Attempting to get hotel bill refunded by OBB Austrian Rail

[tom3107]

Hello,

On 4th August I was due to travel from Lesce Bled to Geneva via Villach, Salzburg and Zurich, I was travelling on an Interrail pass. My train from Villach left 20 minutes early, so I missed it (according to staff at Villach this was due to a timetabling error because of engineering work and caught multiple people out). I was then put on a train 2 hours later which would get me to Geneva at 23.18 however this broke down whilst still at Villach - as a result I missed my connection at Salzburg and there were no other trains to Geneva that day. After speaking to OBB staff at Salzburg they said they suggested that I stay in a hotel in Innsbruck (closest I could get to Geneva that night) and then claim the money back from OBB because they were the cause of the delay - I was given a claim form to fill out and post to the office in Vienna.

I sent the form to Vienna by airmail from London on 12th August, it had all my contact details on it with copies of my ticket and schedules, but I have not yet received a response. I then sent a follow up email to kundenservice@oebb.at last week with scans of the claim form, and all reciepts, tickets and schedules last week and have still not had a response - not even an auto reply with a reference number.

I just wondered if this was normal for it to take this long, and if not, is there anywhere else I can take this as I am 72EUR out of pocket due to OBB?

I will try phoning tomorrow, but wanted to get the opinions of other members who may have been in this situation before. Thank you in advance for any help you are able to give.

 

[Greenback]

I have never been in that situation before, but responses are probbaly delayed because of workload. Since the recession, the most obvious place for cost cutting has been in back office staff for many companies.

My usual tactics are to write two follow up letters, both asking for confirmation of receipt, with the second one having a reasonable deadline to of around four weeks receive a full reply.

Many organisations do not meet whatever targets they have for replying to correspondence, and if you are communicating in English that may well delay matters a bit longer.

Most people in your position would come to the understandable conclusion that they are being ignored when they don't get a reply within a few weeks. I am pretty confident that you will get the money back, the only question is how long it will take them to sort it out.

 

[philjo]

We had to put in a claim to Trenitalia in 2004. Our Bari-Milan sleeper broke down & arrived in Milan too late to catch the 10:00 TGV to Paris. A the ticket office in Milan we were rebooked on to the next TGV without any problems but that left Milan at 16:00 so missing the last eurostar to London - so we stayed overnight in Paris.
We had put in a claim for the hotel cost to Trenitalia (plus additional charges for eurostar as they wouldn't pass our existing tickets)

We eventually had a letter back from Trenitalia containing a cheque but I think it took 3-4 months to get a response.

 

[tom3107]

Thanks for the advice

I'll wait until next week before persuing it further as that will be 2 weeks since my last email and over 5 since the original letter.