Hi, apologies there is a lot to read, I had a thread a while back about Great Northern refusing a disruption refund on a carnet ticket ("oh no, we only refund full books of carnet tickets, if it says anything else in NRCoT then sorry that bit doesn't apply").
Is it just me or is the correspondence below utterly crackers and the case handler is not really adequately understanding/addressing the issue? She seems to be saying that London Travelwatch's preferred approach is to get NRCoT changed to reduce disruption refund rights???
EMAIL FROM LONDON TRAVELWATCH 5TH JANUARY
Thank you for contacting London TravelWatch and for the further emails you sent. Your correspondence has been passed to me to review.
Firstly, I would like to apologize for my colleagues confusing the two watchdogs. I would like to assure you that we deal with appeals for both watchdogs and, on occasions, accidentally the wrong one is mentioned in our correspondence. We’re looking to use one term for both watchdogs but this has to be agreed by senior managers.
With regards to your complaint I’m sorry your request for compensation for disruption has been rejected by Great Northern as not all of the Carnet tickets could be provided. I can only imagine how frustrating this must’ve been as the terms and conditions only appear to apply to refunds and not compensation. As there are some questions I’d like to ask of Great Northern I’ve sent them a copy of your correspondence. However, I need to let you know London TravelWatch has no legal powers to insist Great Northern offers any compensation or gesture of goodwill for the frustration that’s been caused.
Once I get a reply from Great Northern, which can take 20 working days, I’ll write to you again.
Yours sincerely
EMAIL FROM ME 5TH JANUARY
Do you have a view on this based on my submission? Do you think I’m right?
Regards
EMAIL FROM LONDON TRAVELWATCH 12TH JANUARY
Thank you for your further email.
Firstly, I need to let you know I received an email from Great Northern saying you had a case open with the them. However, when I contacted the Rail Ombudsman it was agreed your concerns were to do with the policy surrounding Carnet tickets which comes within our remit. They agreed to this. However, I don’t know if they let you know they were closing the case you had opened with them. It’s very confusing especially as the Rail Ombudsman was set up to help passengers.
In answer to your question as it’s a matter of the policy of the Carnet tickets it would’ve been something you’d have agreed to when they were bought. Whether they are right or wrong isn’t something we can answer. However, we can ask for gestures of goodwill or that a transport company considers thinking outside of the terms and conditions. This is something I’ve done but, as I mentioned, London TravelWatch doesn’t have the legal powers to insist Great Northern agrees with my request.
I appreciate this will seem very vague but London TravelWatch will do what we can to help.
EMAIL FROM MYSELF 13TH JANUARY
I have to say I’m very disappointed by your handling of this and would like to request that you pass this up the chain to one of your colleagues for a further review.
First of all, I do not fully understand this distinction regarding what is “policy” and what is not. After all, there is a policy regarding pretty much every aspect of the train operating company’s operation and therefore it would appear to me that pretty much any issue could be labelled as being “policy”, which apparently seems to take the issue out of the remit of the Rail Ombudsman (who can compel Great Northern to do something) and into London Travelwatch (who cannot compel Great Northern to do anything). Would it be possible for this to be explained more fully?
I would also question whether it is appropriate to have these conversations/decisions without involving the complainant. I have now found that my complaint was reallocated from London Travelwatch to Transport Focus without (at the time) explanation or my agreement, and now I find my complaint is being closed at the Rail Ombudsman and continuing only through London Travelwatch… again I am not consulted/informed until after the event. I do not think this is satisfactory and again I would question why you do not seek the view of the complainant before these actions are taken rather than after?
Turning now to the actual meat of my complaint, I feel you have failed to actually address the content of my complaint at all. I am now going to explain, so there can be no doubt, what my complaint is.
Let us take for an example my job in the insurance industry. It would be possible for my employer to put a clause in my contract saying that I was entitled to only two weeks’ holiday during the year, and for me to agree to that by signing the contract. However the law of the land (specifically the Work and Families Act 2006 and the resulting Working Time (Amendment) Regulations 2007) specifies a much higher minimum holiday entitlement (specifically 5.6 weeks or 4 weeks plus bank holidays) so in fact this would take precedence over the clause in the contract. My holiday entitlement would be the legal minimum, regardless of what the contract said.
The point I am making here is that there is a legal framework which restricts the conditions my employer can impose.
Here the equivalent to a “legal framework” is the National Rail Conditions of Travel (NRCoT). These apply to all journeys, all tickets, and again they restrict the conditions which a train operator can impose.
Section 29 of NRCoT allows the train companies to impose conditions on what I will call “personal choice” refunds. Specifically section 29.1 says “If you purchase any Ticket(s) and then choose not to travel, you may apply for a refund from the original retailer, unless the terms and conditions of your Ticket(s) state otherwise.” So clearly the train company is allowed to impose conditions which would prevent or restrict the passenger’s ability to apply for a refund if simply of his/her own personal choice.
Section 30 deals with disruption refunds. This section is headed up “Your Right to a Refund If Your Train Is Disrupted and You Choose Not to Travel”. So it is clear from the heading alone that this is a different situation, in which the train passenger has a right to a refund, which the train operator cannot restrict.
Section 30.1 is very clear about the scope and that all tickets are captured - “Conditions 30.1 - 30.4 cover all Tickets other than Season Tickets…” so the right to a refund definitely extends to the carnet tickets which I had purchased.
Section 30.1 continues to say “You may return an unused Ticket to the original retailer or Train Company from whom it was purchased, where you will be given a full refund with no administration fee charged, if you decide not to travel because the train you intended to use is: cancelled, or delayed…”
Please note the difference of language from section 29. Section 29 included the words “unless the terms and conditions of your Ticket(s) state otherwise”, whereas section 30 does not. So the NRCoT allows retailers to impose restrictions on personal choice refunds in section 29, but does not allow them to impose restrictions on disruption refunds in section 30.
