Delay repay where you don’t know the ticket cost?

[M7R]

Hopefully some of the brilliant minds on here will know the answer…

My folks have been on a “rail” holiday, booked via a travel agent, trains from their home town to fort William, couple if excursions again on the normal rail network and then back home again via normal public trains.

One of their trains the Avanti from Glasgow to Crewe was delayed by 30 mins and they missed their connection, so they have ended up back at their destination 1hr late.

So all fine for delay repay, however their tickets just say “inclusive tour” there isn’t any price shown on them, so can they even claim delay repay? If so how would they do it?

Thanks

 

[Adam Williams]

These tickets have a value of £0.05/£0.10 if the TOC goes by the fares data, any delay repay would not be worth claiming. Obviously the tour operator would have paid a different figure to the TOC, I don't know if you'd have any right to ask that they use this figure to calculate a delay repay entitlement though.

A TOC may be willing to provide something as a gesture of goodwill if you ask

 

[M7R]

Oh that’s pants if that’s true! To be honest for what they paid I suspect it would have been cheaper to book it all themselves and they would have definitely got delay repay then but my folks are very odd at times.. won’t do anything unless it’s their idea etc

Thanks for the quick reply though

 

[gray1404]

In these circumstances I would submit a request to customer relations

 

[Cantab26]

The one occasion this has happened to me I contacted customer relations and they used the price of the equivalent ‘normal’ fare e.g. I was travelling on a free scratch-off ticket which was equivalent to an Anytime Day single.

 

[M7R]

I’ll drop a message over to Avanti then and see what they say, nothing to lose I guess thanks both

 

[jon81uk]

Did the tour company rebook onto new trains? Or was the connection they missed not part of the tour?
I would talk to the tour company about compensation if they had to pay out further for a missed connection.

 

[yorkie]

Hopefully some of the brilliant minds on here will know the answer…

My folks have been on a “rail” holiday, booked via a travel agent, trains from their home town to fort William, couple if excursions again on the normal rail network and then back home again via normal public trains.

One of their trains the Avanti from Glasgow to Crewe was delayed by 30 mins and they missed their connection, so they have ended up back at their destination 1hr late.

So all fine for delay repay, however their tickets just say “inclusive tour” there isn’t any price shown on them, so can they even claim delay repay? If so how would they do it?

Thanks

How much would hotels etc have cost without paying for train tickets? You could calculate the marginal cost and make a case on that basis.

But really I think there is no clear cut answer and it's simply a case of asking the company to consider a goodwill gesture.

I don't know if Avanti issue complimentary travel coupons but if they do, that may be an option. Northern certainly do this, GWR do (or at least did) and I know LNER used to.

 

[Cantab26]

And if you request rail travel vouchers rather than cash I tend to find TOCs can be a tad more generous because the money comes back to the railway eventually: either the vouchers expire unused or they encourage a new journey in the future

 

[fandroid]

The TOC never sees any financial benefit. If vouchers are unused then they may get the income from a paid journey that would have happened anyway (assuming the claimant has lost/forgotten about the vouchers). If the vouchers are used they get the (admittedly small) marginal cost of carrying someone for nothing.

And if you request rail travel vouchers rather than cash I tend to find TOCs can be a tad more generous because the money comes back to the railway eventually: either the vouchers expire unused or they encourage a new journey in the future

 

[CyrusWuff]

As an aside, for Excess Fare purposes "High" rate ITX tickets are treated as Off-Peak and "Low" rate as Super Off-Peak (where they exist), so logically a DR claim should be based on that too. It'll probably require manual review, however, otherwise you'll only get 5p or 10p back.

 

[Benjwri]

The TOC never sees any financial benefit. If vouchers are unused then they may get the income from a paid journey that would have happened anyway (assuming the claimant has lost/forgotten about the vouchers). If the vouchers are used they get the (admittedly small) marginal cost of carrying someone for nothing.

No financial benefit, but reputational benefit. The railway most definitely doesn't see benefit from Delay Repay either, but companies choose to implement schemes that are more generous than required. There is benefit in retaining customers and having a good repuatation. Vouchers are prefered by TOCs because it is even less of a financial loss than giving the original money back, and therefore they are more likely to be generous with them.

 

[Haywain]

companies choose to implement schemes that are more generous than required.

Most of those schemes that are more generous than the NRCoT requires were specified as part of franchise agreements, and may have been set out in the invitations to tender so not exactly 'chosen'.

 

[M7R]

Did the tour company rebook onto new trains? Or was the connection they missed not part of the tour?
I would talk to the tour company about compensation if they had to pay out further for a missed connection.

They didn’t have to pay anything out, they just hung around a Crewe for a hour and got on the next train home. The train they wanted was still in the platform, they went over to it but the doors had already been shut for departure, from what I can tell they spoke to the dispatcher and maybe the guard but was told tough they were too late, although to me that doesn’t fully make sense as surely the guard would have had the local door open? Unless he was leaning out the cab window.. either way they couldn’t get on it.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 Dec 2022 ==

As an aside, for Excess Fare purposes "High" rate ITX tickets are treated as Off-Peak and "Low" rate as Super Off-Peak (where they exist), so logically a DR claim should be based on that too. It'll probably require manual review, however, otherwise you'll only get 5p or 10p back.

These are their tickets, so super off peak I guess.

I’ll email Avanti tomorrow and see where I get,