Compensation on split tickets

[BrownE]

Evening all,


An interesting question for you (in my opinion). I was recently delayed by over an hour due to a fault within the control of the rail industry. This lead to one very expensive taxi journey (paid for by the operator) home. I then submitted a claim for the cost of my tickets, which was about £40. The tickets were split, so I held three in total (two operators and a day travelcard).

Now, my case was deemed 'special', by the particular operator and passed off to the 'specialist team' who 'are a team of advisers that work closely with the Customer Services Manager'.

So the response was 'positive' and I'm happy with that, though I'm a little concerned that it may be factually wrong. I was told:

customers are welcome to use combination tickets for their journey, as per section 19 of the NRCoC, but compensation is only valid when using a through ticket

Having questioned this fact, a friend of mine looked into this and passed on this:

Split tickets do of course cover your journey - i.e. the journey you are making. However they break this down into sections and become individual contracts with us. For the sake of the passengers charter, we refund for the individual journey. The customer will have effectively 2 tickets for 2 journeys and we only comp for the affected one.

This just seems strange that because the delay was on the first leg and the first ticket then only that should be compensated for? Any clarification on the smoke and mirrors here would be great thanks!

 

[yorkie]

What TOC delayed you?

 

[soil]

Which TOC was this?

They can set their own rules for their own delay repay schemes.

 

[BrownE]

What TOC delayed you?

I was intentionally avoiding that fact, but I suppose it is relevant. The delay was with First Great Western (NR had the blame [points failure]).

 

[yorkie]

Ah, FGW don't do Delay Repay, and their Charter is quite stingy in comparison.

You could go back to them and remind them that their Passengers Charter states "you will be entitled to compensation in National Rail travel vouchers of at least 50% of the price you paid for the delayed journey", and if they still don't back down, take it to Passenger Focus.

TBH I am not really a fan of compensation claims when they've had to pay for a taxi, but at the end of the day they do commit to compensating you for the "journey" and are now refusing to compensate you for your "journey", and only agreeing to compensate you for part of it. That's not what they say!

What was the booked arrival time at your destination station, and what time did the taxi arrive at the destination station?

Was your journey on a "former FGW" or "former FGW Link" or "former Wessex Trains" service? (They all have different compensation terms, which is daft enough but it is utterly ridiculous that they refer to the old franchise names in their Charter without giving you any information as to what services they are describing!)

 

[BrownE]

TBH I am not really a fan of compensation claims when they've had to pay for a taxi, but at the end of the day they do commit to compensating you for the "journey" and are now refusing to compensate you for your "journey", and only agreeing to compensate you for part of it. That's not what they say!

I agree, the operator did pay a little under £250 for just me to get a taxi home. However, I'm entitled to a part refund and I don't really have a pile of money to burn on rail travel. They've agreed to compensate me the whole value but solely as a 'goodwill gesture' (hence my 'positive outcome' comment) and that was all I asked for in my letter/email. I was/am more concerned about the correctness of the statement suggesting split tickets means a part refund.

What was the booked arrival time at your destination station, and what time did the taxi arrive at the destination station?

I'm not going to go into specifics but I arrived around an hour and 40 minutes late, some time around 2:45-3:00

Was your journey on a "former FGW" or "former FGW Link" or "former Wessex Trains" service?[/QUOTE]
This would have been a former Link service.

 

[soil]

You are entitled to a 20% refund under NRCOC.

 

[island]

He has been offered a full refund as a goodwill gesture.

 

[BrownE]

You are entitled to a 20% refund under NRCOC.

10% - but I think you are missing the point here.

but compensation is only valid when using a through ticket

Which implies no matter what the delay unless you have a through ticket you get NO compensation.

Then the clarification which suggest the refund is only on the ticket(s) for the affected part of the journey.

The question is thus are either of these statements correct? Which one is correct (if applicable)? Why? It's not a case of percentages of refunds.

 

[soil]

Well it might be, since they don't have to operate their discretionary scheme according to the NRCoC, they only have to offer that as a minimum.

 

[island]

The thing is that condition 19 of the NRCoC says you may use multiple tickets for your journey provided that one of three criteria is fulfilled. So they clearly consider the possibility of one journey being covered by two or more tickets.

 

[yorkie]

Agreed - for the avoidance of doubt "You may use two or more tickets for one journey" is stipulated in the NRCoC. There is absolutely no question that the OP made one journey on two or more tickets.

 

[DL]

This is what cross country customer relations had to say to me when I did delay repay on a journey where I split tickets last year:

Unfortunately we are only able to compensate for the leg of the journey that you were delayed on and if people do split their tickets to get a cheaper combination then we will not add the tickets together and only take into consideration the leg that you are delayed on.

I do apologise for any disappointment that this may have caused you and please consider this in the future when looking at splitting your journey into multiple tickets.

However in this instance my total journey was a single XC train and so I argued that as the delay occurred during the first leg, my second ticket was delayed as well and if I had done it as two separate claims they would have paid out for both without question. In the end they did begrudingly pay out for both tickets but I certainly I wasn't impressed with their attitude to it!

 

[bb21]

I have a Delay Repay in dispute with EMT at the moment for exactly the same reason. The problem is that if they only pay out for the first leg, then the delay is not sufficiently large to qualify for Delay Repay. The delay on the first leg was only 8 minutes, but enough to cause me to miss my connection and a 90-minute delay in total.

It is either pay out for the whole journey, or using their principles, no compensation whatsoever. Paying out for the first leg only as they have done is neither here nor there.

I have never had such a problem previously with East Coast, FCC, LM, Southern or Southeastern.

 

[maniacmartin]

I've recently had the exact same situation described by bb21 with East Coast. They paid for the first leg only, but at that leg wasn't sufficiently delayed to qualify in its own right without factoring the missed connection

 

[BrownE]

For closure and your interest, here is FGWs response:

Dear Mr. XXXXX,


Thank you for your further email. I am happy to clarify.

A ticket forms a contract with a Train Operating Company to take you from and to the stations indicated on your ticket. A combination of tickets can be used to make your journey and compensation for a delay would be considered where appropriate,for the relevant ticket appertaining to the affected journey.

In this particular instance, compensation was due for the delay you experienced between Reading and London Paddington and would be based on the cost of the ticket held for that journey.

My colleague has reimbursed the full cost of your three journey tickets in Rail Travel Vouchers as you had such a bad customer experience. These were sent to you XXXXXX address and I am pleased that you are now happy with the outcome.

Thank you for another opportunity to explain.

Yours sincerely

XXXX XXXXXX
Customer Relations Senior Officer

 

[island]

I am not sure that this should be a closure!

 

[yorkie]

They admit that you can use a combination of tickets for one journey, but then try to claim Reading to Paddington is a journey, when that is clearly only part of the journey. Obviously not the brightest spark!

 

[Mr Spock]

On reading the OP,s last post I take it that compensation has now been given for all three tickets.

 

[BrownE]

On reading the OP,s last post I take it that compensation has now been given for all three tickets.

Indeed it has. All three tickets were compensated for at their full value. So my journey consisted of:

A station - Paddington
Paddington - St. Pancras
St. Pancras - Another station

The whole value of all three tickets (despite 2/3 being returns) was paid as compensation.

 

[IanD]

Indeed it has. All three tickets were compensated for at their full value. So my journey consisted of:

A station - Paddington
Paddington - St. Pancras
St. Pancras - Another station

The whole value of all three tickets (despite 2/3 being returns) was paid as compensation.

Although FGW are obviously still of the opinion that they were doing you a favour rather than following correct procedure.