Delay Repay should be abolished

[miklcct]

I think that delay repay is good for longer delays but useless for smaller delays and especially for lower price tickets. If it were me in charge, I think I would increase the 15 minute delay up to 20 minutes and put in a clause saying that any repay which would equal less than £5 is not claimable.

Firstly, the increase of delay time is that 15 minutes isn't actually that much and not really that disruptive to your day. Nowhere else would you get a repay scheme as generous as that. 20 minutes is when things, in my opinion, start becoming a bit of an issue and meetings get cancelled. It may not seem like much of an increase but it reduces the amount of people able to claim back money.

Secondly, the introduction of the rule, no repay less than than £5 would save staff time and money. Why should staff or systems be sorting out payments for such little money. It's a waste of resources and will cost more to arrange the payment than the payment is even worth it. The railway costs a lot of money to run and funds certainly shouldn't be spent sorting delay repay for small change.


I'd certainly make a central delay repay website and then have a central team deal with it and work out who is responsible as I think it's unfair for passengers to work out which TOC caused the delay and claim from there and I do think people get confused by who to go to for delay repay so a central site, probably ran by Rail Delivery Group, would be much easier for people to deal with.

That creates a system which hugely disproportionately impacts people who make shorter, less expensive journeys.

If I travel from home to Leeds or Manchester it’s a journey of 30 - 40 minutes and a ticket costing £10 - £14. Under your proposal I could be delayed by 50% of the journey time every single time and not get a penny back. (And back in the 2018 Northern meltdown, that’s pretty much what was happening)

Why don’t I deserve delay repay in that situation?

I second this. If compensation under £5 is refused, train companies can delay their passengers at their own will without financial consequences since most train tickets cost £20 or less. I don't have a particular objection of upping the 15-minute limit to 20 minutes, as 15 minutes is just the consequence of missing a departure in a turn-up-and-go system, but it's ridiculous denying compensation to those who have been delayed by 30, or even 60 minutes, just because the compensation amount is pennies.


I have been delayed to threshold 11 times this year. Only 1 of them is at least 30 minutes. It is a medium-distance journey and the compensation barely exceeds £5. The relevant single journey price of most of my journeys is in the order of £2 to £5, and it's utterly ridiculous to deny a 63p compensation if a signal failure delays me for 45 minutes for a Clapham Junction - Harrow & Wealdstone journey.

No, Delay Repay should be extended to all businesses which, through incompetence, inconvenience their customers; For example, the well-know national hobby and craft supplies chain which last week, thanks to only one till open and therefore a massive queue, caused me to miss a bus and incur a 30 minute delay. Not quite sure how that would be administered, however.....

On a more serious note, Delay Repay should at least operate to the same conditions for all public transport operators; Eg airlines, which compete with rail for certain flows, do not I believe offer anywhere near the railway's obligations, such as payment for externally caused disruption.

Sweden provides delay compensation for local traffic if the delay is at least 20 minutes, which includes all modes of transport including trains and buses. Under certain circumstances one can even claim back the replacement taxi fare, or car cost as well (subject to a limit). On long-distance traffic, the threshold is 60 minutes.

 

[markymark2000]

I second this. If compensation under £5 is refused, train companies can delay their passengers at their own will without financial consequences since most train tickets cost £20 or less. I don't have a particular objection of upping the 15-minute limit to 20 minutes, as 15 minutes is just the consequence of missing a departure in a turn-up-and-go system, but it's ridiculous denying compensation to those who have been delayed by 30, or even 60 minutes, just because the compensation amount is pennies.


I have been delayed to threshold 11 times this year. Only 1 of them is at least 30 minutes. It is a medium-distance journey and the compensation barely exceeds £5. The relevant single journey price of most of my journeys is in the order of £2 to £5, and it's utterly ridiculous to deny a 63p compensation if a signal failure delays me for 45 minutes for a Clapham Junction - Harrow & Wealdstone journey.

If it costs more to sort than you get in reimbursement, it's a waste really. Someone has the figure but I'm sure it was around £2.60 or so is what it costs to sort the repay. Delay repay doesn't have to be a thing at all and the fact we have it is very good, for people to use the system thought to claim back, as you are saying, pence, is ridiculous. If people are petty enough to go chasing the railway after 63p each time they are delayed, I'd say that it's better to lose them passengers than it is to have them costing the taxpayer around £2 every time they claim as well as costing hundreds of other delay repay claimants in longer waiting times.

 

[miklcct]

If people are petty enough to go chasing the railway after 63p each time they are delayed, I'd say that it's better to lose them passengers than it is to have them costing the taxpayer around £2 every time they claim as well as costing hundreds of other delay repay claimants in longer waiting times.

Well, then good luck losing the bulk of passengers and the system running into a huge loss, while the traffic in the city centre comes to a standstill.

The maximum Oyster / contactless fare within zones 1-6 - where most commuters travel in - is £8.90, for which a 25% compensation is £2.23, less than the £2.60 cost you have quoted.

The existence of Delay Repay puts a cost onto the railways to motivate them not to delay their trains. If the scheme is scrapped, and trains get delayed to the extent that people don't trust them any more and drive their cars despite having to pay the congestion charge and parking fees.

 

[markymark2000]

Well, then good luck losing the bulk of passengers and the system running into a huge loss, while the traffic in the city centre comes to a standstill.

The maximum Oyster / contactless fare within zones 1-6 - where most commuters travel in - is £8.90, for which a 25% compensation is £2.23, less than the £2.60 cost you have quoted.

The existence of Delay Repay puts a cost onto the railways to motivate them not to delay their trains. If the scheme is scrapped, and trains get delayed to the extent that people don't trust them any more and drive their cars despite having to pay the congestion charge and parking fees.

Losing the bulk of passengers. Really! That's an over exaggeration if ever I heard it.

Most people don't even claim delay repay where they are entitled to it and even less go for Delay Repay when it's smaller amounts involved. Infact, we could probably do a poll on this forum. At which point do people start looking into delay repay. I know that I and a number of others do not claim these £2 reimbursements, it's just not worth the process to get £2 back.



I do agree with the delay repay scheme so not sure why you are saying about scrapping it.

 

[miklcct]

Most people don't even claim delay repay where they are entitled to it and even less go for Delay Repay when it's smaller amounts involved. Infact, we could probably do a poll on this forum. At which point do people start looking into delay repay. I know that I and a number of others do not claim these £2 reimbursements, it's just not worth the process to get £2 back.

Let me show you my Delay Repay record I have made delayed by South Western Railway services this year.



There are 8 delays shown in the screenshot, with only of 3 of them over £5. However, 2 of them were in fact 120+ minutes paid out despite I only claimed for 15-29 or 30-59 minutes (one of them was because the automated system can't handle the fact that I took an earlier delayed service on the day of major disruption, another was because a rail replacement bus was incorrectly shown as cancelled in the system while in fact it was just delayed), so only one of them was a "legit" claim of over £5, which was a result of missing a connection onto the only direct service of the day, resulting in an extra connection onto a line with 60-minute headway, resulting in a huge (60-119 minutes) delay.

All these journeys aren't short journeys at all. They are all medium-distance regional journeys.

Avanti has already done a great job of driving away rail passengers. If Delay Repay can't be applied for amounts of £5 of less, South Western Railway will be free to become another Avanti, cancelling their trains at will knowing that their passengers can't apply for Delay Repay anyway as by cancelling even half of the timetabled trains on the day, it's unlikely that passengers will be delayed by more than 60 minutes, which is the point when the expected Delay Repay starts to go over the threshold.