TOCs rejecting delay repay claims saying other TOC responsible, not forwarding the claim and not advising claimant of right to appeal

I've seen a number of threads about delay repay where a TOC has rejected a claim saying another TOC is responsible but has not forwarded the claim. I've also seen longstanding members state that TOCs are supposed to, or even that they have to forward the claim if they believe another TOC is responsible.

I've just received what looks like a boilerplate letter from GTR, however, which states

Decision: Declined
Details: We've checked the journey you have claimed for and our records show that the original delay was caused by another train operator Southeastern. We're unable to compensate for delays caused by another train operator, so please be advised that you'll need to make a claim with them directly.

Thank you again for contacting us. I do hope that your future journeys are trouble free, now sod off.

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[Okay, I may have embellished this slightly with the final three words, otherwise this is verbatim].

This was a postal reply to a postal delay repay claim and it makes no mention of any right of appeal, nor does it even give any contact details other than their non-Freepost PO Box address.

Is there anything written down anywhere specifying that TOCs should do better than this i.e. forward claims if you believe another TOC is responsible and/or provide an appeals process for rejected claims?

In this particular instance the original delay was caused by Great Northern, so the decision is wrong. That first delay was material because it caused me to miss a connection. A subsequent leg on Southeastern was also delayed. As they've provided no avenue to appeal, I'll bang in a complaint.

NRCoT section 32.1 covers this, I think.

SuspectUsual said:

NRCoT section 32.1 covers this, I think.

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Ah, so it does, thank you.

Presumably this behaviour could allow the other TOC to reject the subsequent claim on the basis that it was submitted too late...

Bill57p9 said:

Presumably this behaviour could allow the other TOC to reject the subsequent claim on the basis that it was submitted too late...

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Yes, it would in this case given I travelled on 18/8 and posted the claim form on 19/8.

On 28/8 I sent it to them again by including a scanned copy of the claim form plus proof of postage in an email to their Customer Relations team complaining about a couple of earlier postal claim forms that they had apparently lost. I had to chase for a response and eventually received a curt reply saying I need to wait 20 working days plus two days for postage before chasing. Then I receive a spurious rejection on 13th October dated 7th October and claiming that they only received the form on 6th October, some 35 working days after I posted it and 26 working days after I first emailed it to them, telling me to make a claim from Southeatern some 57 days after the date of travel.

All the above despite them assuring me by email on 13th September that "concerns previously identified with the receipt and processing of postal correspondence have been addressed".

Why are you submitting claims by post? Unlike a claim made on their website, you have no proof of submitting a postal claim. Even if you pay for proof of postage, that is no guarantee of if or when it gets delivered. And whereas an electronic claim may possibly be paid automatically within a day, a postal claim will inevitably go into the big backlog of claims to be manually processed.

redreni said:

on 28/8 I sent it to them again by including a scanned copy of the claim form plus proof of postage in an email to their Customer Relations team complaining about a couple of earlier postal claim forms that they had apparently lost. I had to chase for a response and eventually received a curt reply saying I need to wait 20 working days plus two days for postage before chasing. Then I receive a spurious rejection on 13th October dated 7th October and claiming that they only received the form on 6th October, some 35 working days after I posted it and 26 working days after I first emailed it to them,

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It is your responsibility, as sender, to ensure that your claim gets to them within the deadline. Without paying for proof of delivery, you have no way of showing when they actually got your letter. "they only received it some 35 working days after I posted it" could well mean that is when they finally got around to opening your letter out of all the bags of letters that they likely receive.

And when you say 26 working days after you first emailed it to them, did you email it separately, specifically as a resubmission of that particular claim, or just as an aside to your generalised complaint you emailed on 28/8? If the latter, I could understand it not triggering consideration of that particular claim.

Given so many TOCs are so obviously playing games to deny delay repay these days, it would be reasonable to assume it's been agreed upon privately with the DfT, so it might be a losing battle. Perhaps we need more collective action and lobby our MPs?

In any case as noted above, don't give them more ammo by doing things by post, especially with how much Royal Mail has deteriorated these days.

The train companies are simply stupid and incompetent I'm afraid. This is a worse problem to fix than Machiavellian intent, so that isn't good news by the way. And definitely don't post claims because they can get lost. Not "tossed in the bin" lost, I mean actually lost. With emails you have an audit trail of everything.

I first formed the habit of posting claims to GTR because when the Luton to Rainham (Kent) service first commenced, I was commuting on it 5 days a week (or would have been if they'd had the foresight to train up an adequate number of drivers) and I was delayed by more than 15 minutes most days, often twice a day. Keeping a stack of photocopies of the claim form with my name, address and season ticket details pre-filled made for a much more efficient process for me. I took the view that if it's less efficient for them, that's their problem, they should run a few more trains rather than cancel them (which they eventually did). No claims ever got lost in the post pre-pandemic.

