum and Dad’s shared email address.

After them initially rejecting my claim because I started short on my ticket so the journey didn’t match the ticket, my claim was accepted. However, Mum and Dad’s claims were rejected due to “Our systems show that you have already claimed that you were travelling on a different service at this time. You can only claim for the actual delay you experienced and therefore this claim has been rejected.”

So I appealed and they have relented with the advice -


I can’t see my elderly, computer-illiterate mother setting up her own personal email account purely to keep Northern’s AI happy. In future I will advise them to claim using a paper form in the post.

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Just get a fresh Gmail account and set then up their own accounts for this sole purpose.

If the existing account is a gmail account you can probably add a + suffix (i.e. email+alice@gmail.com and email+bob@gmail.com) to create an email alias that will still deliver all the emails to the same inbox. Other email providers likely have something similar (and I'm not sure if this still works since I haven't used gmail in a while).

blimmo said:

and I'm not sure if this still works since I haven't used gmail in a while

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It does, as does adding (or removing) dots wherever you'd like in the email address.

my.email@gmail.com and myemail@gmail.com and m.y.e.m.a.i.l@gmail.com will all go to the same inbox.

MrJeeves said:

It does, as does adding (or removing) dots wherever you'd like in the email address.

my.email@gmail.com and myemail@gmail.com and m.y.e.m.a.i.l@gmail.com will all go to the same inbox.

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Additional options are using @gmail and @googlemail as these don't seem to be recognised as the same by anyone but Google.

In future I will advise them to claim using a paper form in the post.

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I cannot recommend this method, because Northern do not offer an electronic payment method if you submit a claim form in the post. I discovered this a couple of years ago when trying to assist a non computer user friend of mine.
This is what they offer:
• Cashable voucher - this can be exchanged for cash at any Northern ticket office.
• Free ticket(s) - see table above for the number/type of tickets, which varies according to the length of delay. These can be used for any journey on a Northern Service
• National Rail Travel Voucher - these can be used like a book token against the cost of a ticket with any train company. Change cannot be given if the cost of the ticket(s) purchased is less than the value of voucher(s) tendered.
In my situation I submitted a claim as if I had been the passenger, and refunded my friend with cash.
I can't work out where the nearest ticket office, operated by Northern, would be.

JBuchananGB said:

I cannot recommend this method, because Northern do not offer an electronic payment method if you submit a claim form in the post. I discovered this a couple of years ago when trying to assist a non computer user friend of mine.
This is what they offer:
• Cashable voucher - this can be exchanged for cash at any Northern ticket office.
• Free ticket(s) - see table above for the number/type of tickets, which varies according to the length of delay. These can be used for any journey on a Northern Service
• National Rail Travel Voucher - these can be used like a book token against the cost of a ticket with any train company. Change cannot be given if the cost of the ticket(s) purchased is less than the value of voucher(s) tendered.
In my situation I submitted a claim as if I had been the passenger, and refunded my friend with cash.
I can't work out where the nearest ticket office, operated by Northern, would be.

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Legally speaking they are required to offer at least one "money option" under condition 34.1 of the NRCoT:

Compensation methods may include payment by cheque or a bank transfer payment (usually referred to as a BACS payment); by means of a refund to your debit or credit
card (each of these three is a “money option”); or in rail travel vouchers. Your options, which will include at least one “money option”, will vary by Train Company

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Only a cheque, bank transfer or card refund is considered a "money option" so the options Northern offer for paper forms are not sufficient to meet that requirement.

I see no reason why they can't offer cheque payments as no confidential personal details are needed to issue one.

I just wanted to draw the OP's attention to the deficiency of Northern's paper based claim system. It is unlikely that the elderly mother using the paper based form will be happy with any of the methods offered, unless there is a staffed Northern station nearby from which to collect the cash. Who wants to get into the debate with Northern as to whether their DR paper based process complies with the NRCoT? They might consider that collecting cash from a station is a "money option".

JBuchananGB said:

I just wanted to draw the OP's attention to the deficiency of Northern's paper based claim system. It is unlikely that the elderly mother using the paper based form will be happy with any of the methods offered, unless there is a staffed Northern station nearby from which to collect the cash. Who wants to get into the debate with Northern as to whether their DR paper based process complies with the NRCoT? They might consider that collecting cash from a station is a "money option".

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The NRCoT clearly states what counts as a 'money option', collecting cash from a station is not one of those options.