The idea of paying a subscription to have a company complete delay repay forms on your behalf highlights how customer unfriendly the process is. I can see why TOCs would (hypothetically) pressure these companies into ceasing services - it shows how unfriendly it is and harms their revenue (does delay repay come from the government or the TOC?)
-
Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Questions About Delay Repay Claims and Third-Party Services in the UK
- Thread starter ethp2000
- Start date
- Status
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
ethp2000
Member
Yeah, totally agree. We’ve got this fragmented, uncentralised system where each TOC has its own set of rules and long, tedious forms for Delay Repay. The whole process is deliberately frustrating (especially for someone like me who hates admin lol)—TOCs are the ones who have to pay the compensation, so they make it as annoying as possible to discourage people from claiming. It’s all pushed onto the passenger to navigate, and honestly, it’s a real shame. No wonder around 50% of people don’t bother, especially in cases when the refund is only a few quid. It’s just not right.
redreni
Established Member
Their (presumably deliberately) fiddly forms are the reason, in the case of some TOCs, why I do postal claims. I'm not a luddite, but if the want me to fill in an online form they need to make it quicker and easier than doing a postal form.
Vexed
Member
While the TOCs pay it to passengers, the money comes from the DfT / Treasury - the TOCs are on National Rail Contracts now and transitioning to GBR (except open access of course) and don't really care how much they end up giving out as it's not their money!
What TOCs do have are general performance incentives. I would be very surprised if they have a financial incentive to reduce Delay Repay claims as this wouldn't look good at all if it came out. Off the record words or purposely complicated forms still in use from when the TOCs were on the hook for pay outs might be another matter though.
Maybe I'm not cynical enough.
On a seperate matter I would be very cautious about simplifying the process as incorrectly claiming Delay Repay can have serious reprocussions, as we see in the Disputes and Prosecutions sub forum.
Presumably this is one area where we can hope for de-fragmentation in the medium term. GBR will presumably (slowly) standardise procedures.
Haywain
Veteran Member
- Joined
- 3 Feb 2013
- Messages
- 24,832
I don't think there is any truth in that. TOCs are under great pressure from DfT to cut costs and Delay Repay will be seen as a cost to the business.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
It may be also worth bearing in ind that of a TOC were to take action against a claimant for false claims, and the claims had been submitted by the third party, the third party could then be on the hook for being sued by the claimant. It looks like a very dubious business model to me.
It's sensible to pressure them into reducing delay repay, but as we've seen it just ends up with them dropping services!
Tazi Hupefi
On Moderation
You're on a hiding to nothing here, except perhaps an injunction.
Delay Repay Sniper, Rail Guard etc and plenty of others were shut down, mainly for facilitating fraud. They all were not conducting reasonable due diligence when it came to their customers, and the vast majority of claims were unsurprisingly, fraudulent. If you want to act as the professional agent or intermediary for a passenger, to claim money on their behalf, it is right that the industry expects you to conduct Know Your Customer checks, perform basic due diligence as to the merits / validity of a claim, and have robust procedures in place in terms of managing the payment and payment details. You are going to have to ensure that money is paid directly to customers, and not to you, otherwise you are then encountering issues around client money suspense accounts, money laundering etc.
Most TOCs also have rules in place that block persistent IP addresses, Device fingerprints, MAC addresses as well as extensive data matching in the background.
I suspect now, that the ORR would also take a dim view of any organisation seeking to take a facilitation fee or subscription for claiming compensation, and may well use consumer protection legislation to apply pressure.
Delay Repay Sniper, Rail Guard etc and plenty of others were shut down, mainly for facilitating fraud. They all were not conducting reasonable due diligence when it came to their customers, and the vast majority of claims were unsurprisingly, fraudulent. If you want to act as the professional agent or intermediary for a passenger, to claim money on their behalf, it is right that the industry expects you to conduct Know Your Customer checks, perform basic due diligence as to the merits / validity of a claim, and have robust procedures in place in terms of managing the payment and payment details. You are going to have to ensure that money is paid directly to customers, and not to you, otherwise you are then encountering issues around client money suspense accounts, money laundering etc.
