delay repay northern

[anothertyke]

On 26 June, I attempted to travel from Horsforth (nr Leeds) to Windermere to do a walk in the Lake District. A day return with a Senior Card with the flexibility I wanted is over £40, so after considering my options I booked Advances from Horsforth to Leeds and Leeds to Preston, an off peak day return from Preston to Oxenholme and a Northern Newspaper offer Day ranger to cover the Windermere legs and the return trip from Preston or Lancaster to Horsforth. (The Day ranger is only valid from 0845 so was not usable on the outward to Preston).

All went well until on arrival at Preston we were told there had been a fatality at Oxenholme and it was up to me what to do. I decided to return home. On trying to reclaim for my tickets, it appears that Northern are only willing to refund the Preston-Oxenholme return leg.

Question 1-- is that correct on Northern's part?

Question 2--- if not, any advice on what to do? I have had an exchange of about eight emails with their on line team and sent my tickets up to their Edinburgh PO Box address but have got nowhere. We are talking about £17 here (plus a wasted Day ranger) so it is not trivial but on the other hand life is too short for an endless circular exchange.

 

[AlterEgo]

You abandoned your journey and returned home, and are therefore not due delay repay. Instead, you should claim a full refund for abandoning your journey from the retailer of the tickets. This may prove difficult if you purchased your tickets from different points of sale.

 

[anothertyke]

You abandoned your journey and returned home, and are therefore not due delay repay. Instead, you should claim a full refund for abandoning your journey from the retailer of the tickets. This may prove difficult if you purchased your tickets from different points of sale.

Sorry yes, title of thread is misleading. That is indeed what I am trying to do.

an element in the story is that the three tickets were bought on line (fortunately all Northern) and the Day Ranger newspaper offer ticket at Horsforth Station.

 

[fandroid]

Their logic strikes me as absurd. You started from home on that day, as evidenced by the Advance tickets. Even if your intention was to just visit Oxenholme, you still abandoned your intended trip at Preston for justifiable reasons and returned home to where you started your journey.

Are they implying that the Advance tickets were someone else's because there are no specific tickets for the return journey home (because they were covered by the Day Ranger)?

 

[anothertyke]

Their logic strikes me as absurd. You started from home on that day, as evidenced by the Advance tickets. Even if your intention was to just visit Oxenholme, you still abandoned your intended trip at Preston for justifiable reasons and returned home to where you started your journey.

Are they implying that the Advance tickets were someone else's because there are no specific tickets for the return journey home (because they were covered by the Day Ranger)?

Don't think so. Their line is more like 'You bought advance tickets from Horsforth to Leeds to Preston. The trains ran. End of story.' After several attempts I have not got beyond that. Whereas if I'd bought a return from Horsforth to Windermere I'd have been covered.

 

[Watershed]

Northern are, unsurprisingly, wrong here. You may have bought split tickets - but under condition 14.2 of the NRCoT, you are still deemed as making one journey. Condition 30.1 gives you the right to a full refund if:

you have begun your journey but are unable to complete it due to a delay to, or cancellation of, your service. In such cases, you are permitted to return to your point of origin and still get a refund.

Note that the phrase "your journey" is used - in combination with condition 14.2 (which also uses the same phrase), this makes clear that all tickets are eligible to be refunded in the case of split tickets.

If you're not getting anywhere with Northern, it's worth asking them to confirm whether you are in deadlock so that you can proceed to the Rail Ombudsman. The Ombudsman is an utter chocolate teapot in our experience, but asking for the deadlock letter can sometimes mean that your case is looked at by someone more senior, who might actually have a clue what they're doing.

You always have the option of a chargeback (probably not a section 75 claim, due to the ticket value being under £100) if Northern still don't play ball.

 

[yorkie]

Don't think so. Their line is more like 'You bought advance tickets from Horsforth to Leeds to Preston. The trains ran. End of story.' After several attempts I have not got beyond that. Whereas if I'd bought a return from Horsforth to Windermere I'd have been covered.

I don't think they would have quibbled if you had booked online a journey from Horsforth to Windermere, regardless of the number of tickets in the booking; for example the forum's site will handle that automatically, in the case of point-to-point tickets. You then get one itinerary and the booking is clearly identifiable as one journey.

The problem is where you make a journey by booking lots of separate journeys; it gets even more messy if you use more than on retailer (or retail method), as then an individual "journey" will look fine to the retailer, and manual explanation and inspection is required for the issue to be understood.

What I'd suggest, and I recognise it's not always possible, is to try to book any complicated journey as one journey; the number of tickets isn't a problem, but getting it to be one journey can make any refund or compensation claims so much easier!

Where you mix and match in the way you did, I think it is just inevitable that time and effort is going to have to be invested to get any issues resolved.

Issues don't just occur due to disruption on the day but can also occur due to services being retimed; I've known people find that what was booked as a valid itinerary can become an invalid one, and if it's booked as separate journeys it can be a pain to resolve.