What if someone mistakenly claims for less than their delay actually was, then they are paid out for that much cause that's what they claimed but then they realise the delay was more and now they question why they've been underpaid?
Then on realising they'd just appeal and explain the situation. There is no benefit at all to paying out more than the passenger has asked for - that's just throwing money away, the passenger is going to, in pretty much every case, be happy being paid what they claimed.
(Yet at the same time we have stupidity like dogmatically saying that where a passenger was delayed due to a cancellation of a clockface hourly service but because the following one arrived a minute early it's only a 59 minute claim, which does nothing but annoy the passenger because if there's a cancellation on an hourly service you're basically by definition an hour late - paying out what was asked in this case makes a lot more sense and could be funded by not paying out 100% for a 15-29 minute claim!)