Can you see the parallel with the example of my employment contract? In the same way it wouldn’t have any effect for my employer to put a clause in my contract limiting my holiday to two weeks, because the legal framework does not allow them to do that, equally Great Northern’s purported restriction on disruption refunds for carnet tickets is of no effect as the NRCoT is very clear that they cannot impose such a condition.
I tried to raise this with Great Northern but ultimately they are just so used to their way of doing things, and I am just a humble passenger, that they dismissed the complaint. They said NRCoT does not apply to carnet tickets, whereas as I clearly demonstrate above, it does.
The whole point of involving London Travelwatch was to tap into your expertise and therefore to be taken more seriously by Great Northern if they are doing something wrong, which as I demonstrate above, they are.
The reason I am so disappointed with your handling of this case is that you appear not to have engaged with the actual key argument at all. You have now emailed me twice and have not mentioned NRCoT once. You have not told me if you agree/disagree with my argument that NRCoT bans the train operating company from imposing conditions on disruption refunds, this point appears simply forgotten as irrelevant. I provided the correspondence with Great Northern, I presume you read this, the argument that NRCoT bans disruption refund conditions was laid out, I cannot understand why you have not even mentioned it. Was the correspondence somehow lost in the Transport Focus / London Travelwatch confusion?
You say you cannot say whether it was right or wrong that those refund conditions were imposed on the carnet tickets. Surely I would have thought you can comment on whether ticket conditions comply with NRCoT… surely that would be a key purpose of London Travelwatch? Or would the Rail Ombudsman be able to comment on that?
What is particularly disturbing is that you have asked Great Northern for a refund as a goodwill gesture… thereby implicitly confirming your agreement that they were within their rights to refuse my refund request, which as I explained above, they were not. So your intervention has achieved the exact opposite of what I had hoped, you have actually weakened my position rather than strengthened it and made it more difficult for the correct resolution to be reached.
I appreciate you probably feel like I’m making a mountain out of a molehill as it is only £6.40 in dispute but I am fully aware that 99% of people would not pursue this and therefore would end up going without the refund to which they were entitled. I was hoping the intervention from London Travelwatch would not just resolve my case in my favour but get Great Northern to understand they could not act that way under NRCoT and so improve this for all passengers. As I explained above, I feel your intervention so far has almost certainly made things worse, both for myself and for other people in the future facing the same issue.
Sorry about the length of this but I’m trying to be as clear as possible and wrap everything up in one email.
Could I suggest you pass this to your manager for him/her to conduct a further review of the case and I would be grateful for my points actually to be addressed, which I feel so far has not adequately happened.
EMAIL FROM LONDON TRAVELWATCH 20TH JANUARY
Thank you for your further email.
I can understand why you’re disappointed with the handling of your case as there’s been confusion on the part of the watchdogs as well as the Rail Ombudsman. I’ll try my best to answer your questions.
Policy
When we talk about policy it’s in relation to the terms and conditions of the tickets. Generally, these are contained within the National Rail Conditions of Travel but each train company has enhanced conditions which are found in the Passenger Charter. However, there are ticket, such as Carnet tickets, which have their own terms and conditions which can be found using the link:
https://www.thameslinkrailway.com/tickets/ticket-types-explained/carnet-tickets/carnet-terms-and-conditions. Any complaint about these policies come within the remit of the watchdogs and not the Ombudsman. It may seem unfair to do this all in the background but it was only done so as the best placed organisation was quickly dealing with your concerns rather than having you wait longer still for the matter to be referred by the usual process. But I do take your point and appreciate that this may have been easier to understand if the Rail Ombudsman had referred you to us themselves.
Who does what?
There are two watchdogs – London TravelWatch and Transport Focus – which have different regional remits. Having said that, as you’d have seen from the signature below both have the escalated complaints dealt with by one organisation. As I mentioned before, mistakes do happen for which we apologise. We have taken steps to reduce these errors and will continue to work towards getting this right first time. Some years ago the Rail Ombudsman was created and the different types of complaints were split between them and the watchdogs. I’m sorry it wasn’t properly explained to you as to why the Rail Ombudsman would have to close the case they had open for you.
Your complaint
As mentioned above, Carnet tickets have their own terms and conditions. I say this you refer to the National Rail Conditions of Travel. Regardless of what the conditions say when I contacted Great Northern I asked them to consider offering a refund for the delay and compensation as I felt it was unfair not to offer anything as you’d fulfilled the obligation to complete the ticket before travelling. But, as both the watchdogs have no legal remit to insist the rail operators to reply favourably to our appeals, we rely on the goodwill and relationship we have with the train company. The reason I didn’t go into detail in my original email is that I feel it’s more of an introductory email rather than one giving a lot of information. Please accept my apologies you felt your concerns weren’t taken seriously as I can assure you this was far from the truth.
Both London TravelWatch and Transport Focus strongly believe that there are gaps in the National Rail Conditions of Travel that don’t provide sufficient information for passenger rights with regards to certain ticket types. We will continue to press for another update to this document in 2023, to ensure that passengers are fully aware of their refunds. Although I must stress, that although these industry documents may not allow for refunds of certain tickets, that wouldn’t stop our efforts in trying to obtain a better outcome for passengers.
I have already written to Great Northern to express my dissatisfaction about your refund but I am aware that you are dissatisfied with the work I have done to date. I would like to put this right to ensure that you have confidence in the efforts I wish to make on your behalf and in the organisations for whom I represent in general. In addition, I can request one of my colleagues to take this matter up on your behalf if you’d prefer. Please let me know if you’d like to take up this option and in the meantime I’ll continue making representations about your refund.
I look forward to hearing from you.