Post-pandemic I claim from them much less often. I have used their online claim form but it is full of bugs (e.g. the list of stations you can select excludes the Elizabeth Line core) so I don't always bother.

Them losing claims is definitely a relatively new phenomenon and I wasn't prepared to just accept that you can't claim by post anymore. Instead I kept copies of everything I sent and obtained proof of postage for all claims. Over about a nine month period ending this summer a pattern had been established where I would post the claim, wait 3 weeks, email them attaching a scanned copy and asking if they had received it, and they would say no we haven't received it however we will process your claim. One I had 5 or 6 of those I put it to them that claims were going missing consistently and this couldn't really be explained by the vagaries of the postal service or bad luck: I speculated maybe somebody was binning them to avoid having to process them and asked if they would look into it. That's when I received a reply saying our processes are none of your business, but there we have identified concerns about the receipt and processing of postal correspondence which we have addressed.

So that's the context in which I emailed them this particular claim form: I said here, I posted this 10 days ago, if you've addressed the issues with your post then you should know if you've received it or not. There were two or three separate matters in a single email, and they did ignore my question about whether they'd received this claim when they first replied, but I pressed them for a specific answer to the question about whether they'd received this specific claim. That's when I got a shirty response saying it hasn't been 20 working days yet and we won't know if we've received it until we get to it.

Now, I don't personally mind how long it takes them to deal with these things, but obviously I do mind if they wrongly attribute the delay to another TOC, especially if they don't forward it and advise me to make a fresh claim which would be well out of time.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Yesterday at 09:50 ==

Belperpete said:

And when you say 26 working days after you first emailed it to them, did you email it separately, specifically as a resubmission of that particular claim, or just as an aside to your generalised complaint you emailed on 28/8? If the latter, I could understand it not triggering consideration of that particular claim.

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My email of 28/8 wasn't intended to necessarily trigger immediate consideration of the claim, it was intended to prevent them subsequently denying receipt of the claim once the matter was time-barred. The email establishes that they received it within the 28 day window.

redreni said:

especially if they don't forward it and advise me to make a fresh claim which would be well out of time.

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But it wouldn't be out of time because you will have evidence that the claim was submitted to and considered by a train company within the 28 days time limit. The fact that they haven't forwarded it is neither here nor there.

Haywain said:

But it wouldn't be out of time because you will have evidence that the claim was submitted to and considered by a train company within the 28 days time limit. The fact that they haven't forwarded it is neither here nor there.

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Yet if I follow the advice upthread to claim online, I have no way of explaining that to Southeastern when I claim. Will they know? They only allow one attachment for all tickets so it'd be hard to upload the email as a supporting document and also submit the ticket.

In any case, I'm not going to claim from Southeastern because the first material delay was on GTR. I will report back when they respond.

redreni said:

Will they know?

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No, but if the claim was rejected for being out of time you would be able to demonstrate what had happened.

Haywain said:

No, but if the claim was rejected for being out of time you would be able to demonstrate what had happened.

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Weeks of endless fun! They reject it for being out of time, I appeal, then they reject it (correctly) because GTR caused the delay.

This process has never been perfect but it used to work a lot better than this...

I'll complain to GTR and report back.

redreni said:

Yet if I follow the advice upthread to claim online, I have no way of explaining that to Southeastern when I claim. Will they know? They only allow one attachment for all tickets so it'd be hard to upload the email as a supporting document and also submit the ticket.

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Most TOC's on-line claim sites won't allow you to enter a claim for a journey made more than 28 days ago. In such cases, you need to email your claim to Customer Services. You can explain in your email, and attach a copy of the email you received.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Yesterday at 21:51 ==

redreni said:

Them losing claims is definitely a relatively new phenomenon and I wasn't prepared to just accept that you can't claim by post anymore. Instead I kept copies of everything I sent and obtained proof of postage for all claims. Over about a nine month period ending this summer a pattern had been established where I would post the claim, wait 3 weeks, email them attaching a scanned copy and asking if they had received it, and they would say no we haven't received it however we will process your claim. One I had 5 or 6 of those I put it to them that claims were going missing consistently and this couldn't really be explained by the vagaries of the postal service or bad luck: I speculated maybe somebody was binning them to avoid having to process them and asked if they would look into it. That's when I received a reply saying our processes are none of your business, but there we have identified concerns about the receipt and processing of postal correspondence which we have addressed.

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If you can show that they are continuing to "lose" postal claims, it is probably time to consider raising this to the ombudsman.