Most TOCs also have rules in place that block persistent IP addresses, Device fingerprints, MAC addresses as well as extensive data matching in the background.
I suspect now, that the ORR would also take a dim view of any organisation seeking to take a facilitation fee or subscription for claiming compensation, and may well use consumer protection legislation to apply pressure.
What if it were just a plugin to the user's web browser, which, once the user navigates to the delay repay web form, takes care of inputting the data, but the user is still responsible for looking over the information entered before clicking "next" on every page (as well as solving CAPTCHAs etc), and the money goes directly to the user's bank account - would that be definitely OK? (Obviously payment would then have to be taken on a subscription or pre-payment basis instead...)
Tazi Hupefi
On Moderation
I think the ORR is not likely to be supportive of any organisation that seeks to charge people for a service that is free.
Much in the same way that horrible and abusive companies advertise extensively to "help" you book a driving test, get a free UK Health Insurance Card, passport etc. The ASA tries to crack down on them along with some other agencies. The ones that survive are supposed to prominently make clear that it is an unofficial service, and that they are charging you more for something that is free or cheaper from the official site.
I also think the Information Commissioner would also have concerns around the legal basis for processing data - at the very least you'd need to register with them. If you are storing payment information, then you're into a whole other world of pain.
The TOC fraud managers will also inevitably register and sign-up for a subscription discretely, and will then proceed to dismantle you from the inside out - any non-compliance or possible vulnerability and they'll report it / take action which could be costly.
redreni
Established Member
GTR directly told me, a couple of weeks ago, that "we're currently taking more steps to be more vigilant" in scrutinising delay repay claims (in the context of an email justifying a rejection of an obviously valid claim). So maybe the TOCs on management contracts do periodically come under DfT pressure to pay out less?
I have it on good authority that every government department was told, quite late in the financial year, to find areas where they could underspend their projected budgets for 2024-25, so I wouldn't be surprised.
Tazi Hupefi
On Moderation
There is no pressure to reduce payouts - but there is an increased focus on the need to reduce fraud that affects the public sector. TOCs are starting to align with the latest Government Counter Fraud Functional Strategy.
I would expect the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill to have implications for the public railway. This may see a fraudulent, persistent delay repay claim customer having their data shared with other parts of the government to identify possible other frauds, amongst other regulatory changes. It may also see GBR receiving information from the other direction.
Last edited:
As @Tazi Hupefi has said, it isn't a new idea or model and has been done and shut down before. Even if it can be facilitated in a way that can't be shutdown, all that will happen is that the delay repay conditions would be changed to maintain the status quo.
As someone who used to supply a lot of the delay repay services with data to perform their calculations, it was my understanding that most if not all of them were either shuttered by the aforementioned issues with regards to fraudulent delay repay claims or as a direct result of lack of subscription revenue from the pandemic. I think the last one (that we supplied) was terminated in May or June 2020.
I would note that Delay Repay Sniper in particular actually shifted gears and ended up supplying some operators their Delay Repay claim portals.
I would note that Delay Repay Sniper in particular actually shifted gears and ended up supplying some operators their Delay Repay claim portals.
Last edited:
redreni
Established Member
They can't distinguish fraud and error from correct payouts, though.
If that isn't true by definition (which it almost is because if they knew which claims were fraudulent or mistaken, they wouldn't pay them), it is true in actual fact. Realistically, DfT know that, so while I'm sure they're not directly saying "pay out less", that is what it amounts to.
Because the TOCs can't tell which payouts are fraudulent or erroneous, an instruction to reduce fraud manifests in spurious rejections of valid claims. Maybe fraudulent claims that would previously have been paid are also being rejected, who knows, but if so it only goes to show that all an instruction to reduce fraud does is cause them to pay out less.
(In my case, at the moment they've saved £1.90 which they may or may not ultimately end up paying anyway, but it's already cost them far more than that to process the correspondence and it will result in unnecessary Rail Ombudsman casework for them.)
- Status